Andrew Davis

I'm going to be giving the slowest lightning talk ever. Go.

So this is, In Emptiness There Is No Software: Buddhist Wisdom for DevOps.

A lot of the best ideas are old. They're not new ideas. You thought you made everything up. You didn't. We've known this for a long time.

So I'm a DevOps specialist. I've been in IT for 15 years. I also spent most of my 20s and 30s as a Buddhist monk. So I went deep on this topic and focused my whole life on meditation, teaching, and so forth.

So what did I learn? We experience a complex world. Not news to you, right? Everything comes from causes and conditions. Things are changing all the time. Everything also depends on our subjective mind.

The outer world is complex: the earth, nations, markets, businesses, teams, everything. So complex. We're dealing with all this complexity all the time, right? No surprise. You know this.

But our inner world is complex. Look at all the emotions that we experience. We have perceptions, we have beliefs, memories, biases. We have our interactions with other people, our energy levels, physical bodies changing all the time.

So life would be a lot simpler if we were a bacteria. Food, pain, good, bad. Simple life. Go back to the basics. That's one option.

But our other option: we deal with complexity by using concepts, and concepts are also known as mental models. So a mental model is based on beliefs. It's not facts. It's just a model of what we know, and we project that on the outer world. We try to make sense through that model. We need to not mistake our concepts for reality.

So we need to take a high-level view. In different contexts, it means different things. Maybe it means value streams and so forth, but we need to look at what's actually going on and continually adjust.

So what is our mental model of ourself? We are the center of the universe. That's obvious, but there is evidence to indicate that that is not the case. Still research, but there's a good side of that. We're the hero of our own story. That's Joseph Campbell. Same stock imagery that was used previously, you might have noticed.

So that's the good version. So if we're the hero of our own story, how do we really make this whole story work? How do we win?

So we live in a world of concepts, but our concepts obscure reality. We mistake our concepts for reality continually. We see things, and we think that we know what's going on. But what's actually happening inside of us, for example, is changing all the time. There's tons of different feelings, beliefs, perceptions happening. Our body is changing all the time, but it still kind of feels like us. That's the concept: it's me.

So how can we act on the basis of our limited information? We have limited information about even who we are. Even though we're at the center, right? We barely even know this person. We're still getting to know ourself. So we have limited information even about ourself.

So what do we do? Be open. So clarity: just seeing, understanding what's actually going on. Being open gives us perspective, and so we need to observe before we act. This advice applies all over.

And then be kind. So be open, be kind. So empathy improves our judgment, gives us different perspectives. In every action, we can try to act to maximize the benefit to others as opposed to maximizing the benefit to ourself. Simple rule.

So we can ask ourself, what are we thinking and feeling right now? Maybe it's good. Maybe it's bad. This is what you need to ask yourself. This is the exercise. This is the slow part of the talk. And it's going to get very slow.

So how does it feel when you breathe in?

Then how does it feel when you breathe out?

And how does it feel when you breathe in?

Because it's actually the feeling of being alive, right? And there's a feeling to it. It feels nervous when you're up here. I don't know how it feels when you're down there.

Clarity and empathy brings peace of mind no matter what's going on. So our clarity and empathy will bring us peace of mind in any situation. So I offer this for your reflection. Thank you.