The Art of Not Thinking

Now, don't take this personally; there's just not many people that I know that could out-smart plain old dishwashing on such a fundamental philosophical level. I'd love to know what's your background and how you learned think in this way — and I'm asking mostly because I could use some of this way of thinking in my life as well.

I am what most people would call a "productive person" — I'm at one of the best universities in my country, have top grades, have a part-time position in a pretty good research facility, and I'm also slowly chipping away at my startup idea.

Sometimes I'm all happy about this, but other times I see that there's not much time for being "myself" between all these activities. Now, please, bear with me — it's hard to put it in words.

Often I ask myself whether I actually care about these activities, or whether I do them just because it is easier to fill my free time with all sorts of different things and delegate the question of „what should I do next” to external factors. The fact that I don't really care for good grades but at the same time act as if I did care, for example, made me wonder whether the values I have been raised with are really _my_ values, or whether I follow and fulfil them just due to some kind inertia mixed with inability to find my own values. And I’m sure that not only my cowardice and the imprinted values are at fault — the western culture is surely doing its part as well.

But don't get me wrong — I enjoy being the best, I enjoy programming (@ the startup) and the hard work (@ the facility). I just don't know whether it's me enjoying the stuff or some frankenstein of my parents' values and general cultural views occupying the space inside my head... I’m not exactly unhappy, I’m just not sure whether I’m taking the right path here, that is to say „my path” [1]. I think that learning how to think about things on a fundamental level, as you did, could help me in my case as well.

[1] A little side note: From the practical point of view, being raised to be "the best" has its warts — e.g. when your entire self-worth depends on external measures of "bestness" and crowds of people that praise you for your brilliance. So, even though I'm not unhappy, I foresee that I certainly will be at some point in the future if I don't rethink my values and a big chunk of my life — so I might as well start right now.

[2]: In case this is too OT for HN, I'd be happy to chat at wybitul [at-sign] evzen [dot-sign] dev.

I'm no one special, just a person who has finally made some progress on these very issues.

I've struggled for quite a while with the same fundamental questions about self as you seem to be struggling with now.

>I'm at one of the best universities in my country, have top grades, have a part-time position in a pretty good research facility, and I'm also slowly chipping away at my startup idea.

All of this takes hard work, these are certainly accomplishments that bring temporary satisfaction and happiness.

>Sometimes I'm all happy about this, but other times I see that there's not much time for being "myself" between all these activities.

This is a very subtle form of suffering. Things are going well, there isn't necessarily something obviously wrong, but still you can't shake the feeling and it has the potential to cause (a lot of) anxiety.

>I’m asking myself whether I actually care about these activities

There's no need to find yourself at one extreme or the other (caring or not caring). You do care about these things, but perhaps you overestimate their ability to provide you with lasting happiness and satisfaction. As you say, it's a never ending search for the next source of momentary satisfaction: "what's next for me?".

>Often I ask myself whether the values I have been raised with are really _my_ values, or whether I follow and fulfill them just due to some kind inertia mixed with inability to find my own values.

Inevitably, it's both. All of us are a result of an unbroken chain of cause and effect which started long before we were ever born. Part of your value system comes from your parents, part of theirs came from their parents, and so on. On top this, your personal experience and conditioning is overlaid. Recognizing this fact is important if you would like to break out of this cycle of questioning.

>To be frank, I’m not sure what to do about this. I’m not exactly unhappy, I’m just not sure whether I’m taking the right path here.

Yeah, I get you.

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To answer your technical question, I stumbled into the Tibetan school of Buddhism known as Dzogchen several months ago, this has exposed me to the wider landscape of the Madhyamaka (or middle way) view in Buddhism. I hesitate to scare you off thinking I'm trying to convert you to a religious practice, but as I've discovered myself, this is a highly logical and first-person oriented form of scientific philosophy that had been developing in India for at least 2500 years before Hinduism took over. Buddhism continued to develop in Tibet and has been well preserved by the Tibetans. In fact, quantum physics and modern science and the Madhyamaka view are in stunning alignment when it comes several factors, including the reality that things do not exist exactly as they appear to us.

There are two techniques (neither involving faith) to decomposing phenomena as I displayed with washing dishes.

The first is known as Shamatha, which means quiescence, calm abiding mind, singled pointed concentration, or even meditative equipoise. Shamatha is the act of meditating single-pointedly on some object with unwavering focus. This leads to mental stability overtime because through the process of cultivating Shamatha you develop right-thinking about discursive, roving thoughts, and eventually the waves settle (so to speak) and you're left with a very calm mental disposition (which can easily bring you joy). You may know of similar westernized meditation techniques in the mindfulness genre, they were almost certainly developed based on Shamatha, where one of the most popular objects of meditation is the breath or "mindfulness of breathing".

The second is known as Vipassana, which means wisdom, true seeing, or true insight. Vipassana is a form of analytical meditation in which an object of meditation is decomposed and deconstructed over and over again, forcefully illustrating the true nature of the object (which is always empty of inherent existence). Emptiness does not mean that the conventional world we live in does not exist, but rather that nothing in the conventional world exists in its own right as an independent object (as we humans tend to take for granted), but that everything manifests from one or more interdependent causes. This is known as dependent origination. Lucky us in the modern world, we already know that every thing we see is actually composed of sub-atomic particles which are constantly in a state of flux. This was actually something that took people a LONG time to fundamentally accept in the ancient east.

A common example in the literature is a chariot.

What is the chariot? Is there anything substantial to this notion of a chariot?

Is the chariot the wheels? Is it the axle? Is it the bars that connect to the horse? Is it the seat for the rider? Is it the wood?

Of course, the answer is no, that none of the parts are the chariot, and that even the parts themselves are empty because they can be decomposed all the way down to the sub-atomic level.

Therefore, the chariot is simply an imputed concept over an aggregate and has no inherent existence, even though it appears to simply exist when we look at it.

Okay, now ask yourself how do phenomena that are essentially empty trigger afflictive thoughts and emotions (which are also empty)? Then ask yourself, if thoughts and emotions are fundamentally empty, how can they cause me to suffer?

The answer comes from not seeing reality as it really is and is at the core of my example about the dish washing, which is a display of Vipassana.

There are countless entrypoints to this philosophy, some lean more on the classical Buddhist side and some lean more towards a purely secular approach, although like I've said, if you think that Buddhism is based on faith, then you're 100% misconceiving its nature. Therefore I don't view it even in the slightest as a faith based religion. The Buddha Shakyamuni himself urges you not to trust his words any more than you'd trust gold you buy at market, which is to say you must test and experience these truths yourself for there to be any lasting benefit.

I'll point you to two books by the same westerner. This was not my entrypoint, but it may serve you well and he's been immersed in Tibetan studies for most of his life so he is legit I promise. It's called Minding Closely by B. Alan Wallace (a great person indeed)[1].

If you'd like to continue this discussion or have any questions, simply reply again and we can link up over email or something. I hope this brief introduction helps you if even in the smallest way.

[1] - https://www.shambhala.com/minding-closely-2302.html

Continuously audit yourself, like you already are (noticing that Discord is now an issue), and block more and more things that you find distracting. But also recognize that there will always be something that is more entertaining and you can always find a new website to waste time on. Block out as much as you can so that you're not fighting yourself and use a bit of self-control for the rest. Again, once your options are sit there and be bored or code that's when you see the greatest benefit.

Keep going, any progress that you make is good. Try to make a habit of opening your computer and starting with something productive even just for 10 minutes. Usually once you're engaged it's not that hard to keep going as you make progress. Getting started is the hard part and being bored helps you want to get started.

In general the less stimulation you have in your life the more interesting work will be. Depending on what resources you need for coding it might be easier to set up a whitelist for those couple of websites instead of a blacklist where you're trying to block everything distracting manually.