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There are two types of knowing: emotional knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The two can overlap, but the overlap is surprisingly small. We know something intellectually when we’ve read it or heard it or been taught it from a reputable source. Knowing something intellectually, you can answer questions about it on a [...]

I’m as guilty of this as anyone: living by self-imposed rules. Life is absolutely full of freedom, but we constrain ourselves by a thousand little personal traditions and requirements. We make ourselves jump through hoops which nobody else even cares about. Part of becoming a more effective, enlightened person, is the [...]

If your goal is to become a sculptor, it’s worth your while to try chiseling a wheel out of stone. Just for practice, you know. Reinventing the wheel isn’t always a bad thing. It gives you a lot of insight and skill in an area you’re starting out in. I believe [...]

Time is…
…A river. We navigate it in our boats, having some minor ability to resist the currents but ultimately bound ever forward by the waves. Perhaps the river leads to a tranquil sea, or perhaps a violent waterfall– we’ll never know ’til we reach the end. One of the features of the [...]

Happiness is mysterious and elusive: we like to associate it with things like wealth, status, and success, and yet we see people wealthier than us, higher status than us, and more successful than us, who don’t seem particularly thrilled with their lives. At the same time, people who have nothing are perfectly capable of [...]

In no particular order…
1. Having a great dream, and remembering it vividly after waking up.
2. Sharing a smile with a cute stranger.
3. Getting invited to a party.
4. Making new friends and hanging out with old ones.
5. Publishing a great article.
6. Solving a tough math exercise I’ve been stuck on.
7. Making passionate love.
8. Eating [...]

A hedonist is someone who actively pursues pleasure. In a sense, we’re all hedonists, for even Mother Teresa made the sacrifices she made because ultimately she calculated that was how to maximize her own pleasure. A more precise title for this article would be: “Ten Reasons to be a Conscious Hedonist”. [...]

To an adult language learner, the first language is always the hardest. It makes a lot of sense to pick an easy language from the start. That’s absolutely fine if you’re interested in learning, say, Spanish. But maybe you don’t wanna study Spanish for a year. Maybe you want to learn [...]

When mastering any discipline, you’re bound to run into the Plateau Effect from time to time. For awhile, your mastery increases steadily through training or studying, but then you begin to experience diminishing returns. The slope of mastery versus time evens out, until you reach the plateau point, when it seems like further [...]

A Buddhist Koan is a short tale used to nudge people closer toward Zen enlightenment. Since I really appreciate and love these witty little verses, I decided I’d share some of my favorites here. At first, I thought I’d garnish them with some detailed commentary and analysis. Then I realized, the verses [...]