nikvana

[nikvana]

Open ending to be mulled over.

[nikvana]

Thinking of occasionally sharing the kind of music I find myself liking.

[nikvana]

My favorite quotes from this article, which is the probably the most intelligent (and-humorous) piece I remember reading:

1. Wisdom is the way. The goal of personal growth should be to gain that deathbed clarity while your life is still happening so you can actually do something about it.  The way you do that is by developing as much wisdom as possible, as early as possible.  Wisdom gives people the insight to know what “fulfilled and meaningful” actually means and the courage to make the choices that will get them there. 

2. Humans bob along a staircase of consciousness (and do not sit at its top). So it’s not that a human is the Higher Being and the Higher Being is three years old—it’s that a human is the combination of the Higher Being and the low-level animals, and they blend into the three-year-old that we are. The Higher Being alone would be a more advanced species, and the animals alone would be one far more primitive, and it’s their particular coexistence that makes us distinctly human. The battle of the Higher Being against the animals—of trying to see through the fog to clarity—is the core internal human struggle.

3. Certainty is absurd. Certainty is primitive, leads to “us versus them” tribalism, and starts wars. We should be united in our uncertainty, not divided over fabricated certainty.

4.  (Only) Humility is logical. There are really two options when thinking about the big, big picture: be humble or be absurd. ...it makes me feel more hopeful. And it leaves me feeling pleasantly resigned to the fact that I will never understand what’s going on, which makes me feel like I can take my hand off the wheel, sit back, relax, and just enjoy the ride.

[nikvana]

Professional summary. Now.

I am currently a clinician, internal consultant for health systems, and a psychiatrist-in-training at Yale. I trained as a physician at AIIMS, and functioned as a early-career strategy consultant at McKinsey India.

My twofold professional vision is to: - Executive role: improve 1. safety 2. efficiency 3. cost-effectiveness in health service delivery locally. - Consultant role: scale up mental health services and systems globally.

[nikvana]

About me. Now.

I spend my time in one of 3 ways: studying human behavior and motivation; facing the consequences of my behavior and (lack of) motivation; and sleeping.

I am currently a clinician-in-training at Yale and an internal consultant for health systems, with a background in early-career strategy consultant.

I try to align my life to experiential enjoyment; i.e. I try to be in the now. I mostly enjoy what I do (and vice versa).

I believe in yoga, music, monism, punctuation, and puns. I do not believe in likes and dislikes, right and wrong/left. Istigkeit.

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An Indian Harry Potter... I can live with that!

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Vile live!!

[nikvana]

My fortune cookie encourages me to wear short transparent dresses!

[nikvana]

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Gandhi.

[nikvana]

The way to mindfulness.

The very process of observation changes what we observe. What you are looking at responds to you looking at it. Some essential attitudes to success in the practice of meditation follow in plain English:

1) NON-EXPECTATION: Don’t expect anything. Just sit back and see what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment. Take an active interest in the test itself, but don’t get distracted by your expectations about the results. Meditative awareness seeks to see reality exactly as it is. Whether that corresponds to our expectations or not, it does require a temporary suspension of all of our preconceptions and ideas. We must store our images, opinions, and interpretations out of the way for the duration of the session. Otherwise we will stumble over them.

2) DETACHMENT: Don’t cling to anything, and don’t reject anything. Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don’t fight with what you experience, just observe it all mindfully.

3) ACCEPTANCE: Accept everything that arises. Accept your feelings, even the ones you wish you did not have. Accept your experiences, even the ones you hate. Don’t condemn yourself for having human flaws and failings. Learn to see all the phenomena in the mind as being perfectly natural and understandable. Try to exercise a disinterested acceptance at all times with respect to everything you experience. Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

4) CURIOSITY: Investigate yourself. Question everything. Take nothing for granted. Don’t believe anything because it sounds wise and pious and some holy man said it. See for yourself. Subject all statements to the actual test of your own experience, and let the results be your guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight into the true structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the truth.

5) ATTENTION: Don’t ponder. You don’t need to figure everything out. Discursive thinking won’t free you from the trap. In meditation, the mind is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. Habitual deliberation is not necessary to eliminate those things that are keeping you in bondage. All that is necessary is a clear, nonconceptual perception of what they are and how they work. That alone is sufficient to dissolve them. Concepts and reasoning just get in the way. Don’t think. See.

When we perceive any sensory object, we are not to dwell upon it in the ordinary egoistic way. We should rather examine the very process of perception itself. We should watch what that object does to our senses and our perception. We should watch the feelings that arise and the mental activities that follow. We should note the changes that occur in our own consciousness as a result. In watching all these phenomena, we must be aware of the universality of what we are seeing. 

-courtesy of Shane Parrish, from the book Mindfulness in plain English.

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My cooking is like money... Looks better than it tastes :)

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Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.

brainpickings blog

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Managed 14 hours (>30 tough km) straight of strenuous hiking in the Adirondacks in NY; hoping to do the same with 98 hours in the next week on medicine (including two 28-hour shifts)!

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Am amazing concert by Beach House yesterday! - with Victoria's ethereal voice and perfect acoustics.

[nikvana]

“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, its connection” -  Brilliant talk on addiction.

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Nihilism.

All words refer to nothing; the zero is the foundation of all language. All meaning is empty at its core. And even though I believe in this essential meaninglessness, I must nonetheless participate in the charade of meaning, because to do otherwise is no way to live. It's like free will: you must act as if it exists even if you believe in predestination. Meaning is a beautiful and necessary and miraculous illusion, one you must take care not to shatter. You have to tiptoe around it, buttressing the illusion of existence with every utterance, because you cannot live any other way. - credit, an article on Motorola X by D.Bohn from the Verge!

[nikvana]

I'm tired and deflated - thinking of "retiring" soon.