[alfredallan1]

Maybe. Maybe not.

>Why aren't they generating awesome works of science or philosophy or literature or something with all that clear-headedness

Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic.

Just because they aren’t doing X doesn’t naturally and obviously mean it is because they cannot do X. e.g. I can readily be a manager, and have more of certain (in)tangible things, but choose not to, because that line of work interests me less than other kinds of work. Just as, by the same token, just because somebody wants to do X doesn’t mean they can do it. e.g. I really want to be a talented rockstar with mad guitar skills, but I cannot becuse I am largely tone deaf.

[pdpi]

> Maybe they don’t want to? Maybe their motivation is towards intrinsic goals, while science/literature/etc. are all extrinsic

Douglas Adams comes to mind.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

[lopmotr]

No doubt they are successful pursuing their intrinsic goals. But the disconnect I saw was between monks who don't work and workers meditating to become more productive. Maybe the meditation is actually the cause of their not working and is harmful for productivity. It might lead you to do as little work as possible, even if you do what you do do really well and feel very personally satisfied.

[alfredallan1]

Whose productivity?

The individual’s? If my needs are simple, and easily met by working 2 hours a day, what reason do I have to toil 18 hour days? To enrich someone else? My skills and talents are for me to decide what to do with. What right does someone else have to dictate how much I ought to work?

[lopmotr]

I'm thinking of the advice you sometimes hear about meditating so that you'll be better at your job. Maybe it makes you better at your life but not at work.

[alfredallan1]

Yes, and it lets you be better at whatever you want to be better at. It also lets you figure out what you really want to be better at, rather than arbitrarily pegging that down to be one's job. And isn’t one’s work really part of one’s life?

All it does, really, is put people in a more focussed, balanced state of mind, and shut down much of the incessant internal monologue. Someone focussed is generally better at their job than someone distracted.

So as one of the comments mentioned about monks not producing works of art or science - if an artist/scientist really did get into meditation, and if they were innately passionate about their art/science, they would get better at it. But it is presumptous to assume that the average monk wants be do art/science.