I was quite deeply engaged with Effective Altruism 2018-2021 and I am grateful for EA. In 2020 I began immersive Buddhist training and I am grateful for the teachings of the Buddha. My introduction to Buddhist training came through the Monastic Academy, and I continue to train there seasonally and be grateful for Monastic Academy. Through these communities, I continue to learn, aspire, and train to make good choices given the current situation we are in individually as humans and globally as a society and global ecosystem.
About five years ago in early 2021, I deeply was caring for and searching for ways to continue to offer my life to Effective Altruism. Three years of (CEA Funded) EA community building had completely changed my life.
Before EA, I was finishing up an undergrad degree in Philosophy (ethics) and Psychology (well-being) and I was interested in making an impact. My sense of impact was local, therefore I was trying to build community among Atheists/Humanists, students e.g. young philosophers, and academics more broadly, via conferences and TEDx. When EA and I found each other, I went from having little drive and direction in life to having clear, beneficial actions that I could take locally with a global mindset. I went from gaming all night to organizing events, advice, and connections/opportunities for local (and global) people to change their life to do good and do good better—to the point that I was attending EAGs and EA community builder retreats, putting together and support a team to run an AI Safety Camp, and helping people to get EA jobs and startup new projects, career paths, and organizations.
I am deeply grateful for Effective Altruism. The relationships I've formed, as well as the work the community has done, striving to benefit others in the world. I am in debt to the EA community for what it offered me.
About five and a half years ago roughly, amidst COVID, I made my first attempt to merge two worlds that I was a part of through an online event: EA and Buddhism. I was so nervous about the magnitude of doing this that I literally went unconscious in the middle of hosting this event, and my dear friend @Naryan, close by my side, took great care of me and of the event, as I stayed on the floor and physically recovered as my blood pressure came back up. Even now, my body tenses and gently shakes with the recalling of this, and now there is also a smile, chuckling, and a deep and hard-earned skill, right here and now, in caring for and taking firm hold of the state of this body.
That nervousness and passing out, as I see it now, were woven in with a sense of insecurity, deep doubt, e.g. "Should I be doing this or should I stop immediately?" "Am I doing this correctly enough?"
That insecurity, as I understand it now comes from a lack of confidence. And, the lack of confidence, perhaps surprisingly, comes from a lack of humility, the skill of making mistakes, truly falling low, and then truly picking oneself back up again. One way in which I can express this now is that my body, at that time, did not properly know how to bow.
That body did not know how to kindly respond, i.e. how to humble itself, before deep confusion, or what we call in some regions of Buddhism: Great Doubt. Later, I would learn how this Great Doubt is necessary in order to see through subtle, old, and deeply held assumptions and to take real steps to let go of such unclear states of mind and make better decisions based on seeing more clearly.
The questions held in my body and mind hollowed me out, with this sprinkle of Great Doubt. How do I truly honour and respect Effective Altruism, which I have been giving my life to, including, honouring the variety of people on this event video call? How do I truly revere and respect the teachings of the Buddha, which I have only started giving my life to and which is bigger than me, thousands of years bigger at the least, as I try to offer to it my voice and apply this living ancient wisdom to modern questions?
About six years ago in April of 2020, I joined the Monastic Academy: A Buddhist Training Center with the EA-friendly mission of preserving life on Earth. I arrived at Willow, a new, Canadian offshoot of Monastic Academy, as it was in a pre-nascent state. I began following the daily and weekly schedule.
Short months later, I welcomed my first formal teacher back to Willow, Soho (Seishin, Jasna), and I worked with her to make Willow: to offer a place where people could come to train. In the fall of 2020, thanks to Soho's help, I first arrived at MAPLE in Vermont, the Monastic Academy (for the Preservation of Life on Earth), and shortly thereafter I met my teacher, my root teacher, my teacher to this day and onwards, Soryu Forall.
I recall the first words Forall said to me were feedback on my mopping of the main hall: "The mop is too dry." It was too dry. It wasn't picking up the dust, hair, and dirt on the floor, only pushing it around a bit. This is the first of countless interactions I've had with Forall that are precious to me because they enabled me to change my behaviour, my body, mind, and life, similar to how EA did: in ways that truly widen my circle of ethical care and transform my ability to take skillful action—trustworthy, ethical, kind, compassionate, and wise actions of body, speech, and mind. This is worth celebrating, and I continue to celebrate this, for nearly six years running.
I don't expect this preciousness to be conveyed in a forum post, but I would like to leave you with something to glimpse the magic that will be straightforwardly relevant to EAs, so I'll link one talk (2-minutes, timestamp 30:42) so that it doesn't feel like I'm spamming you.
To bring EA, Buddhism, and Monastic Academy together in one section, in synthesis, I'll highlight what I take from EA and Buddhism and how that comes together in MAPLE.
From EA I learned that the world is big, bigger than I can see. This introductory EA question shook me and my life: "How can I do the most good?" This question took me out of each simple and fixed answer that I found. It took me out of my Philosophy/ Psychology/ etc. degree-mind. It took me directly to each next practical question, path, and step I could find to offer my life to the happiness of ethically good choices by taking real action.
From Buddhism I learned and am still learning to live with great questions. This is one such question that I learned at Monastic Academy as part of the standard meditation technique, part of the daily morning chanting: "How can I give my body, mind, and life completely to great love for the benefit of all beings? [the chant continues] Put all aspects of your life in accord with this. The steps you take incessantly and completely to answer this question give the practice meaning and power." Great questions and real (ancient, come-and-see testable-verifiable) practices can show us the way to make space in our bodies, minds, and lives for something besides our ideas, selves, and attachments.
From MAPLE I am learning that mind is the forerunner, the leader, the maker of all things, or by another translation, by Bhikku Sujato, "Intention shapes experiences; intention is first, they’re made by intention." In mopping, the intention (the active aspect of mind), shapes the mopping as picking up dirt or pushing it around or leaving it behind. The same is true in all the work we do, all actions of body, speech, and cognition. We need to be clear enough to see intention as it arises and passes away.
This is more pervasive than you might think. If you operate under the impression that this principle does not hold when you're doing math or using a system (because the system works no matter the intention), I'd say: you couldn't be more wrong. The choice to use and participate in that system is the intention that you're bringing without awareness. And this is the level that is trained when you pay attention when mopping.
I'll end with a teaching that is alive right now, as I write, in this MAPLE community and one that addresses much of what EA is deeply and rightly concerned about:
The whole of the AI problem is religious, therefore the whole of the solution is religious.
We're making a new religion that guides AI; this must be a new formulation based on the truth discovered by Gautama Buddha.
Historically, this work has been done best at monasteries, so we [at MAPLE] live and work at a monastery.
Let's do good better!
May there be merit and wisdom, for all beings!
Namo Buddai, Jai Bhim, Jai Prabuddha Bharat, USA, Canada, Earth![1]
P.S.
I'll say more about any of the above to the degree that there is appetite to add on to, clarify, or correct any of it. I welcome feedback.
I am deeply grateful for both 🙏 Effective Altruism and 🙏 Buddhism, especially to all of the people I have had contact with around the world through these two ethics-focused religions. Specifically:
I am grateful to 🙏 Effective Altruism Toronto, where I got my start in EA, especially the organizers at the time that I joined and the friends who first recommend to me an 80 000 Hours Career Guide, circa 2017.
I am grateful to 🙏 Monastic Academy, where I am currently visiting for a short few months of seasonal training, as I expect to continue to do each year, especially around this time of year (Vesak), including my teacher 🙏 Forall and the community here.
I am grateful to 🙏 Indosan Sogenji Mahadhyan Bhumi Mahavihar, where I ordained as a monk in December 2024 and continue to train as limited Canada-India VISAs allow, including my current/heart teacher 🙏 Zen Monk Dr. Shaku Bodhidhamma (Bhanteji).
I enjoyed reading of your continuous inquiry/exploration that started in EA and continues with your monastic training. I find your unique perspective to contribute a lot to my own thinking in this area, which I might say also started in rationality/EA and continued into the systems thinking direction. I see our friendship as the glue that keeps our diverging perspectives making repeated contact over time - a pattern that has continued with many friends that I met through EA as far back as a decade ago!