dce/davideisinger.com
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

alan watts

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
David Eisinger
2025-08-04 15:32:32 -04:00
parent 4ea725e540
commit 7c405f9d95
2 changed files with 120 additions and 21 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

47
content/journal/dispatch-30-august-2025/index.md
View File

@@ -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

94
static/archive/puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt Normal file
View File

@@ -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