Wow, something from the Meaningness blog got onto the front page of Hacker News. I did not expect that. I want to make a note of something here. The author is

Wow, something from the Meaningness blog got onto the front page of Hacker News. I did not expect that. I want to make a note of something here. The author is a practitioner. I don't know how he thought up of these things, but what he says here and in many of his other articles are worth listening to because many of the things he says here seem to come from practice on the cushion -- at least to me, he does. It's the meditative experience itself that loosens up beliefs and opinions. When they arise and you pay attention on the cushion, things you take for granted get seen in a new light. Many of the deeper observations result from seeing things that you'd rather not see. What's ironic is that, for some reason, many folks in Consensus Buddhism will have these strange, adverse reactions to this very questioning of the core beliefs of Buddhism, even though the meditative methods taught at the core of Buddhist practices will open up the questioning process. If you're practicing correctly, you'll run through layers of personality and deeper into tightly-held beliefs and world views. Releasing and opening those are often one of the hardest practices. (But hey, you can take what I just said as the ethical posturing; I get that reaction a lot too). This method does not apply to just Buddhist beliefs. It can apply to any belief system (religious, political, social, etc), including Atheism (Yeah yeah, atheism is an "absence of belief"; but not after you find out what beliefs really are on the cushion). So, while the insights in this article might be interesting, even practical, I doubt you'll really get it's full potential unless you replicate it by sitting on the cushion yourself. Just saying.