When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as rootless and stemless. We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.

When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are.

A very wise person once told me, when it comes to overcoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says, I can overcome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to overcome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.

immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different

A quick word about competitors: competitors are a startup ghost story. First-time founders think they are what kill 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems. If you fail, it will very likely be because you failed to make a great product and/or failed to make a great company.

You should enjoy the little detours. To the fullest. Because that's where you'll find the things more important than what you want.

In the spring of 2025, Andrew Yang came back to Brown to deliver a talk at his alma mater. This particular thing he said stuck out to me:

I referred to this mindset of scarcity earlier. it's genuinely overtaken millions, tens of millions of Americans, where, if someone else gets something, it makes them mad, maybe because they've experienced hardships themselves, or they've seen people around them struggling, and then when they see someone else, particularly for people of other communities, they get mad. So the 25% who are for poor kids are laboring under this mindset of scarcity, and just have this sense that hardship is a part of life and it builds character, and they should suffer because I've suffered. I try not to hold that belief against anyone. In my view, the first step is to try to get the boot off their throat, and then if you make them feel secure in their future and their kids' futures, and then they see other kids getting something, they'll be like "thats cool." the attitude has to be "someone else get's something, thats fine, that'll probably good for me in the long run". But that's not where a lot of Americans are right now. a lot of Americans right are just like "Yeah, you're suffering good! because I'm suffering."

When things don't go the way they're planned, your average joe will start to panic and find comfort in their source of failure, such is a mindset of a loser. But a winner sees a challenge.

It's a mentally absorbed state that can be obtained through personal optimal experiences. Regardless of their scale, human beings have moments when they're so focused they even forget the passage of time. That state of enjoying whatever it is and getting the brain all excited... That's flow. So how do you get into this flow? The most important condition is concentrating on a daring challenge. To put it plainly, you have to aim for an objective of optimal difficulty. There's a balance between challenge and the ability to get into a flow state. If your abilities exceed a given challenge, you won't feel joy and you'll get bored. Conversely, if a give challenge exceeds your abilities, you can't see yourself succeeding and you become anxious. IN short, you can't experience joy in a state of boredom or anxiety. That's why you need concentration for a daring challenge. Know your abilities precisely and control them. Then challenge yourself with a goal that's appropriate for you. In that moment, you will pull out an exceptional performance, which will push you up to the next level. From the outside, it might look like a miracle. But there's a formula to it. And that's flow. However, it's not easy to achieve. Your daily life is flooded with information and entertainment. Its an endless hell to cover up your boredom and anxiety. People can't get absorbed in something so easily. For example, you may passively get into a trancelike state on your phone. But that's not the flow state you actively achieve, available only to you. That cannot be classed as ego in my book. The thrill you fell when you score a goal. The exhilaration you feel when you gain a new weapon. That joy is something that belongs only to you. That's ego.

It's learning. Piling up mistakes through trial and error... or pushing to one's limits in the pursuit of victory... the scattered pieces of success mesh with each other... and the ego blossoms... In other words, an awakening is the moment you learn who you truly are.

I can't recall exactly what we talked about, but we found a million topics and could have talked forever. With a laserlike clarity I could grasp everything she wanted to say. And things I couldn't explain well to anyone else came across to her with an exactness that took me by surprise. We were both married, with no major complaints about our married lives. We loved our spouses and respected them. Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle—running across someone you express your feelings to so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been a mistake to label this "love." It was more like total empathy. We started going out regularly for drinks. Her husband's job kept him out late, so she was free to come and go as she pleased. When we got together, though, the time just flew by. We'd look at our watches and discover that we could barely make the last train. It was always hard for me to say goodbye. There was so much more we wanted to tell each other. Neither of us lured the other to bed, but we did start sleeping together. We'd both been faithful to our spouses up to that point, but somehow we didn't feel guilty, for the simple reason that we had to do it. Undressing her, caressing her skin, holding her close, slipping inside her, coming—it was all just a natural extension of our conversations. So natural that our lovemaking was not a source of heartrending physical pleasure; it was just a calm, pleasant act, stripped of all pretense. Best of all were our quiet talks in bed after sex. I held her naked body close, and she'd curl up in my arms and we'd whisper secrets in our own private language

He who sees the present has seen all things, both all that has come to pass from everlasting and all that will be for eternity: all things are related and the same.

You should meditate often on the connection of all things in the universe and their relationship to each other. In a way all things are interwoven and therefore have a family feeling for each other: one thing follows another in due order through the tension of movement, the common spirit inspiring them, and the unity of all being.

Fit yourself for the matters which have fallen to your lot, and love these people among whom destiny has cast you — but your love must be genuine.

You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

It's proof that you are functioning normally. That's why there's no need to run away or be afraid. A pregnant women gives birth to her kid by suffering through what feels like squeezing a watermelon through her nostrils. Artists endure suffering that feels like pulling the entire universe out of their ass to create their works. Everyone has times when they've come up against a wall and feel like giving up on everything and running away, but you can't forget that during these times when the going is rough, the soul inside of you will try to create something to break through that wall. And don't forget that in your suffering there is something very precious. We're all suffering in agony with our own troublesome lives. Sometimes it comes to tears. When that happens, let it flow as much as it wants. If it still doesn't stop flowing, then we'll come and mop it up.

CEOs should review all the work Similar to Apple, we do product releases. Said differently, we develop software like people develop hardware. And the reason why is, because, I thought well, data is ubiqitous, everyone can go different directions, they can ship continuously, and the problem is, there's no cohesive product vision. There's no central editing of quality and standards. That twenty teams don't work together. That actually a lot of projects require 20 teams to collaborate, and if you don't have a forcing function, there's no mechanism to drive change. Steve Jobs had a concept that he called stacking the bricks. He said if you have a pile of bricks and you lay them on the ground, no one will notice the ground, but if you stack them vertically, you create a tower, and everyone notices the tower, and that's the theory behind launches. It was a coordination mechanism, and it was a marketing moment for the company to ship products. So what I do is we have a big launch, the launch is a deadline, and then we review work frequently. If you want people to work harder, I don't think you need to tell them to be in the office, I don't you need to check their badges, I don't think you need them to come in on nights and weekends — you can do that. If you want people to work hard, have a launch deadline, make the thing crazy ambitious, and check every week. That is the way to make people hard harder, and they'll work as hard as the goal as ambitious and the check-ins are frequent. The only other thing I do is I kind of do deep dives into every function of the company every year or two. So beyond checking work, I might do a really deep dive into x, and it might be a two to four week audit, where I say, "hey no one's going to get fired, just show me all the good and bad of the department."