About Two Feet In The Boat

tl;dr: I spend a lot of time reading ancient Sanskrit literature on spirituality and trying to apply it to my life. This is a place to share my reflections so I can help others apply spirituality to day-to-day life.

Hi. I'm Sid.

I've always had the impression that regardless of whether they're an expert in their field or a talented writer, most people who start writing a newsletter suffer from overly inflated egos. There's nothing less interesting than a person who thinks they're super interesting and proceeds to talk about how super interesting they are to everyone they meet, and a newsletter is just the Internet equivalent of screaming "I'm interesting, pay attention to me!!!" into the void.

Naturally, I started to write one.

So why'd you start writing then?

Two Feet In The Boat was primarily intended as a place where I could answer the questions I get about my life choices and also share my reflections on said life choices. I've fallen in love with a spiritual tradition that holds as its highest examples individuals who left everything in the search for knowledge, inner peace, and happiness. And when I say everything, I mean everything - these people gave up life in a palace and ended up living in a forest, sleeping under a different tree every night!

As someone with every intention of living a seemingly normal life (wife, kids, job, house, etc), figuring out how to integrate this ideal of constant, complete, and full absorption into my life is a HUGE struggle, and something I'm questioned about frequently and think about often.

What can I find here?

This is a place to share my reflections so I can help others apply spirituality to day-to-day life. I might occasionally sneak some insights I have about the world of business and technology (my professional expertise) into this as well, but I'll always connect everything I write back to spirituality.

The other part of sharing my reflections involves explaining the ancient Sanskrit texts I read in a way that's accessible and easy to digest, because they provide very useful mental models for understanding and interacting with the world that are still relevant today, and obviously the overwhelming majority of people don't know Sanskrit.

For now, Two Feet In The Boat is going to stick to these two things: reflections and explanations.

Ok, so you're like a super realized Sanskrit scholar or something, right?

Absolutely not. Aside from that, I'm just a regular guy living in New York City, working a 9-5 in tech. When I study Sanskrit, I rely on the work of other, more scholarly persons. I find citing the verses I'm inspired by in the middle of a post quite tedious, so while I typically will base each post around a handful of verses, I'm making them available on request rather than citing them within each post. Contact me if you want to know more!

I want to make this super clear, so I'm going to bold it and say it twice: I'm just a student, not a master. Just because I'm sharing stuff doesn't mean I don't have my own struggles. My journey into spiritual life is very much in progress, and I owe everything I have when it comes to spiritual life to the people who have taken me under their wing to teach me the philosophy and what it actually means to clean the mirror of the heart. This is just my humble offering, to pay what I've received forward to a broader audience. I'll say it again: I'm just a student, not a master.

Interesting. Is this going to cost me anything?

Nope! My goal is to keep Two Feet In The Boat free forever. Maybe down the line I'll go full content-creator and expand into podcasts, AMAs, and subscriber exclusive content, but I'm not trying to make money from this. Like I said earlier, I already have a job - this is just something I'm doing as a service.

Cool. Why is it called Two Feet In The Boat?

The title comes from the old saying "One foot in the boat, one foot on the dock". And to that end, there's a famous Sanskrit verse that makes the analogy of spiritual life being a boat that allows you to cross the ocean of material life. But what I've found in examining my own life is that I don't actually commit to spiritual life.

Left alone, I prefer to stay comfortable in my routine of going to work, hitting the gym, eating nice food, and chatting with my friends, rather than do the introspective, difficult work of spiritual growth. Putting two feet in the boat forces someone to abandon their doubts and uncertainty and leave the harbor's safety to journey to their destination.

Basically: don't half-ass it.