u/rant_on_parent

Jai Jinendra!
I am a 28M Software developer. And I am seeking guidance from folks who have sorted their Dharm journey or atleast have optimized it in a sane way.

Let me first give a lil bit of context.

I see my job as the spiritual lab where:

• I can tame my subconcious by alert manoeuvering through ups and downs by complying to core principles of jainism that I study.
  • I have to interact with people, hear praises and taunts all the same and stay aware of not getting absorbed in it
  • Be it honesty, dedication, Staying Apramatt, staying in equinamity, etc. I can practice it all by staying vigilant.
• I can build and strengthen my neural pathways in brain for staying curious, understanding complex problems, solving problems, doing the right thing, staying alert, never giving in to lazyness.
• As long as I can derive value from the lab and its excercises, I think work is good for me.

I do not intend to take Deeksha, because at least right now, for me I feel below:

• For me it might be Avoidance disguised as vairagya. I think i still can leverage and learn a lot from the spiritual lab of work and sansaar.
• I also noticed that they have to take serious vows which at times they cannot follow coz of the world around them, often saying its the 5th aara and it is not possible to comply to all the vows. But taking vows and not being able to carry them is a bigger sin which I want to avoid. Being in a sangh means complying to the unsaid rules of it, and if a rule is anti dharm then I would rather be not bound by those unsaid peer pressure rules.
• I have also heard a lot of politics happening in the Sangh around monks.

So walking my own path, feels to be apt for me.

And that would require some money, hence I don't mind accumulating it without getting greedy about it.

I see Money as :

• A by product of the lab excercise that I do.
• A limited amount as requirement for survival and a lil extra to cover emergencies.
• Money actually is a facilitator for my dharm yatra just like how my body is.
  • I intend not to get attached with either, but I have to maintain it enough so that my spiritual journey is not hindered. In fact if a lil extra effort in these, helps in optimising my journey, then so be it.

If you are with me so far, and you agree to most bits, and you have sorted your life in these terms, please help me with some margdarshan.

The tricky bit for me rn is to strike the balance in my planning, I have three main things to do in order of priority

1. Study a lot of things, and for everything that I study, I genuinely want to go through the cycle of gyaan, darshan and charitra.
   • I am experimenting with systems to optimize my study, understanding, retention, revision and inculcating it in habit.
   • I want to do more and more of this, to me this is my life goal.
2. Leverage work as spiritual lab as long as I still derive meaning from it in terms of training myself with right ways to live in noise.
3. Earn and save money as a byproduct of that spiritual lab without getting greedy about it, and achieve Fire so that I can focus on my main priority of pt1 without compromising on health.

How do I strike balance between the three? I cannot ignore work and money, coz they have their significance in my journey as well! I cannot ignore the studying part, because it gives compounding returns, the more I study early, more I can inculcate in my habit and knowledge base, the more I can shed karmas and the more I can understand and connect the dots down the line.

The best that I can think is to get rid of the pt3, and focus on 1 and 2, with pt3 sorted, I can freely quit 2 when I feel I am ready for it and truly focus on pt1. I have saved up a good chunk, I actively manage my portfolio and am very mindful about it, here is a post detailing it, but I am not sure that at what point I can truly quit pt3, I have discussions with my dad about it but he seem to be adamant that I am very far away from that point so I should not worry about it. He is very spiritual and I trust his judgement, but he refuses to discuss a number and hence this dilemma.

I would really appreciate if you can help me with some suggestions to streamline my path forward.

I feel the itch to not be able to completely lock in on one goal. if pt3 is something to get rid of quickly, I would focus on my tech skills make job switches, do businesses or whatever required to quickly get rid of it. If pt3 is irrelevant, then I want to dig deep into pt1. Studying jainism is complicated, I dig deep, cross refer a lot of resources, try to make sense of things through alternate lenses of science, psychology, other philosophies as well.

I genuinely cannot go all in, if I do not have all the time in world to do it. But I still do all three in limited capacity.

My itch is that I want to go all in, utilize my full potential and not hold myself back.

Thanks for reading through this. Please feel free to DM me or comment here, whichever feels apt to you. 🙏🏻

Hey all,
Just wanted to share my milestone of 1 cr and how I am tracking things:
First of all before anyone asks me in comments here is my story:

• 28 M, Software developer, working in Pune.
• Started with 10.5, subsequently got hikes like 11, 14.5, 20, 24 in same company.
• Switched to a startup in search for more brainy work with better stack and got 35 base salary, recently got it bumped to 38.5.
• I am a minimalist, around 2L hits my bank rn and I spend around 20k-30k per month.
• Parents are independent and I am inclined to study and research spirituality through science and do not intend to marry unless I find someone who is super aligned with my values and has similar goals like mine.
• I still don't have an approval from my dad around a number at which I can retire (can rant a lot about how those conversations unfold every month when I crib about my intent to quit job and focus more on my study of jainism, Science and psychology).
• I don't need and crave a lot of money, but my dad reasons that you never know how much you would need, needs can change and evolve over time and you never know what curveball life can throw at ya.
• So I am continuing as long as AI doesn't render my tech skills obsolete (I think it is already there, so maybe as long as companies don't figure out that AI has rendered my skills obsolete).

Now let's talk numbers and charts!

Here is my networth split:

Shares	NPS EQUITY	Gold	FD PF NSC BOND	Arbitrage fund	Savings Bank	Total
57,92,576	357188.3	2,22,051	12,33,428	34,28,090	7,59,756	1,17,93,089

https://preview.redd.it/3s4dp5j0oqyg1.png?width=1208&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e6d3c2ed279a7fe97854c1a103a0c1b774e29f5

I have always heard how your next Cr comes waay faster than the previous one, so here are some graphs to track and visually see how steep the curves become over time :

https://preview.redd.it/rruixgnsoqyg1.png?width=2072&format=png&auto=webp&s=1236e4072917fafa283563e4e6632f6f43475e04

I was lazy and didn't track and note data points before 2022, I also had infrequent data points after 2022, so the smaller dots and dotted lines are interpolated values, while the solid lines are actual noted values.

I have also added some interesting columns in the end of my sheet to make sense out of the dips and jumps and added comments on cells to make sense out of the variation:

Iran war did me dirty but I invested a lil and gained this month coz of it.

I know my Arbitrage fund liquid investment is still too high, but I just cannot make peace with the current valuations. Also my dad is heavily invested in direct equity, hence in terms of family portfolio, we are lowkey balanced. Keeping Liquid money ready for deployment.

Would love to hear your ideas and sugesstions if any!