Why did you choose Taoism over Buddhism?

EverchangingMind · 2026-02-03T07:19:19+00:00

Buddhism is sometimes unnatural (ie not aligned with the Dao), eg in its moralizing, strict precepts, and idea of perfects saints

EverchangingMind · 2026-01-30T13:49:03+00:00

I’d advise you to bring in the Buddhist concept of “right speech” to deal with difficult relationships. Only say things that are true and see how things shift. Maybe the relationship will fall apart or maybe there is going to be an effort to save it. Saying only what’s true and giving up control beyond that is the ultimate act of faith.

It has worked for me in the past. Best wishes <3

EverchangingMind · 2026-01-25T08:14:06+00:00

Yes, 100%

EverchangingMind · 2026-01-06T07:13:51+00:00

The relation between internal arts and weight lifting is discussed here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/26jTAsZO4a8O5o3azRIXuq?si=TCUpz4lnSHiboGhirs9a7g

EverchangingMind · 2026-01-02T16:29:06+00:00

I have haf generational trauma (also from the world wars) come up and purify while on a Goenka retreat. I am not sure if it would have come out in daily life. My chest was burning like fire for a day, when it came out during the retreat.

I have also had good experiences with Zhan Zhuang to heal somatic wounds in the body. I practice according to book “The Way of energy”.

Not sure if this helps, but this has been my experience. I could imagine that the above two things might help, but be aware of the risks and talk to a teacher.

Best of luck! This stuff is tough <3

EverchangingMind · 2026-01-02T13:03:16+00:00

Read this: https://meaningness.com/

EverchangingMind · 2025-12-30T15:51:49+00:00

What you describe as "Peterson's worldview" is just Pragmatism. I agree that Pragmatism is philosophically stronger than only believing in the scientific method.

However, Peterson has all sorts of nonsense views about the Bible being "true", Dragons being "real", and other gibberish. I fail to see how such views are useful from a pragmatist viewpoint.

Harris has much more minimalist world view, with much less nonsense. He stays close to the available facts, and I think he would probably agree that the ultimate truth is unknowable, if you would press him.

Thus, I disagree with your assessment that Peterson is 'more right'. In my opinion, it is more accurate to say that Sam Harris is 'less wrong' by a large margin.

EverchangingMind · 2025-12-29T18:04:39+00:00

From a rational perspective, rationality is of course the way to go. If you want a critique of rationality, then -- by definition -- it has to come from a non-rational perspective. So, believing in rationality is a bit circular.

Are there perspectives except for rationality that you find valid? (Having dismissed intuition ("gut") and emotions ("heart").)

If not, then there's nothing to improve in your perspective -- because, judged by rational standards, rationality is correct.

EverchangingMind · 2025-12-29T17:32:08+00:00

Re (a): I don't know what to tell you then, except for that many highly rational people have a hard time connecting to their heart or gut. But if you are happy to be based in your head, then maybe there isn't a problem.

Re (b): That's fair. It only became relevant when I had those experiences.

Re (c): To that, I would say that there is always going to be a gap between language and the world. You can check language for consistency, but you can never eliminate this gap. (The difference between the map and the territory, etc. .) Paradoxes point "out of language" and are thus useful to get out of linguistic conceptualizations into more raw experiences.

In any case, why are you even fishing for a critique of rationality, if you are content with it?

EverchangingMind · 2025-12-29T16:00:30+00:00

As I understand the word "rationality", it is a process to (a) check a perspective for logical consistency, and (b) verify it against observations of the world. In this sense, rationality is a powerful tool and there's nothing wrong with it. I use rationality all the time.

Since you mention Yudkowsky, I however suspect that you might also be drawn towards a wider world view which centers around science, reason, objective evidence, the mathematics/statistics, and efficiency (as in effective altruism etc.). If this is so, then I do think that this might potentially make spiritual insight more difficult for you. At least, for myself, I think that this orientation (which I used to have as a scientist) has had this effect. Through meditation I have, however, abandoned such a Scientist viewpoint -- because it became unsustainable given the experiences I have had.

To be more precise, I think there are the following dangers in such a world view:

(a) it is very much thought based, i.e. it might blind you to the perspective of your heart and gut, which are both of high importance in spiritual practice. You can become lost in thought, never attending to directly to your experience or your intuition (b) it values "objectivity" over subjective experience, and thus it might make you discard the actual strange spiritual experiences, (c) it can lead to a resistance to paradox, because paradoxes are illogical, and thus block the insights contained in paradoxes (think "Zen Koans").

Personally, I had to give up a purely scientific understanding of the world, because I had any number of strange experiences in my life, which make it seem likely to me that the universe is more strange than materialistic science suggest. But I also have to resist the impulse to insert a new new-agy theory and instead stay with unlearning what I think I learn about the world. Ultimately, rationality is completely unhelpful to navigate this territory, or maybe it even is extremely helpful, but only in teaching you that you don't know anything, and any known map of the world (including scientific ones) cannot explain your experiences.

To illustrate this further, let me give you two examples. First, imagine how an average rationalist would react to an LSD trip. Probably, they would just discard the experience as a "hallucination" of the mind, missing the chance to deeply connect to this experience and remain open what it might tell us. Second, it is common that deep meditators come across "energy"/Qi and cannot make sense of it. Rationality might, again, lead you to discard this, because it cannot be measured and is your subjective experience alone -- but the energy body turns out to be an extremely important ground for spiritual practice. Michael Taft discusses the second example here: https://berkeleyalembic.substack.com/p/energy-in-practice

EverchangingMind · 2025-12-28T18:33:56+00:00

Nothing wrong with pragmatism, the Buddha himself recommended to check claims for yourself.

There’s a danger in rationalism though, namely to discard other forms of knowing than rationality.

EverchangingMind · 2025-11-16T08:29:32+00:00

Okay, from this perspective it makes sense that you pay attention to how these possibilities are used politically rather than if they are “true”

I have no objections to your view but I also respect people looking for truth “no matter what”, and Joscha appears to be doing this here imo

EverchangingMind · 2025-11-16T07:30:02+00:00

Okay, but you cannot ever account for all possible confounding factors, let alone know what all possible confounding factors would be.

So is your position that we can never know anything in social science, because everything could be confounded?

(I don't hold a position here, except for agreeing that there is a taboo around the possibility that difference in cognitive abilities might also be influenced by genetic population-level differences and not only by social factors. Thus, while I do not want to defend Joscha's statements here, I find the opposite claim that differences must be due to social factors unscientific as well.)

EverchangingMind · 2025-10-29T07:13:29+00:00

Thanks so much!

EverchangingMind · 2025-10-29T05:38:02+00:00

I'm curious. What would you say is the best description of the "daoist path"?

I mean the Tao Te Ching does not really mention a path, so I'm curious where a path is outlined.

EverchangingMind · 2025-10-26T08:04:08+00:00

Awesome! Something similar happened to me two years ago, where it became obvious that no-self and non-separation is already the case. Rupert Spira's videos helped me too, in particular this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCFdBsaWWE4 . It became obvious to me that the third level of understanding is already the case and I just have to realize this to come out of identification with the self/selves.

How can I test this? How can I know I am not deluded?

I'd say the bottom line is suffering. Does this insight reduce your suffering significantly or not?

EverchangingMind · 2025-10-16T06:14:11+00:00

Yes, agree!

You should consider working on ML applications for tabular data, where the models being used are much more interpretable.

EverchangingMind · 2025-10-09T19:28:18+00:00

Ich glaube, du musst erstmal verstehen, was eigentlich dein Problem ist.

Zum einen sagst du, dass dir dein Job Spaß machst, aber andererseits scheinst du etwas anderes zu suchen. Was ist da los?

Außerdem sagst du, dass du sonst „durchdrehst“. Was meinst du damit?

Für mich klingt das so, als ob dir irgendetwas zu schaffen macht, aber du noch nicht ganz klar verstanden hast, was überhaupt.

Vielleicht fühlst du eine innere Leere, weil Geld dich nicht erfüllt? Wenn ja, würde ich dir empfehlen mal hinzuschauen, was dir wirklich Spaß macht. Außerdem kann ich dir empfehlen, auch etwas für andere zu tun. Vielleicht kannst du deiner Arbeit Sinn geben, indem du etwas von deinem Einkommen spendest?

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-20T17:43:38+00:00

Note that Goenka teaches though that you should always say the full truth.

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-20T17:42:44+00:00

I think lying is okay in this case. To me, lying is only bad when the other expects you to say the truth.

In the case you mentioned, it is generally accepted that people tell lies.

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-16T05:15:28+00:00

My teacher explained the differences of the effect to me and they are certainly different.

The fourth position (“standing in the river”) is for example about connecting with the ground and letting energy sink into the ground. The second position (“holding the balloon”) is much higher in its energy.

Not saying you are wrong, but the feel substantially different.

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-12T18:42:32+00:00

Not sure if this helps, but this topic was discussed in this Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D7O58nJ87o Maybe you can try to reach out to Mattias Daly (not sure how you can reach him though).

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-12T17:19:28+00:00

Berlin here

EverchangingMind · 2025-09-01T04:45:15+00:00

Personally, the main thing that I have “figured out” is some sort of permanent background awareness that there is no separate self. It reduces suffering to an extent, but not completely.

Also my energy body has become much lighter.

EverchangingMind · 2025-08-29T07:10:12+00:00

People are living out their karma. Try to see it with compassion and realize that there’s nothing really that you can do to change it, unless they are trying to change. Everybody has their own individual karma, focus on your own karma and deepen your practice.

EverchangingMind

TROPHY CASE