All right, since I was told on my very first, and abortive, discussion thread that I should post a larger summary or excerpt of the link I had on there if I wanted to comport with LW's norms, let me do that here instead (since my karma is now too low to make another discussion post).

So I've written a long article summarizing a life philosophy which asserts the significance of a certain kind of meditative self-expression for grasping human freedom and understanding the significance of pain and suffering in human life.

Any LessWrong readers interested in thinking about the meaning of life, meditation, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, art, or in better understanding and handling their own minds should be interested.

Here is the largest excerpt I could post without the comment being rejected as too long:

The next time you stub your toe or otherwise hurt yourself, take a moment to become curious about exactly what the pain is like. What exactly does it feel like? Is it stabbing? Does it radiate? Is it blunt or sharp? Does it come and go? Is it cold or hot? Does it remind you of someone, or something, or some place?

As soon as you suspend the pain in your mind, the pain immediately changes. It becomes interesting. Like Keanu Reeves might stop a bullet in the air in The Matrix, you stun the pain by paying it conscious attention and then examining it like a scientist or artist might. It becomes fascinating. And then, as you describe it, its character changes more and more. It becomes sharp, specific, and beautiful. It might still be pain, but still, even as pain, it is no longer painful in the same way. Now it is a jewel. You see within it organization, ideas, intelligence.

Through the process of reflection and then expression, we can transform pain into beauty. This is true not just of physical pain, but of all pain, and indeed, of any experience. This is the essence of human freedom and power.

The most interesting and fundamental question in the world is what we’re doing here in this life. What’s the point? I spent years thinking about this question — going through psychology and western and eastern philosophy, and asking this question over and over.

I think I have an answer, at least a certain kind of partial answer. It’s certainly not totally original. Yet it is not often seen, not often heard.

My problem is how to explain it in words. I have tried many formulations on paper and in my head and none of them seem quite right. So I’ve decided to share several of them with you here, and hope you get the point. I’m trying to indicate a sensibility about the world — a way of relating to it, of seeing it, of dealing with it. What I’m trying to say cannot be wholly communicated in words (though can anything?). I need you to get the feel of it, to have the shift in perspective without which none of this will really make sense.

There’s a zen story about the monk who points to the moon. And the disciple keeps looking at his finger. ‘No, no, up there!’ the monk tries to say, but the disciple cannot understand the concept of pointing. That’s the kind of barrier I feel I’m up against.

Let me give you another example: to someone new to wine, wine tastes like wine. Maybe red wine tastes like red wine, and white wine tastes like white wine. To someone who drinks a little more, and thinks about what they drink, perhaps they start to identify sour and bitter, dryness and acidity. But to the wine connoisseur and critic, the vocabulary and the experience expand. They start to be able to detect and name notes of musk, florality, and minerality. They distinguish the taste of the wine at the front of the palate from the taste at the back. They comprehend the history and the heritage of the wine, its lineage in the soil, the effect of the sun and the rain on the grapes that made it. They taste and appreciate the various nuances of fermentation.

For the connoisseur, the wine unfolds into a much more complex, in-depth experience. It happens not just because the person drinks a lot of wine, but because they pay attention, and because they analyze the wine, and come up with labels, and break down and express their experiences.

The same way the experience of the wine reveals layer after layer with increased attention and thought, so too can the same general idea apply to life. Any particular experience you’ve had without thinking about it you’ve barely even lived. It passed by and vanished, and you missed a lot in it, a lot like a rookie misses almost everything interesting in the wine she’s tasting. If you take an experience of yours, pay it attention, and express what it is like, you will find that the experience starts to refine itself. It becomes complex, multi-layered, rich, fascinating, interesting, beautiful. It ceases to be one big blob and starts to become a multitude.

This revelation of layers of intelligence, of pattern but also of chaos—interesting chaos—is the reward for this expression.

Expression is the key.

Mere observation is not enough. Simply remembering an experience is not enough. You just remember the same pale, shallow memory you had before. But if you remember an experience and then 1) think deeply about it, 2) try to honestly and originally express exactly what it was like for you, and 3) put this expression in some form (music, poetry, film, or even just a few sentences in your journal) then 4) that will allow you to see the experience in a new light. It will force you to choose the important aspects of the experience. Those aspects of the experience will come into focus. Like a near-sighted man putting on glasses for the first time, the experience will become dramatically sharper.

Of course, expression inevitably distorts. Even a good map is partly wrong. It is still illuminating. A map has to distort and simplify to be useful. Similarly, every expression breaks down experience in a way that is partly wrong. One kind of expression will highlight certain facets of an experience; another expression will highlight other facets. Experiences can be expressed in an endless variety of ways.

This sensibility I’m trying to communicate results in the appreciation of “subtlety.” To a casual listener of music, when someone plays a key on a piano, they hear it as a single note. To a musician or a music critic or an audiophile, though, the note has at least three parts. The first is the attack, when the key is struck and a tiny hammer literally pings against a tight string inside the piano. The second is a middle portion of the note. The third is the decay, as the note fades. Each of these is different. And in fact even within each of these parts the note changes. Expression is like an instrument that allows you to see the worlds within every world.

Observing and expressing any experience streams down beautiful ideas that allow you to see it in a new way. The experience discloses connections to other experiences, patterns within it, intelligence.

To appreciate the finer and finer details of these changes — to see distinctions and discern refinement where once there was only sameness — is the spirit of subtlety. It is to see not just a thing but the presence of the space surrounding that thing. It is the spirit of the Japanese tea ceremony.

It is the spirit of not trying to overwhelm with a simple rush of pleasure, but to see deeper and deeper and quieter and quieter parts of something. It is why John Cage created an entirely silent piece — he wanted to make a statement about this spirit of subtlety, that looks for the shyest and most reluctant details. It is the spirit of, when you’re hungry, not just gobbling up food, but making food that tastes good, and then, looks good. Taking your time to do that prolongs the hunger, but then allows you to explore that hunger in a more and more elegant, artistic way.

The Magic Equation: Desire = Pain

And if you want to see these subtleties, desire is crucial. You do not fully control your mind anymore than you fully control the weather. You are at all times in a mental landscape, and the most important feature of this landscape is desire. We always want something — or perhaps to avoid something — and this focuses and defines our attention. We can use this desire as the starting point of our attention and expression.

Desire, which unfulfilled is the same thing as pain, is what allows you to appreciate anything. So the connoisseur realizes that desire is a precious thing. It should not be used up too early. It is what allows you to be interested in something. As soon as you’ve had an orgasm, interest in sex decreases. It is the desire for sex, the ache, the hunger, that can motivate you to explore subtler and subtler realms of sexuality: to be interested in those realms. And that is why celibacy shows up so often in the world’s mystical traditions. It provides the motivation to seek sexuality not in physical bodies, but in knowledge and contemplation. The subtlest sexual objects are ideas.

The artistic mindset I am trying to communicate sees emotional or physical pain — unfulfilled desire — as a precious, specific energy that we can capture like a firefly in a jar, to follow its spirals and whirls. We can use it by investigating the desire itself. The desire is an experience. We can attend to it, note its intricacies.

Read the rest of it...