sophyphreak

In Buddhism, we talk sometimes talk about how apathy is the "near enemy" of equanimity. That is, equanimity is good and apathy is bad, but sometimes apathy looks like equanimity.

I was a software engineer for several years, and what was hardest for me was this exact "who cares" attitude. I wanted to do good work, but that was not the culture.

Now I seek the extinguishment of suffering. No one here says "who cares" here about this work. It's deeply refreshing. I feel very lucky to be here.

I'm not a lawyer, but as other commenters mention, this would be both illegal and totally reversible because it would be a decision made due to coercion. In the same way a contract is not legally binding if someone holds a gun to your head and compels you to sign, the decision to give the coup leader control of the company wouldn't be legally binding either.

Ethics are, sadly, totally unquantifiable, so they must always be some level opinion. But if dog trainers are held to a higher standard regarding ethical training of dogs than ABA providers are held to regarding ethical treatment of Autistic children, I think we have a pretty persuasive argument right there that ABA is totally unethical.

It's also notable that Autistic academics like Devon Price, a fairly famous professor of social psychology, also believe ABA is unethical.

On the mindfulness/meditation side, there's a lot more out there than what secular groups like the field of psychology can provide. Consider looking for meditation groups and Buddhist religious organizations in your local area.

Also, there are also a billion podcasts and YouTube videos. Some people I know like Thanissaro Bhikku who is outside San Diego. Others are passionate about Ajahn Brahm near Brisbane, Austrialia, or potentially Bhikku Sujato in the same tradition. Some people really like Empty Cloud's stuff in New Jersey. But I'm a fan of Ajahn Sona in British Columbia. Ajahn Jayanto's Dhamma talks, which you can find on the Temple Forest Monastery website, are another favorite of mine.

Among mindfulness meditation, there are the cardinal body scanning and breath awareness meditations, but samadhi meditation is also awesome--Ajahn Sona is probably the best place to learn about this. Chanting is another meditation--adjacent thing that requires concentration. The Metta Sutta in English, Amaravati translation, is a great place to start.

Good luck! I wish you all the best!

If we want to go out into the weeds a bit, I think this text is ethereal in the original but despite this, most translations tend to be quite similar. Wang Bi, the oldest commentary writer and popularizer of the Daodejing, argued that the text supports a large number of divergent meanings. If this is true, we should expect translations to be vastly different from one another. But despite the Daodejing being the second most translated book in history after the Bible, most translations keep the feel and content of the others.

On another topic, translators usually translate the text as poetry when most of the text is best translated as prose. The text itself is a work of philosophy and not poetry, hence the author's name ending in 子 and the subject matter about correctly running a state and following the Dao. Although the text is doubtlessly more mystical than other Chinese philosophy texts such as The Analects of Confucius, in China today, the Daodejing is correctly placed next to the other great philosophers of ancient Chinese philosophy: Confucius, Mencius, and Zhuangzi.

And finally, it's important to note that classical Chinese rarely used punctuation marks like those we find it modern reproductions like you see here: https://www.daodejing.org/1.html . Commas and periods are usually modern additions to aid in reading but usually did not appear in the original. Importantly, we have evidence that even the chapter breaks are themselves mostly inserted, that the original Laozi did not put them there. If we take out these punctuation marks, the text lends itself to still more possible translations and interpretations. And this ignores the inherently inexact and inferential nature of classical Chinese, which itself supports many translations.

Someday in the distant future we'll have a hundred unique lenses on this text, but today we have relatively meager pickings. And they all sort of sound like Ursula Le Guin's translation.

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1 point by sophyphreak 0 minutes ago | next | edit | delete [–]

It always fascinates me how much people bend over backwards to create euphemisms for "Autistic people" or, in this case, "high IQ, STEM-focused, Autistic people." Even "people with Autistic traits" would be fine. A large part of me thinks we would be better off to be specific, and another large part of me thinks this pattern reinforces stereotype of Autistic incompetence. (Stereotype of Autistic incompetence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8813809/)

I don't really want to go out of my way to flesh this out further because just googling around and reading Wikipedia articles will be way better than whatever else I say in a few sentences, but suffice it to say, if people can discriminate against Autistic people for being who they are, what should we call that? I'm partial to "neurotypicalism" but that's not the common term. Ableism is much more common.

Anyway, please Google the social model of disability.

There are other forms of meditation as well, but this one and it's variants is probably most common.

Very mercifully, I've never had visions in meditation. But recently I've been feeling a lot of weirdly physical pleasure in my head and shoulders from the samadhi--concentration or calmness--that comes from my practice. I've also had more "insight," which just means I notice more internally and externally. In Buddhism, we talk about how concentration and insight are the goals and results of meditation.

It's important when talking about meditation, however, to mention sila, or morality. Sila for a common person means following the five precepts--not to kill any living creature, not to steal, not to commit sexual misconduct (rape, adultery, etc.), not to lie, and not to take intoxicants like alcohol and cannabis (caffeine is okay). Many teachers often say that if you summarize Buddhist practice, it's just sila, samadhi, and pañña, which means morality, concentration, and wisdom. If you want results from your meditation, also practicing the five precepts is a good idea.

I suppose the final result for me is that after studying Buddhism in college more than ten years ago and then spending several years in Thailand in my 20's, I'm taking steps now to seek ordination as a Buddhist monk. I'm in the very early stages of turning my life upside down, but those are my results right now.

So if you don't want to give up your worldly possessions and pick up the robe and bowl, don't meditate. Lol. I kid.