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Announcement: Adding Daily Usage Limits to Statblocks

April 15, 2024 by Kenji Leave a Comment

In January, I was laid off from my position as a software developer at REI. Since then, I’ve dedicated more time to developing my AI-powered Game Master tools, which started as a passion project. To support this endeavor, I started a Patreon to help cover the costs associated with ChatGPT API calls, without focusing much on monetization initially. However, as I pouring more effort into these tools, I’m shifting towards a freemium model.

This change hasn’t been implemented yet, but I want to share what you can expect. The most popular app, the D&D 5e Statblock Generator, which use templates from D&D 5th edition SRD monsters, will soon have a daily usage limit. Users will be able to generate up to five statblocks per 24-hour period. This limit should accommodate the average user based on my surveys, which show most generate zero to five statblocks weekly.

For those who need more extensive access, a subscription at the $5 or Master Worldshaper level will remove this limit. This adjustment also allows me to potentially make other tools, like the dungeon generator, free for all users while reserving more complex features, like enhanced statblock generation for the npcs that appear in the dungeons, for patrons.

These changes are designed to strike a balance between making the tools accessible and supporting their continued development and my livelihood. If you are excited about these updates or if you’re connected to software development opportunities, please do not hesitate to reach out. My LinkedIn address is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenjicrosland/. I am also eager to hear your feedback and ideas for future enhancements to the Game Master tools.

Thank you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm for the apps.

Filed Under: Dungeons And Dragons, Personal Stories, Technology and Tech Startups

Choosing the Way of the Coder

March 3, 2016 by Kenji 1 Comment

zen-stones

In Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist a mysterious old man by the name of Melchizidek presents the protagonist Santiago with two mystical stones by the name of Urim and Thummin. He tells Santiago to consult them when his path is unclear. Should he retrieve the black stone from the pouch, the answer to his question was “yes.” Should the the white stone surface, then the answer was “no.”

I found myself inspired by Santiago’s openness to the unknown and a little envious that he had the wisdom and the magic of the stones to help guide him to the right path. Like Santiago, I wanted to pursue a meaningful and fulfilling life, and yet, without any mystical omens to guide me, I found myself stumbling from one unfulfilling job to the next.

As my shelf and my kindle list filled up with career and self-help books, I began to learn, both through the advice they offered and through my own experience, that while no Melchizdek will come knocking at my door, I can develop a sense of what is right for me as well as the openness and courage to explore new things. Through developing this openness, I learned that I enjoyed software development, something which I had once viewed as a soulless pursuit. Through reading about the stories of others who had taken risks and found fulfilling careers, I found the courage I needed to take the leap.

Eventually, I quit my final job as an internet marketer and put down the cash to enroll in Code Fellows, a Seattle software development bootcamp. It was a big decision, and while I did wrestle with some uncertainty before making it, I also felt a level of confidence I had never felt before. I felt confident because I could find meaning in the value coding offered others; because learning the secret language of machines and using it to solve problems felt utterly engaging. And yes, I’ll admit that the fact I wouldn’t have to worry about paying the rent as a developer boosted my confidence as well. Over many years of searching, these three standards of meaning, engagement, and financial security had become my guides, and as I started taking my first steps into the world of code, they were there to reassure me, encourage me, and urge me forward.

Meaning

The first guide, meaning, is the “why” of your work. It’s what keeps you going when the work isn’t particularly fun or financially rewarding. But you can be mislead by it.  This guide can become a creature of the ego–a preening, haughty, and ultimately frail thing that inflates when people shower it with praise, and shrinks, withers, and dries up when encountering criticism and indifference.

If you follow this creature of ego as I have sometimes done, you’ll pursue some goal or path because you want to be better than others or to stand out from the crowd. The problem is that the moment you receive criticism you’ll either give up because you’ve derived all motivation from what others think of you, or you may double down on your endeavors and drown out the voices of others who may provide you with constructive criticism. You may achieve some success by following the advice of this creature, but oftentimes it’s short lived. The creature is always hungry for more.

If, on the other hand, your “why” is driven by the need to contribute and help others, it will make you think about the value your work can provide. You’ll ask yourself if the work helps you grow and if you’ll be satisfied that the time you’ve invested has been a net positive for you and those you serve through your work. You do your work to the best of your ability not because it makes you look good, but because it’s an offering of respect to those who have decided to pay for what you do. This ensures that even if you don’t reach the pinnacle of achievement for the path you’ve chosen, you’ll feel content that the work you’ve done was worthwhile.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to ignore the drive of ego completely. There’s a part of me that wants to be envied and have valuable skills and knowledge that others don’t have. I must admit that I do find some motivation and purpose in that. But I also find purpose in the feeling that I’m acquiring the tools and knowledge to solve problems I care deeply about. As a junior developer, I do modest work. In my first month on the job I had spent most of my time orienting myself to an overwhelming amount of code and doing minor bug fixes. And yet, this was the first time my work felt like a true offering. I could point to what I had done, and I didn’t have to resort to any mental gymnastics to convince myself or others of its value.

Code is meaningful to me because it makes up our world: from simple websites to algorithms that regulate the dosages for radiation treatments. As a coder, I can ensure that the little part of this world that I build I build with care and attention. And even if it never happens, I find real motivation in the idea that one day I could help create something that could enrich the lives of many.

Engagement

The second guide, engagement, is about the enjoyment of your work as you do the work.

Have you ever been so engrossed in a task that all chatter in the mind fades, and your sense of self recedes into the background, so much that it seems as though you don’t make your own decisions, but rather the decisions are made through you, and you feel a sense of delight in watching your work unfold?

If so, you’ve experienced what psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls “Flow,” a state of heightened concentration and complete engagement. To Csíkszentmihályi, finding work that consistently brings us to flow is the key to happiness, and I believe that’s the reason why so many people from diverse backgrounds have learned to enjoy programming, because of how easy it is to enter a state of Flow when developing software.

Three conditions that are essential to Flow are:

  1. Having a clear goal.
  2. Immediate feedback.
  3. Having the right amount of challenge.

Clear Goals
Anyone who has worked in a job where the goals are nebulous or nonexistent know how demotivating that can be. After all, how can you feel any sense of progress or achievement when you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re progressing toward?

With coding, I’ve rarely found myself in this situation. It’s as though the goals are already set for me. I know what features need to be built and what bugs need to be fixed. I know that web pages need to be loaded in 2 seconds or less and I know what behavior to expect from software when I complete a feature. Yes, sometimes the goals in coding are not always the right ones, and can lead to unforeseen consequences down the line, but at least there is always a direction to move toward. This fuels a sense of productivity and progress that often leads to flow.

Immediate Feedback
In software development, you write tests to ensure that your code does what you want it to do and when they pass you get instant validation that you’ve pulled it off.  If the code doesn’t work, you investigate what went wrong and then you try something new based on what you find. You try your new solution out and you continue to get instant feedback. Granted, the feedback isn’t always helpful or informative, but the fact that it’s always immediate can give you a sense of progress at every stage.

NOTE: I should point out that there are integration tests that can take a significant time to run, so feedback in software development is not always immediate. But hey, no job’s perfect, right? 😛

Challenge
Unfortunately, most coders, especially beginners, don’t spend 100% of their time in a heavenly state of flow, and the reason is oftentimes that the problems that need to be solved are so challenging that you feel anxious, frustrated, or sometimes even like you want to abandon coding altogether.

The trick to entering flow is to have just the right amount of challenge for your skill level. As shown by this handy chart below, too much challenge and you become anxious. Too little challenge and you suffer boredom:


Mental state chart model by Csíkszentmihályi. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Striking this balance, especially when learning to code, is not always possible. Indeed, when I was at Code Fellows, our class was designed so that we’d be “just barely drowning” nearly every day. Depending on the day, my emotions ranged from triumph (I just solved a difficult problem! I am the best!) to despair (I can’t figure this out. I might as well give up). My experience ran all over that chart, with boredom being the one possible exception.

I noticed, however, that even when I found myself up against what seemed an impossible problem, there were plenty of books, internet articles, teachers, and fellow students to point me in the right direction. Because my goal was clear, and because I was able to get regular feedback whenever my code failed to work, I was able to progress quickly towards whatever goal had been set, no matter how impossible it may have seemed at first.

Although learning to code can be very challenging, the combination of clear goals and immediate feedback can help accelerate the learning process, and often gives you glimpses of flow, even when your skills are put to the test. As you continue to code, moments of flow become more common as the number of problems you tackle will match your level of skill.

Financial Security

The third guide is financial security. Wait, what? Shouldn’t we just “follow our passion” instead?

I grew up indoctrinated in the church of following one’s passion. And I must admit that I feel a vague sense of shame when I tell people that I’ve chosen software development as my new path. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m being judged for choosing security and stability over more uncertain but potentially more rewarding paths.

I eventually realized, however, that when it comes to financial security vs. finding your passion, there actually is no choice. If you had to choose between starvation and a menial job fastening zippers to jackets in a sweatshop, you’d choose the sweatshop every time. You wouldn’t have the luxury to think about following your passion because the options are so incredibly limited. You’d line up for that zipper job and you’d feel grateful if you got it.

The very fact that we’re having a debate between choosing a life of stability and financial security and choosing a life of creative expression, purpose and meaning, shows just how affluent our society has become. As Eunice Hii says in her Illuminating talk, Don’t Just Follow Your Passion: A Talk for Generation Y: “Passion is a Privilege.” The fact that we are able to pursue our passions today is incredible–a luxury that few generations who’ve lived before us have known.

So while passion is important, security will always win. The only difference from person to person when it comes to pursuit of passion is:

  • The amount of security needed
  • Knowledge of opportunities available

How much security do you need?
While security will always win in an equal battle, you have to think about what defines security for you personally. Can you live from day to day without a worry about your next meal or next month’s rent? I know some people who can, although they usually count on the support of family and friends should the worst case scenario come to pass.

On the other end of the spectrum are people who don’t feel comfortable without a decent income, a good health insurance plan, and a 401k. If these things aren’t taken care of first they can’t pursue their passion because they’re too busy worried about paying the rent not just months from now, but years from now.

Any honest talk about the pursuit of passion has to start with the level of security you need in order to do so. As Penelope Trunk said: “No great art was made by a person who can’t pay rent. If you can’t pay rent, you think about that constantly, to the point that it’s impossible to consider the perfect word or the perfect shade of blue.”

I almost agree with this, but I would revise it to say that no great art was made by a person worried about paying rent. This is an important distinction.

I’m a worrier descended from a long line of worriers. And find that I identify much more with the those who need more security than those who can make do with less. I’ve been told to follow my passion all my life. This is probably why I’ve felt shame every time I’ve traded passion for security.

But instead of feeling shame for these decisions, I’ve learned that it’s much more productive to be realistic about the level of security I need and try to adjust it by:

  • Reducing worry through mental training: meditation, therapy, hypnosis, NLP etc.
  • Thinking through the true consequences of a worthwhile risk (Will I really end up homeless if the career change doesn’t work out? Probably not).
  • Learning and researching opportunities where fulfilling work also fulfills my need for security.

Learning About Opportunities
I believe that of these options, the third is the easiest. If your need for stability and security is high, it would behoove you to spend your time exploring fields you are passionate about that fulfill your need for meaning and creative expression. Chances are that as you search, you may find hobbies that don’t pay well, but you may also find an opportunity where both your passion and need for security meet. The trick is to expose yourself to new ideas, new worlds, and new ways of thinking. If I had done this at an earlier age, I may have discovered my interest in coding much earlier–an interest which, as it happens, pays very well.

Choosing a Way

It’s no coincidence that Taoism, one of the most influential Eastern religions, simply means “The Way.” Choosing a Way is much more than choosing a set of tasks to occupy our time.  Our choice is a chance for personal expression and connection, a chance to grow in our skills and engage fully in the performance of a task. It’s integral to our sense of self-worth and value and it’s the way we support our own livelihood and those who depend on us.

When choosing the way of code, I decided to devote all of my attention, time, and resources to making the career change and I don’t think I could have done it without feeling confident that it was the right choice for me. And while I didn’t have any mystical divining stones to guide me, I had developed a sense of what was important to me. Perhaps that was all I needed.

Zen Stones Photo Credit: George Hodan

Filed Under: Careers and Business, Personal Stories, Technology and Tech Startups

3 Technological Innovations that Could Revolutionize Meditation Practice

November 3, 2013 by Kenji 13 Comments

technology and buddhism
Almost a century ago, H.G. Wells predicted that “It is quite possible that in contact with western science, and inspired by the spirit of history, the original teaching of Gautama [The Buddha], revived and purified, may yet play a large part in the direction of human destiny.”

Today, we’re seeing this cross-fertilization between science and mindfulness practice becoming a reality. It seems like you can’t scroll through a Facebook feed without coming across an article describing the latest scientific study about meditators reporting less stress, exhibiting higher pain tolerance, and behaving more compassionately. Through fMRI brain scanning technology and behavioral studies, science has managed to provide objective evidence that meditation does indeed work. Thanks to science, what once was dismissed as something only hippies and airy-fairy new agers did has now moved into the mainstream.

This is just the beginning. As I hope to illustrate in the examples below,  science and technology will do more than provide us with empirical data suggesting that meditation has value; it will revolutionize meditation practice itself. It will provide us with the tools to help this ancient discipline become many times more effective than it has ever been.

Innovation #1: Mind Reading Technology

While “mind reading technology” sounds like science fiction, the tools that enable us to read brainwaves and record them have been around for more than 100 years. Admittedly, brainwave reading technology or Electroencephalography (EEG) was quite primitive at its inception; likening it to mind reading would have been like comparing stargazing to space exploration. Today, however, the technology has evolved to the point where someone wearing a relatively unobtrusive headset can manipulate objects on a screen using mind commands alone.

emotiv-headset

The Emotiv Headset

To me, the most exciting application of this technology is one that will help beginning meditation students improve their concentration, their ability to focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted. As concentration becomes stronger, meditators begin to notice the subtlest of sensations, like tiny biochemical reactions on the skin, or the very movements of one’s inner organs. Meditators use concentration to develop insights about the nature of mind and body, just scientists use electron microscopes or particle accelerators to understand the nature of the physical world.

A common meditation technique for students to develop concentration is to focus on the breath. A student will follow the sensations of the in-breath and the out-breath and will seek to stay focused on these sensations without getting lost in thought. This isn’t easy, and beginners often get lost in a stream of thoughts within the first few breaths. When this happens, the student is instructed to gently bring their attention back to the breath once they’ve realized their mind has wandered.

This is a frustrating process since many students won’t realize that they’ve been lost in thought until 5-10 minutes after the fact. To help shorten this period, Meditation teachers will speak up after 10 or 20 minute intervals of silence to remind students to go back to the breath if their attention has wandered. While this is better than nothing, wouldn’t it be nice if the teacher could tell a student to return their focus the very moment their mind wanders?

This is precisely what mind-reading technology can help us do. The soon-to-be-released app, BrainBot, for example, uses an EEG headset that connects to an iPhone through Bluetooth. During the course of a meditation session, the headset will monitor brain activity to determine whether or not you’ve lost focus. Once the Brainbot app detects that your mind has started chasing errant thoughts, your phone will tell you to refocus your attention. (Check out the TEDx talk from one of BrainBot’s founders.)

Giving meditators a nudge whenever they need to refocus, however, is just the beginning when it comes to the potential of mind reading technology—especially when it’s teamed up with…

Innovation #2: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Broadly speaking, there are three levels of intelligence where software is concerned. The first, is the software that forms the majority of code written since people started writing code. It mindlessly does exactly only what it’s programmed to do and nothing more. A good example of this is your run-of-the-mill pocket calculator.

Second, there is “narrow” artificial intelligence. This is software built upon very complex algorithms meant to perform a specific task very well. An often cited example of narrow AI is that of Deep Blue, the computer that defeated the chess world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. While Deep Blue can simulate millions of possible chess moves per second, it can really only understand the rules of chess, and is (without significant modifications made by humans) completely useless outside the 64 square universe of a chessboard.

Finally, there is “general” artificial intelligence (also called universal AI). A general AI system can take in external inputs from the outside world and determine its own goals and objectives based on the situation at hand. A general artificial intelligence could figure out the rules of chess by studying videos of chess matches instead of being fed the rules through lines of code. Although we are a ways off from computers learning chess, we do have software that can play tic-tac-toe and Pac-Man, and can solve the Tower of Hanoi problem without being pre-programmed to do so. As we’ll see in the examples below, all three types of software (non-intelligent software, narrow AI, and general AI) have the potential to provide great benefit to meditation students.

Non-Intelligent Meditation Software
One doesn’t need to utilize AI technology in order to create incredibly powerful tools to aid a meditator in their practice. Oftentimes these solutions have algorithms that are much less complex than those in your average video game.

Take an app like the BrainBot example mentioned above. Here’s a very abstracted representation of the algorithm governing the function of the application:

BrainbotAlgorithm1Let’s go through this algorithm step by step:

  • First, the application starts and plays an audio recording encoded in a .wav file with some basic instructions for meditation.
  • Once the instructions are complete, a timer starts and gives the meditator 2 minutes to focus their mind.
  • When the timer runs out, the app then uses the information it receives from the brainwave scanning device to determine whether or not the meditator has lost focus.
  • When both the timer reads zero and the meditator’s brainwaves match what the app has predetermined as an “unfocused” mind, the reminder plays and the whole thing starts over again.

Of course, this flowchart masks the complexity involved in processing the reams of data that the brainwave scanning device sends to the app. I imagine that thousdands of lines of code would be required to determine just what “losing focus” would mean to a machine. Human beings would have to measure the brainwaves of enough meditators to determine just what ranges of frequency and amplitude of alpha and beta (and delta and theta and gamma) waves would constitute a focused or unfocused mind. These parameters would have to be painstakingly measured, recorded, and spoon-fed into the app before it could even begin to answer the question: “Has the meditator lost focus?” So, although the idea behind the app is really quite brilliant, the app itself is not all that intelligent.

Narrow AI and the Virtual Meditation Teacher
Facial recognition systems in security cameras, self-driving cars, and programs that can “read” scanned documents and convert them into encoded text (often referred to as optical character recognition) are just a few examples of how narrow AI systems are making their way into our daily lives. If enough effort was applied in this direction, we wouldn’t be too far off from adding “providing meditation instruction” to the list.

The first time I was introduced to the idea of a virtual meditation teacher was in a Buddhist Geeks Interview with the meditation instructor and science scholar Shinzen Young. In the interview, Young mentions a project he has in the works, called “Virtual Shinzen,” whereby an automated program would periodically ask a student certain questions about his or her mental state and then prescribe a meditation technique appropriate to that state of mind in accordance with a “meditation algorithm.”

Narrow AI would take this concept one step further by helping to process the subtle ebb and flow of mind states just as Deep Blue would process the millions of potential moves on a chessboard. In order to develop something like this, students wearing EEG scanning devices would provide the raw data of their brainwave activity from a meditation session and then describe their experience to a human teacher. The teacher would then provide the appropriate advice for each shift in mind state. The narrow AI system, after getting enough data from students and instructions from teachers would develop certain heuristic guidelines, “rules of thumb” about the appropriate meditation advice to give a student depending on the brainwave readings the EEG scanners pick up. The more data the virtual meditation teacher collects from students, the better those heuristics will become.

Initially, meditation students taking instructions from virtual teachers will probably need to check in with human teachers at least once a month (probably once a day, for users of Alpha versions of this program). The students will describe their experience to the human teachers and the teachers will then examine the advice given by the virtual teachers for quality assurance. If the virtual teacher gives inappropriate advice (which will happen), the human teacher will provide a correction and the AI system will take that into account for future teaching sessions. Over time, these virtual AI systems could become complex enough that the teachings they provide could become virtually (pun intended) indistinguishable from those of the great masters. In fact, their teachings could even be better because the AI teachers would have the ability to monitor mind states in real time.

General AI and the “Cyberguru”
Depending on whom you ask, we’re about 50 to 100 years away from creating AI that would match (and then quickly surpass) human intelligence. This would have mind-boggling consequences for us as a species, our very extinction being one possible outcome. If we do manage to create an artificial intelligence that doesn’t kill us, however, it will most likely lead to a quantum leap in our understanding of the inner workings of our own minds, as well as meditation and mindfulness practices.

Meditation techniques are, boiled down to their essence, no more than algorithms—a set of instructions, rules and triggers that change based on certain conditions. A computer working through an algorithm cycles through a series of conditions and then performs actions based on those conditions. The benefit of narrow AI is that it can potentially digest existing teachings and techniques from the meditation masters, and then provide instruction comparable to those of the masters themselves—perhaps even better instruction because of the mind reading capabilities they would conceivably have.

General AI would take meditation one step further by formulating new solutions and meditation techniques from scratch. It would take the guidelines from the existing masters and then could gobble up massive amounts of data that meditators provide through use of EEG headsets. This would then help refine meditation techniques much faster than the slow evolution they’ve had over thousands of years.

In order to develop general AI, we must either write extremely complicated software which can exhibit intelligence, or we must create what is called Full Brain Emulation (FBE), whereby we simulate the workings of the human brain through electronics. At this point it seems like a toss-up which type of AI we’ll create first, but when it comes to mindfulness, FBE seems to have the greater potential. The development of FBE will be in large part due to…

Innovation #3 Neuroinformatics

In 2005 a group of scientists in Switzerland founded the Blue Brain Project with the goal of creating a computerized model of the human brain by 2023. The scope of the work is ambitious. These scientists aim to create 3D computerized models of billions of neurons and trillions of synapses which would then emulate the behavior of neurons and synapses observed in the brain’s neocortex (the “thinking” layer of the brain). Obviously this would take a lot of data and processing power. Just to give you an idea, one simulated second of what amounted to “half a mouse brain” (about 8 million neurons) took ten seconds of computing time on one of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

By creating a reliable computerized model of the human brain, we could answer a question that none of the meditation masters of the past could have answered: “What happens in the brain when we meditate?” Should Moore’s law continue to hold up and the processing power of computers continue to increase exponentially, we could simulate what amounts to 15 years of mindfulness meditation in a brain emulator using less than a year’s computing time. Hyperintelligent AI computers (even narrow AI computers) could then use their enhanced capability to recognize patterns within complex systems to determine just what conditions need to be present in the brain in order for its owner to experience that which the meditation masters call enlightenment: the complete cessation of suffering and a dissolution of the sense of self.

If we had a neuron-by-neuron map of the enlightened brain, we could then be able to find shortcuts that could help meditation practitioners achieve mastery much faster than anyone has been able to do in the 2,500+ years of this tradition. We could, essentially, “hack” meditation by having an objective, data-driven understanding of what meditation techniques are effective and what meditation techniques aren’t. From this understanding we could create new techniques and perhaps even create new meditation tools and software—a “BrainBot 5.o” if you will. We could perhaps even learn how to shut off the very neurons in the brain that work to produce the sense of self, thereby creating a technologically induced moment of Satori. I’m sure the possibilities don’t end there.

The Revolution has Already Begun
The technologies mentioned in this article are more than just science fiction. Mind reading EEG technology and narrow AI are very real and have many useful applications even today. Perhaps the most far-fetched of the three is the creation of a computerized brain model, as there are many who are still skeptical about the project, especially in light of  recent news that the brain is much more complex than we had originally thought it was. What is evident to me, however, is that we are starting to see the most fascinating applications of recent technological advances to help us understand how to make mindfulness practice more effective.

What other advances do you envision that might revolutionize meditation practice? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Further Reference:
Hawkins, Jeff (Jun 23, 2008). “Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence.”
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozFn2d45tg
Markram, Henry (2008). “Henry Markram: The Blue Brain Project”
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iDR8Z-e_GU
Markram, Henry (Jul 29, 2009). “A Brain in a Supercomputer.”
URL: http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
Modha, Dharmendra (Feb 17, 2012). “Dharmendra Modha of IBM on Whole Brain Emulation.”
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqeINGOzIZo
Muelhauser, Luke (2012). “Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import”
URL: http://intelligence.org/files/IE-EI.pdf
Sandberg, Anders (Jun 1, 2010). “Whole Brain Emulation: The Logical Endpoint of Neuroinformatics?” URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRB6Qzx9oXs
Young, Shinzen (Apr 18th, 2012). “Shinzen’s Blog: How to Enlighten the World.”
URL: http://shinzenyoung.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-enlighten-world.html
Young, Shinzen (Apr, 25th, 2012). “Toward a Science of Enlightenment.”
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZuxZ3BYvNM
Warren, Jeff (Jan, 2013). “How Understanding the Process of Enlightenment Could Change Science.” URL: http://www.psychologytomorrowmagazine.com/inscapes-enlightenment-and-science/

Filed Under: Meditation, Mindfulness and Spirituality, Technology and Tech Startups

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Hello! My name is Kenji Crosland and welcome to my blog. I recently spent nearly a year traveling the Southern US looking for a new home. I also write about how to run pen and paper RPGs. I also make AI Powered Game Master Tools. Say hello!

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Statblock Generator 2.0 Release!

July 11, 2024 By Kenji

Introducing Kenji’s RPG Setting Generator and Worldbuilding Dashboard!

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Announcement: Adding Daily Usage Limits to Statblocks

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