Today (December 1, 2025) begins what I call the “Bodhi Season”—the event-packed seven days before Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment, literally dealing with his demons. He sure did go through a lot for sitting under a tree! For those who cannot take this entire week to sit under a tree, as the 100th post on this site, I offer you something to meditate upon. Things are changing quickly, so it might be a New Year resolution that you keep.
Creation of Knowledge, From Wash to Source
One of my hobbies is the combination of geology and rock hounding. I live in a great area for that, within a day’s drive to Utah, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon. Mrs. Hanamoku and I always had a fascination with rocks, having grown up on Oahu where, rock-wise, there is nothing more than lava and coral. Not a rockhound’s dream.
We finally seriously took up the hobby about 25 years ago. We always went out on hikes with our eyes tuned to interesting rocks. We didn’t know what was what, but we were still fascinated by anything that wasn’t lava or coral. We didn’t join any rock clubs or take any classes. Our biggest engagement with the “rock community” would be to visit “sincere rock shops” (in the same manner as Linus’ “Sincere Pumpkin Patch”).
For me, any hobby I’ve taken up was more about the joy of discovery for myself rather than attending seminars, consulting experts, or reading a book. That tendency is more a result of having grown up where and when I did—growing up in a very small agg-based town, pre-Internet (even pre-cable TV) where experts, state-of-the-art books, and specialty classes absolutely did not exist.
In this case, geology and rockhounding, I love finding a rock and figuring it out on my own. This challenges and nurtures my thinking and reasoning, while getting a lot of exercise and peace during the hikes. The goal isn’t the identification, but to figure out the process—at a generalized level—by which I found the addition to the rock display in my yard, my memento of insights on thinking. The rockhound’s equivalent of learning to fish.
Out on our hikes, I’m armed with just my eyes, my currently “high-intermediate” knowledge of geology, feet and hands, and geology pick—no rockhounding books, no identification apps, no PhD-level experts to text the rocks pics to, no chemistry equipment. There are a lot of things I don’t know that a real geologist knows. But the point isn’t to identify the rocks like a real geologist. That’s not creation of knowledge. The point is to ponder how my brain applies my current knowledge and experience to improve my knowledge. From the point of view from my unique structure of personal knowledge, there is a chance to see something different. There isn’t if I’m just a carbon copy of my teachers.
Identifying rocks in the field is often not straight-forward. For example, the “green rocks” around the Oregon, Washington, and Idaho area are notoriously one of multiple possibilities (serpentine, green chalcedony, green quartzite, nephrite, epidote). Even when identification is obvious (like it’s clearly quartzite), does it really belong there? Every rock, no matter how common, is part of a story, part of a mystery of abductive reasoning.
Driving along the highways, Mrs. Hanamoku and I are pretty good at spotting places where there just might be something neat waiting to be discovered. This is particularly true in the dry washes all over this semi-arid to desert region we live in. We stop by to inspect the countless pebbles and cobblestones. Often, they are a confusing mix of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. But we’ll stumble upon a tiny piece of some sort of green rock, out of place piece of obsidian, fossil, or something strangely frosty and blue-tinted.
But we’re not quite satisfied with that—it’s just a collection of worn-down specimens from across the tributaries of the wash. This wash is akin to a crime scene where we find clues. We want to find the rockhound’s solution to a mystery, the “source”.
However, I did need a few seeds to start. Since my intent is to learn how I learn and create, not to become a rockhound expert, I picked just a few basics from friends:
- The “Quartz Cycle”: This isn’t a real geology phrase, but it does represent a process. From granite, to sand, to sandstone, to quartzite, possibly back to sand, eventually subducted back into the mantle, to again return as a component of granite.
- The three main categories of: Metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous. Although sedimentary rocks are usually the star category (fossils and agates), metamorphic and igneous rocks are incredibly interesting. Beyond composition of the elements, temperature, pressure, and the rate at which is cools down creates the very cool taxonomy of varieties.
- Crystallization, silicification and calcification processes. Three processes by which the really pretty rocks form. Examples: quartz crystals (clear, amethyst, citrine), chalcedony (agates, flint, chert, jasper), and fossils. The quality of the stones depends on trace minerals, temperature, pressure, hot water (geothermal springs).
Over the years, I learned about many other chunks of knowledge, but I learned it first through my own efforts out in the field with no experts, then consulting expert sources to confirm or debunk the sometimes cringey hypotheses I racked my brain reinventing.
For all of that, it wasn’t just learning the terms. It was why they are different and what are the levers. And it was also drilling deeper into the types of metamorphic rocks, the types of igneous rocks defined by intrusive/extrusive and shallow versus deeper magma (shallow being cooler thus more viscous and lighter, deeper is hotter thus more fluid and richer in heavier elements.
Following are a few of the insights I experienced in the hard way. That is, in the field with just my brain. These are among the essential insights I apply to my current AI and BI work:
- Big systems are nested layers of interacting processes. Each process forms from unique mixtures of forces and constraints. This became the fodder for the book I wrote this year (2025).
- Change is constant, but it happens at different rates to different things and at different times. Continental drift, sedimentation, erosion, and mineral replacement.
- Metrics are related. This became the strategy map. For example:
- The farther upstream I journeyed through the wash, the larger and less rounded the stones.
- The redder the rock, the longer it spent on the surface.
- Inflection points and phase changes. As I walked up a wash, types of rocks would suddenly disappear. I could deduce that a tributary led to the source of the rock that disappeared.
This is beyond just recognizing something, correctly applying a label. Or should I say, this is before recognizing, when there isn’t yet a label.
I advise everyone to try learning a non-trivial but well-established skill on your own. It’s like a koan you must figure out for yourself—to learn how to learn, to focus on your awareness, to experience your innate ability to think on your own. For the most part, we’re taught things, bypassing all that.
Think of something you’d love to learn. Learn the very basics and run with it from there—following your own senses to a path that calls to you. When you find something interesting you’re struggling with, most will suggest Googling it, referring you to someone they know who knows all that. But you need to solve it yourself.
Frankly, finding a green field that isn’t too much to chew (like solving AGI or the Theory of Everything) hardly exists. But that’s fine. The purpose isn’t to invent anything new to the world and to become rich and famous. It’s bigger, to build your awareness of the wonder of this Universe.
Like almost everyone, I’ve had to learn many specific things over my life very quickly and with a highly targeted curriculum. That was in order to build a readily marketable skill so I could pay the rent and other bills. I didn’t have the luxury of exploring those topics for purposes other than becoming a resource to fill a role I’d be paid for.
As I mentioned, growing up in a small town in Hawaii long before there was an Internet or even a decent bookstore, I had to learn things on my own. So my default mode is to learn on my own, the hard way.
I’m not a perfect stickler to this. Sometimes I suspect some expert guidance will help more than working through it myself. But by the time that’s a consideration, I’ve lived and bled the problem. I know in my heart I need a little help to get through that part of the path. The test is the growing belief in the saying, “the more you know the more you know you don’t know”.
I haven’t achieved the wealth and fame of Bill Gates and Elon Musk through learning things the “hard way”—not even the “wealth” and fame of any of the hundreds of colleagues I’ve worked with who are also rather unfamiliar to the world at large. My wealth is the awe I have for the Universe. The awe of knowing everything is possible. The awe of using my sapience to pick up a struggling earthworm on the sidewalk and throwing it back into the yard. Why? Because it too is a fascinating creature, intricately composed at the molecular level, with a lineage on Earth that goes back billions of years like my lineage.
As I’ve said many times, AI or no AI, you are still an awareness with the Gift of Sentience: a piece of the Universe made alive -Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some of Mrs. Hanamoku’s favorite music is Willy Nelson with just Trigger, his guitar. That’s what raw genius sounds like.
Speaking of raw genius, as our dear friend, Ringo, said: “All ya fussin’ wit’ makin’ ya ohn propuh mold, mate … makes thuh bruhnze cast luv-leh-uh thahn guld.”
Grok’s translation for those who don’t speak Liverpool: “All you fussing with making your own proper mold, friend … makes the bronze cast lovelier than gold.”
Please also read my Bodhi Day 2025 prep guidance.
Faith and Patience,
Reverend Dukkha Hanamoku
Bodhi Day 