Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsedlm | Hacker News Reader

> How can we achieve things with no burnout or ego-driven mindset?

I ask myself something quite similar but coming from a different place (so to say).

How can I practice detachment (buddhism inspired letting go) while simultaneously accomplishing goals?

I ask myself this because I see a relation between holding on (firmly grasping a goal; the opposite of detachment) and the perseverance of success at doing difficult things.

In my own experience it remains a fact that if I hold on on to something tightly, this is why I suffer (painful); there's a truth behind "no pain no gain". However this is quite close to "them who don't try don't fail"... so they don't suffer BUT do not really accomplish anything either.

Finally, I don't consider the ego to be inherently bad, it's a tool. IMO a problem with it is that one's self is not the only one capable of using one's ego (e.g. we all have been manipulated by someone else).

View on HN

> How can I practice detachment (buddhism inspired letting go) while simultaneously accomplishing goals?

I think this is somewhat addressed in Hinduism -- the thing you need to realize is that there is your Self, and there is your Role, and those are two entirely separate things. Your Role might be "spouse" or "child" or "software engineer" or "soldier in an army." (not trying to assign any particular morality to a role). Your true Self is entirely independent of that. It is incumbent on you to perform your role to the standards expected, but it's also just a subsystem that exists within your greater Self, it is _not_ equivalent to your self. To find a role, you need to think about unmet needs in the universe. The role you perform is not about you and your self, but it is about something much greater.

Buuuut that doesn't necessarily address motivation - what if we're fine just wanting nothing and sitting around all day just wanting that nothing. The way that is typically addressed in Eastern religion is to actually make that into a virtue - sure, if you want to sit around and self-actualize all day then go ahead and do it, you will be one of the greatest saints ever to live. But that's the catch--it's _way_ harder than it sounds. Generally most of us will get bored at some point, and that boredom will drive us to look at the fuller picture of the universe.

> How can I practice detachment (buddhism inspired letting go) while simultaneously accomplishing goals?

I'd say that:

1) There's a reason for all the insistence on monasticism in Buddhism and many other traditions. Practicing otherwise is doing it on ultra-hard mode. You're unlikely to become A Buddha while having a family and 9-5 job, and that's just how things are. You can't have everything.

2) However—actions are inextricable from successful practice, I think, even in lay-practice. You can't think your way to enlightenment, you have to live it, and not just when you're meditating. And that's the hard part! Not all the reading, the listening, the meditating, the thinking. The doing. As Marcus Aurelius put it (quoting from memory, but quite close): "One can live one's life in a calm flow of happiness, if one learns to think the right way and act the right way" (emphasis mine). The thinking is the easy part. Acting in support of and in harmony with this blissful state, in the world, despite the necessary state of detachment is and always has been the hard part. That's why you can't just Do Buddhism (or anything remotely similar) from books and some part-time meditating.

I think the tension & contradictions between detachment and action is why it's so difficult—impossible, even—to record on paper what a state of complete enlightenment is in any way that fully covers it all on its own. You can't write the differential equation describing it. At best, you can just vaguely gesture in the correct direction.

(note: I am quite bad at the "and act the right way" part myself, so could be entirely wrong about all of this)

My understanding of detachment is incomplete but I think the simplest answer comes down to whether it's in your nature to accomplish those goals without an ego-based drive. Regardless of someone's stage of enlightenment, they still eat/drink/sleep and part of the reason is that your body will gravitate towards those activities if you let it. I think the same goes for more complex work, but it's hard to say. One thing to contemplate would be the difference between detachment and complete spiritual bypass / avoidance

> How can I practice detachment (buddhism inspired letting go) while simultaneously accomplishing goals?

I had the opportunity to ask a monk almost this exact question, I phrased it "why do anything?" instead of "accomplishing goals?"

His answer: Duty. The duties you have to your family, your community, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com