Sasha Chapin writes on Substack about self-love, meditation, writing, conversation, and personal psychology.
HN links it for his self-love and meditation posts; commenters see deep meditation understanding, while one criticizes him as part of a loose, non-traditional Buddhist scene.
This person is part of a weird New Wave of Twitterati Buddhists-not-Buddhists who are happy to throw out huge chunks of the dharma in the name of going their own way. It's not bearing good fruits. This person also wrote a long screed on divorce that was really about spritzing their favorite perfume scent and barely mentioning the person they divorced except as backdrop to the great “I”. [1] It's a new wave that thrives on egoic displays like these, undermining big portions of very helpful dharma teachings like ethics.
Look folks, I know it's vogue in a post post post world to deconstruct all the things but there's a reason why Buddhism has thrived for thousands of years producing good, kind people and rebel dharmas have withered on the vine. Yes, there are exceptions but overall, it's been wildly effective as a method for awakening that also spares others violence. That said, there are good rebel dharma people out there like Daniel Ingram who do promote ethics as an essential cornerstone of practice (and it is, try it).
The Twitterati of dharma are not it. They do not come bearing the gift of conscious revolution, they come bearing more poisoned seeds of self delusion because that's what Twitter thrives on: the grand illusion of Self thrumming to the crowd of their creation.
In this particular article, Sasha declares that endgame meditation looks like more neuroses, pride and immoral acts and that's the dirty secret of the community. Well, yes, when your community looks…
All of my personal 5 whys like the one in the article end the same way.
"I'm always busy but I don't feel productive with my time"
Why? "Because I get distracted by email, refactoring, slack, .."
Why? "Because I don't really want to be doing any of this, but I feel like I should be at my computer trying to force myself to do it."
Why? "Because I have a job and therefore some responsibilities, and I wasted a lot of time last week so I guess I need to get things done this week"
Why? "Because I'm sitting at a computer at home, surrounded by nobody, writing code for projects I don't really believe in, that are being mismanaged outside of my control, and what rewards there are (salary) are totally decoupled from the work, and I have lots of money saved up from doing this anyway but the modern world makes no sense and there's nothing I really want to be doing so I guess I'm working."
... ah, you say, you can't work because you're burnt-out and depressed. Yeah, probably. But I mention this to make the point that: if you can't focus, perhaps you just _don't want to be doing whatever you're doing_. It is sometimes hard to admit that in this modern world where you're supposed to be a hard-working adult. But you don't .. have.. to be employed, or working a 9-5, and for many people it's deeply unnatural, I think, to be doing this your whole life day-in and day-out.
Related, this article about writer's block that was posted on HN a few weeks ago:…
I've saved a link to more or less every thought-provoking article I've read since the last 12 years (first in Evernote, and now Obsidian). I have two notes, one "links", the other "article notes", that's just a bare minimum note-taking system for stuff I read on the web. Both notes are huge, and undoubtedly contain many tidbits of advice, perception shifting ideas, or "subjectivity merges" (https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/books-are-subjectivity-merging-devices).
One of my project ideas now that has been building in my mind is, 12 years on, to go back and re-read and re-evaluate many of these links, and do a short write-up on how I've been influence by this article or any explicit choices that I've made in my life that could likely be attributed to it. I think this would be fascinating from a psychological/neurological POV but also a really cool chance to reflect on how I've changed/grown as a person.
I’m saying you don’t even understand what Cate is talking about because even Cate agrees with me:
https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-cate-hall
“ Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.”
For me, it was an intentional MDMA session focused on shame that spontaneously cracked open my self love. The result is extraordinary - I really don’t care what people think about me because I no longer need validation and “love” from strangers. I’m now free to fully express myself without fear and love others without judgement.
Another similar result from intentional MDMA use:
https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/how-i-attained-persistent-self-love
Actually the author has another post about dealing with negative self-talk: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/how-i-attained-persistent-self-love
And later posted about jhanas.
Having read those, I do think his understanding of meditation is deeper than it might appear from reading this article alone. I don’t think his position is really that different from what a lot of critics here are arguing.