for - Medium article - Heart Sutra and the nyams of Dzogchen - Aleander Vezhnevets - 2022, Sept 7

// - Summary - This is an insightful article on the esoteric practices of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma school of Dzogchen practice. - It provides a first-hand account from a Western practitioners perspective and written in a clear, easy to understand language that stresses the phenomenological aspects and uncluttered with too much specialized esoteric language, other than the Tibetan or Sanskrit names of the major practices. - For anyone seriously practicing b meditation, of any or even no spiritual tradition, It helps to provide useful and major insights and experimental landmarks of the meditative journey into exploring the relationship between form and emptiness - The description helps to locate one in what it might be like to return to the pre-linguistic world of the newborn, experiencing an undivided reality for the first time, as a gestalt that does not reify all the emerging phenomena into separate silo'd objects - These descriptions on - recognising form from an emptiness starting point and - recognizing emptiness from a form starting point - remind me off the Guru Rinpoche song of Khenpo Tsultruim Gyamtso Rinpoche: - https://ktgrinpoche.org/songs/guru-rinpoche-prayer - All these forms that appear to eyes that see All things on the outside and the inside The environment and its inhabitants Appear, but let them rest where no self’s found

- Perceiver and perceived, when purified

Are the body of the deity, clear emptiness To the guru, for whom desire frees itself To Orgyen Pema Jungnay, I supplicate

- All these sounds that appear for ears that hear

Taken as agreeable or not Let them rest in the realm of sound and emptiness Past all thought, beyond imagination Sounds are empty, unarisen and unceasing These are what make up the Victor’s teaching To the teachings of the Victor, sound and emptiness To Orgyen Pema Jungnay, I supplicate

- All these movements of mind towards its objects

These thoughts that make five poisons and afflictions Leave thinking mind to rest without contrivances Do not review the past nor guess the future If you let such movement rest in its own place It liberates into the dharmakaya To the guru, for whom awareness frees itself To Orgyen Pema Jungnay, I supplicate

-  Grant your blessing that purifies appearance

Of objects perceived as being outside Grant your blessing that liberates perceiving mind The mental operation seeming inside Grant your blessing that, between the two of these Clear light will come to recognize its own face In your compassion, sugatas of all three times Please bless me, that a mind like mine be freed

//

The video shows the productivity books which Sheldon used to help design his system including 99u's Manage Your Day-To-Day, Unsubscribe by Jocelyn K. Glei, The One Thing by Gary Keller, Getting Things Done by David Allen, Deep Work by Cal Newport, and Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Stop Procrastinating With Note-Taking Apps Like Obsidian, Roam, Logseq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc by Sam Matla

sophisticated procrastination - tweaking one's system(s) or workflow with the anticipation it will help them in the long run when it is generally almost always make-work which helps them feel smart and/or productive. Having measurable results which can be used against specific goals will help weed this problem out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpvEY-2dSdU

In this episode, I explain the memory system I created in order to expand my memory to new heights. I call it the Sirianni Method and with it, you can learn how to create an intentional photographic memory.

Who the hell is the Sirianni this is named for, himself? (In the comments he mentions that "it's my italian grandpa's last name, I always liked it and a while back started naming things after it)

tl;dr: He's reinvented the wheel, but certainly not the best version of it.

What he's describing isn't remotely related to the idea of a photographic memory, so he's over-hyping the results, which is dreadful. If it were a photographic memory, he wouldn't need the spaced-repetition portion of his practice. While he mentions how he's regularly reviewing his cards he doesn't mention any of the last century+ of research and work on spaced repetition. https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm is a good place to start for some of this.

A lot of what he's doing is based on associative memory, particularly by drawing connections/links to other things he already knows. He's also taking advantage of visual memory by associating his knowledge with a specific picture.

He highlights emotion and memory, but isn't drawing clear connections between his knowledge and any specific emotions that he's tying or associating them to.

"Intentional" seems to be one of the few honest portions of the piece.

Overview of his Sirianni method: pseudo-zettelkasten notes with written links to things he already knows (but without any Luhmann-esque numbering system or explicit links between cards, unless they're hiding in his connections section, which isn't well supported by the video) as well as a mnemonic image and lots of ad hoc spaced repetition.

One would be better off mixing their note taking practice with associative mnemonic methods (method of loci, songlines, memory palaces, sketchnotes, major system, orality, etc.) all well described by Lynne Kelly (amongst hundreds before her who got smaller portions of these practices) in combination with state of the art spaced repetition.

The description of Luhmann's note taking system here is barely passable at best. He certainly didn't invent the system which was based on several hundred years of commonplace book methodology before him. Luhmann also didn't popularize it in any sense (he actually lamented how people were unimpressed by it when he showed them). Popularization was done post-2013 generally by internet hype based on his prolific academic output.

There is nothing new here other than that he thinks he's discovered something new and is repackaging it for the masses with a new name in a flashy video package. There's a long history of hucksters doing this sort of fabulist tale including Kevin Trudeau with Mega Memory in the 1990s and going back to at least the late 1800s with "Professor" Alphonse Loisette and the system he sold for inordinate amounts to the masses including Mark Twain.

Most of these methods have been around for millennia and are all generally useful and well documented though the cultural West has just chosen to forget most of them. A week's worth of research and reading on these topics would have resulted in a much stronger "system" more quickly.

Beyond this, providing a fuller range of specific options and sub-options in these areas so that individuals could pick and choose the specifics which work best for them might have been a better way to go.

Content research: D- Production value: A+

{syndication link](https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10ehrbd/comment/j4u495q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

"PKM-guru wars"!! 🤣

Do we? Really? This definitely needs reframing and books like this that play on these sorts of fears are both partially responsible, but are also preying on an atmosphere which they're propagating.

This is the sort of sad thing that a productivity guru would say...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x22OB55bysc

Hilarious clickbait title for someone who makes productivity videos on YouTube, but she talks about finding some balance.

She's definitely selling something though...

Fahad Daiwani Digital Marketer GURU https://fahaddaiwani.com

Guru Paduka Stotram - Powerful Guru Mantra