why im writing this
excerpt from text convo w my roommate 7/23/25
oh, i just realized this project is basically approx. “it turns out the buddha was right and the four noble truths are literally scientifically true, and why neobuddhism + christianity + therapy are all compatible/coherent”
which is like . level zero of the buddhism path (cuz the whole system is based on the four noble truths)
but it took me a while to even get there cuz there’s so many confusing things and it took so many anti-confusing things to untangle my understanding + remove my qualms and finally say ohh okay so if we just fix a few nuances, theyre not schizo crazy
just sorta writing this out for myself:
hmmm i guess it’s just like . when things dont make sense to me then it rly rly rly bugs me like a pebble in my shoe, especially for pedagogy, and i cant seem to allow myself to progress in something until i have a phd level understanding of the pedagogy/metalearning (whether for better or for worse), and one of those things is how-to-be-happy (as we know, that is one of my main intellectual hobbies/interests for some reason) and i had a lot of qualms/confusions from what seemed like incompatibilities/inconsistencies between my personal 3 leading fields of how-to-be-happy theory (neobuddhism, christianity/KFP, therapy) but then recently many things clicked together in my understanding of the learning/metalearning theory of how-to-be-happy (i.e. i mean the 3 things always felt connected but i needed to iron out discrepancies/qualms and now they feel more coherent than ever) and my understanding finally feels nontrivially stable/coherent at a basic/root level, and then now i wanna write down a lot of the anti-confusing things that were helpful for me (partly because 1 i wanna share to others that are in past corbin situation, partly because 2 i wanna capture a snapshot of my current "research" perspectives, partly because 3 i think pedagogy/metalearning theory is Extremely Extremely Valuable and one of the most extremely underrated fields of research and i believe rigorous ideas have the power to be extremely beneficial, namely i believe that rigorous pedagogy/metalearning theory has the power to be extremely beneficial in wiping out dumb+frustrating student outcomes and creating skilled+smooth student outcomes)
wow #3 is so connected to my visceral anger towards [teacher at brown] and my dad, and my love of pelcovits and 3b1b
copy pasting from https://x.com/corbindreams/status/1956716518311383391?s=46 responding to https://x.com/hermittoday/status/1956679705374937417?s=46
“desire is the root of suffering” is infohazard for individuals whose character structure already revolves around denying feelings as such (and thus denying desire) because it equates perpetuating their condition with doing the right thing
[…]
makes one think how much trouble is caused by incomplete or incorrect interpretations
——
for me it was ~7 years of very very frustrating confusion before coming across nick / romeo stevens talking abt “tanha is the cause of dukkha”
like imagine you wanna be good at tennis but it took you 7 years to find ppl with sufficiently precise n legible explanations that you have to hit the ball over the net
and i didnt know that there was a net, and everyone just kept saying “be fluid!” “focus on power!”
copy pasting from https://x.com/corbindreams/status/1957012430753521963?s=46
im not at all an advanced meditator but ive just been rly confused about this stuff for ~7 years and it just recently finally sorta clicked in my head, like ive passed level zero of being sufficiently unconfused on wtf this is all about
like a sorta okay analogy is maybe: imagine im not at all advanced at tennis but i never even knew there was a net and that i had to hit the ball over the net, bc all the mainstream tennis coaches were rly confusing or not comprehensive or wtvr, and ive finally found some people talking directly about the net. im still bad at tennis but now i understand theres a net and i rly wanna share that anticonfusing fact to people