Quotidian Address

 I find that in myself too. I am very future looking: left to my own devices, I spend my time thinking about the future, not the present or past. The risk is that I spend so much time thinking about the future, I fail to take the actions necessary to realize it. So, I agree. Let us seek to climb the mountain together: each of his needs his own Tao, his own path, but I think it helps to have fellow travelers. Where I stumble is this: what are the different paths available to us? I believe each of us needs to form our own path, but are their archetypal paths we can study for inspiration on our own? Reflecting on it, the paths I can think of are (not mutually exclusive, and I made these up, so take with a grain of salt): Path of Philosophy: Reading and listening to great scholars and thinkers in this space, thinking it through ourselves Path of Reflection: meditation and internal reflection on key topics Path of Experience: living the principles in our everyday life Path of Pilg...

 In his TED talk , Shi Heng Yi tells the story of a man who wants to climb to the top of the mountain. In preparation, he asks travellers at the base which path they took and what they saw at the top. On learning of each path, the man finds some reason why that particular path might not work for him. Ultimately, he decides having heard all of their stories that he no longer needs to make the climb himself as he already knows what he'll find there. In this parable, I see quite a few warnings to myself personally. I, too, often find it easier to survey the many approaches to an endeavour (particularly one as daunting as looking for enlightenment) than to actually undertake the arduous journey that might lead me to achieving it. Also, I often satisfy myself that by reading about the experiences of others I have a pretty good idea of what the end goal is and thus have not lost much in not jumping in. It might be nice then, if we are to pursue this journey of self-improvement, to pick a...