40 Years of Zen

Hi everyone, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is November 1st, 2024. November is my favorite month; it is a very special month because it’s the month I was born. It’s also the month of November 5th, my birthday, and Guy Fawkes Day.

Remember, remember the 5th of November, when radical anarchists tried to blow up Parliament and almost succeeded, if not for the dumb luck of a guard discovering the gunpowder and the gunpowder trees of his plot. However, Guy Fawkes remains a wonderful symbol of revolution and anarchy, most famously represented by V for Vendetta, but we’ve all seen the mask. I am going to be out of the office from Monday to Friday next week, and I’m attending a very special event called 40 Years of Zen. Many of I am in the biohacking community. I attended Dave Asprey’s biohacking conference earlier this year and had lunch with Dave.

He said, "Charles, you have to try out this thing we’re working on; it’s called 40 Years of Zen." I asked, "What is it?" He explained, "We put you in meditation pods, give you a bunch of drugs and other things, and then we wire your whole head up with EEG. You spend 10 hours meditating every day, reaching the deepest states of meditation possible. You replicate what people who have been meditating for 40 years do in a five-day span.

" I thought that sounded insane, crazy, and amazing. I told Dave I’d love to do it, and after some discussion, I figured out that right around my birthday would be the perfect time. However, the process involves a digital device detox, meaning no Twitter, no internet, or any of those types of things. You go in, journal, think, and contemplate existence and reality. Normally, I just go, but the last time I went off the grid for a few days, you guys thought I had died or rugged.

So, I promised the community that if I was going to disappear for an extended period, I would let ahead of time. I will be trying out the 40 Years of Zen program to see what I and what I don’t like. As many of I’ve worked with people the Neural Meditation Institute with Jeffrey Trent. We’re very interested in using BCI devices to better understand what’s happening in your brain during different types of meditation states, whether it be zazen, loving-kindness, or whatever your preferred method of meditation is. The goal is to use EEG to apply principles of deliberate practice to meditation, which traditionally you can’t do.

That feedback loop is absolutely essential for rapid skill acquisition. What Dave is trying to do is create a very effective deliberate practice situation with meditation, and we’re going to try to replicate that. It’s going to be very intense, emotionally straining, and difficult, but it’ll be a lot of fun. I will write a blog post about my experiences and what I learned, and hopefully, if it benefits anybody, they too can understand what I went through. In any event, since I’ll be off the grid for that week, you might panic because you won’t see any Twitter activity.

A lot of people might say I’m dead, but I am not dead. Especially on my birthday, I will just be doing that thing. I wanted to let you guys know, and hopefully, it has very positive therapeutic benefits. I sure as hell need a vacation; this has been a very long and stressful year. We’ve gotten a lot done.

Chang is out, and Chang Plus One is imminent. It’s already being tested on Testnet, and I think they’re going to fork it here in a bit. Hopefully, within 30 to 60 days, we should see something like that on Mainnet, depending on what the Constitution Committee wants to do and the various people that make these decisions because it’s definitely not in my hands. Once that’s activated, we will have the DS, which is the second of three things we need to do to have a fully functional on-chain government. The first was Chang One, the second is Chang Two, and the third is the Constitutional Convention and the ratified new constitution to replace the interim constitution.

The very first major governance action of this new government will be the approval of the first 2025 Cardano annual budget, which will make big decisions about our roadmap and strategy as an ecosystem as a whole. All things considered, Voltaire is doing very well, and the Goen workstream is also progressing nicely. There’s a ton of community feedback, and there are many wonderful things planned for 2025. I’ve already told you about some of them, and when I return from 40 Years of Zen, I will share all kinds of new ideas, depending on the budget and your discretion. But for the most part, November is going to be fun.

I’ve already done No-Shave November, so this is Know Yourself November. I hope you take the time to spend some introspection, looking deep into your soul and seeing what’s there, scary or otherwise. I’ll see you guys on the other side. Thank you very much. Cheers!