From 7c405f9d95484d0eb6f7dbfd67c3fc2c48e81510 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Eisinger Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 15:32:32 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] alan watts --- .../journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md | 47 +++++----- static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt | 94 +++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 120 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-) create mode 100644 static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md b/content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md index 4430573..dd9ca63 100644 --- a/content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md +++ b/content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md @@ -5,6 +5,10 @@ draft: false tags: - dispatch references: +- title: "What is practice" + url: https://puddingtime.org/what-is-practice + date: 2025-08-04T19:29:53Z + file: puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt - title: "Flounder Mode - Colossus" url: https://joincolossus.com/article/flounder-mode/ date: 2025-08-04T03:36:39Z @@ -61,45 +65,46 @@ Some thoughts here... ### Reading & Listening * Fiction: [_The Day of the Jackal_][1], Frederick Forsyth -* Non-fiction: [_Title_][2], Author -* Music: [_The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band_][3], Menahan Street Band +* Non-fiction: [_The Book_][2], Alan Watts (a guy I follow [mentioned this author][3], then I saw this on our bookshelf -- maybe Claire picked it up?) +* Music: [_The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band_][4], Menahan Street Band [1]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-day-of-the-jackal-with-earbuds-frederick-forsyth/15562578 -[2]: https://bookshop.org/ -[3]: https://menahanstreetband.bandcamp.com/album/the-exciting-sounds-of-menahan-street-band +[2]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-book-on-the-taboo-against-knowing-who-you-are-alan-watts/6705001 +[3]: https://puddingtime.org/what-is-practice +[4]: https://menahanstreetband.bandcamp.com/album/the-exciting-sounds-of-menahan-street-band ### Links -* [Flounder Mode - Colossus][4] +* [Flounder Mode - Colossus][5] > I asked Kelly about the tradeoffs of focusing on a single thing if you want to be great (which is what I had been getting at before). “Greatness is overrated,” he said, and I perked up. “It’s a form of extremism, and it comes with extreme vices that I have no interest in. Steve Jobs was a jerk. Bob Dylan is a jerk.” -* [DIYR][5] +* [DIYR][6] > Celebrates the spirit of independence, creativity, and resourcefulness. The acronym DIYR stands for 'Do It Yourself Revolution', promoting reflection and new forms of production, combining simplicity and longevity, ethics and aesthetics. -* [Naz Hamid • Just One Good Thing][6] +* [Naz Hamid • Just One Good Thing][7] > In the last year, a mindset shift and approach appeared as a very simple idea: just do one thing, that I want to do today. -* [Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI — Ludicity][7] +* [Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI — Ludicity][8] > Let me be extremely clear — I think this essay sucks and it's wild to me that it achieved any level of popularity, and anyone that thinks that it does not predominantly consist of shoddy thinking and trash-tier ethics has been bamboozled by the false air of mature even-handedness, or by the fact that Ptacek is a good writer. -* [The AI-Native Software Engineer][8] +* [The AI-Native Software Engineer][9] > A practical playbook for integrating AI into your daily engineering workflow -* [Full-breadth Developers | justin․searls․co][9] +* [Full-breadth Developers | justin․searls․co][10] > The software industry is at an inflection point unlike anything in its brief history. Generative AI is all anyone can talk about. It has rendered entire product categories obsolete and upended the job market. With any economic change of this magnitude, there are bound to be winners and losers. So far, it sure looks like full-breadth developers—people with both technical and product capabilities—stand to gain as clear winners. -[4]: https://joincolossus.com/article/flounder-mode/ -[5]: https://diyr.dev/ -[6]: https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/ -[7]: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/ -[8]: https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-ai-native-software-engineer -[9]: https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/ +[5]: https://joincolossus.com/article/flounder-mode/ +[6]: https://diyr.dev/ +[7]: https://nazhamid.com/journal/just-one-good-thing/ +[8]: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-article-on-ai/ +[9]: https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-ai-native-software-engineer +[10]: https://justin.searls.co/posts/full-breadth-developers/ [^1]: Here are the samples I used: @@ -109,8 +114,8 @@ Some thoughts here... 4. [Cicadas][13] 5. [Osprey Sounds][14] -[10]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/lake-beach-waves-28492/ -[11]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/wooden-floor-creak-81237/ -[12]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/fireworks-field-recording-70720/ -[13]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/cicadas-18654/ -[14]: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/OSPREY/sounds +[11]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/lake-beach-waves-28492/ +[12]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/wooden-floor-creak-81237/ +[13]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/fireworks-field-recording-70720/ +[14]: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/cicadas-18654/ +[15]: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/OSPREY/sounds diff --git a/static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt b/static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ceab0a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,94 @@ +[1]puddingtime.org +[2] + + _____ _____ _ _____ ______ _ _ ______ ______ _____ _ _ _____ _____ _____ ___ ___ _____ _ + |_ _||_ _|( )/ ___| | ___ \| | | || _ \| _ \|_ _|| \ | || __ \|_ _||_ _|| \/ || ___|| | + | | | | |/ \ `--. | |_/ /| | | || | | || | | | | | | \| || | \/ | | | | | . . || |__ | | + | | | | `--. \ | __/ | | | || | | || | | | | | | . ` || | __ | | | | | |\/| || __| | | + _| |_ | | /\__/ / | | | |_| || |/ / | |/ / _| |_ | |\ || |_\ \ | | _| |_ | | | || |___ |_| + \___/ \_/ \____/ \_| \___/ |___/ |___/ \___/ \_| \_/ \____/ \_/ \___/ \_| |_/\____/ (_) 🔥🤘🏻🔥 + +July 14, 2025 + +[3]What is practice + +Al and I went to a dome show at OMSI called "Trust the Universe: The Philosophy +of Alan Watts." Up front, because reviews are thin on the ground, I would +recommend against it: It's only 45 minutes long, feels pretty disjointed, and +the psychedelic visuals are sometimes a little campy. When the lotus position +guy sort of gets sucked up into the mandala having dissolved his own ego I was +annoyed. + +I find Alan Watts engaging. He was a gifted explainer who could make heady, +paradoxical ideas flicker into solidity and coherence. There are a few moments +in the show where his ideas do come together and you get a sense of what he was +about, particularly about teaching and spiritual practice. + +It ended up giving Al and I something to think about afterward. She's a member +of a local Zen center. I've never really felt very compelled to take up a +formal practice. Certainly nothing like Soto Zen. I have some contradictory +feelings about it that the show resurfaced, because Watts saw some spiritual +practice and relationships with teachers as a sort of revolving door one could +never get out of if they don't push us toward our "oh, it's in here" moment. + +I guess I've always felt like big changes and shifts are "it's in here" +moments. There are lots of techniques and approaches to get us to those shifts, +and a skilled coach, mentor, teacher, or counselor can help us to or through +those shifts, but my moments of radical clarity have always come just bumping +into life. It's interview season right now, for instance, and I have been +reminded of the "pouncer" and "stalker" learning styles. I think in life +matters I've turned out to be a "pouncer." + +But I also think there's value in spiritual community -- even having a teacher +-- because to be raised in a liberal society in the 21st century is, regardless +of your ideological tilt, to be coached toward profound egoism and a kind of +selective sollipsism. Finding someone to trust and someone willing to work +through our egoism and self-protection can be helpful. I know I've benefitted +from it when I've been stuck on something, even if the benefit I got wasn't a +resolution, so much as an ability to sit with the discomfort of a lack of +resolution. + +I titled this post "What is practice?" because I'm not always sure. If I ask +that question of a Soto Zen practitioner I'll get a kind of answer. If I ask +three Soto Zen practitioners, I will likely get three different answers. If I +widen my survey to different sects, still more answers. If I ask the person +trying to sell me a mindfulness app, there will be another answer, and since +there seem to be dozens of those people, probably dozens more answers. + +I think for now my working definition is "whatever grants you the most ability +to sit with your thoughts and feelings in a place of remove from them, but +engagement with them." For some people, that will involve very austere forms -- +Al says at her Zen center you can opt in to a firm rod on the shoulder if your +form slips -- and for others not anything like that at all. I'm most in a +"practice mindset" when I'm running, doing some kinds of writing, and playing +some kinds of games. + +Those aren't buttons I can push -- click I am running so I am correctly engaged +with my thoughts and feelings -- because I find myself sometimes a mile down +the trail having been eaten by a narrative instead of understanding where a +narrative came from -- but they're the most reliable cues to get to the right +relationship. + +So, I don't know, I said I wouldn't recommend that dome show. I suppose if you +have a few Alan Watts books sitting around, or care to undertake some internet +research and are careful to avoid what appears to be a recent trend of people +making Alan Watts deep fakes that spout mysticism, you could sort of rig +something up for yourself with headphones and a good screensaver. But it did +remind me of a few questions about practice and mysticism I hadn't thought +about for a while. It did smell a little like weed in the dome theater, though. + + + +powered by [4]LMNO.lol + +[5]privacy policy · [6]terms of service + + +References: + +[1] https://puddingtime.org/ +[2] https://puddingtime.org/signin?goto=/what-is-practice +[3] https://puddingtime.org/what-is-practice +[4] https://lmno.lol/ +[5] https://lmno.lol/blog/privacy-policy +[6] https://lmno.lol/blog/terms-of-service