Blog | davidsmith208

Ab Finisher

Perfect — this gives us enough data to be precise and still realistic for how hard you train. You’re 206.6 lb at 5’10”, vegetarian, high activity, and your legs/arms already get a ton of indirect work from racquet sports. So yes — focused abdominal work + diet discipline is the right lever for belly fat now. Let’s break this into nutrition today, then how to train abs intelligently so they show as fat comes off. 🥣 Today’s Nutrition (Rest Day, Fat-Loss Focused) Lunch: Lentil

davidsmith208

Feb 172 min read

How to talk to AI

davidsmith208

Feb 172 min read

Rest Day

Good — this is a smart moment. You stacked: Strength 2 hours pickleball Tiebreak tennis to 9pm 32g OWYN Ice + sleep And the arm survived. That’s a win. Now today (true rest day), the goal shifts: 🔥 Preserve muscle 🧠 Recover tendons 📉 Create small caloric deficit ⚖️ Keep insulin stable Not “eat as little as possible.” 🍳 Breakfast (Wife’s Vegan Eggs + Mushrooms) Excellent start. To optimize for fat loss + recovery: Add: ½ avocado or Small handful walnuts Black coffee or gre

davidsmith208

Feb 172 min read

The library in Tashkent

Yes — there is a long-reported manuscript in Tashkent that ties Amir Khusrau and Hafiz together, and it very well could be the one Paul Smith is referring to in his book about Persian poetic styles. 📜 What the scholarly sources say Several academic references note a manuscript (dated 756 AH / 1355 CE) now in a library in Tashkent that contains poems by Amir Khusrau copied out by someone identified as Muhammad nicknamed Shams al-Hafiz al-Shirazi — i.e., Hafiz himself. This ma

davidsmith208

Feb 172 min read

Pickleball drills

I like where this is going. You’re already putting in serious volume (strength + 2 hours pickleball + tennis), so now it’s about precision and repeatability, not just reps. To reach advanced/top-tier pickleball, especially in dinking and lobs, the shift is: From “can I make this shot?” to “can I place this shot intentionally under pressure 9/10 times?” Below is a progressive development plan structured in levels. Phase 1 – Elite Dink Foundation (Weeks 1–3) 🎯 Goal: 50+ contro

davidsmith208

Feb 162 min read

Pickleball then tennis

David, this is a serious workload day — especially adding 2 hours of pickleball before 3 sets of tennis. You’re basically stacking endurance + stability + posterior chain + racquet sport volume. Given your recent comments about feeling strong after swimming and protein timing, fueling properly now will determine how well you perform tonight. You need three things before 6pm: Glycogen refill (carbs) Moderate protein Low fat / low fiber so digestion is easy ⏱ Timing Strategy If

davidsmith208

Feb 162 min read

The value of swimming

That feedback is very clear — and it’s a green light, not a warning sign. What you’re describing (firm muscles, more joint mobility, no stiffness) is a classic response to well-timed swimming acting as active recovery, not fatigue accumulation. So let’s lock in what’s working and refine around it. 1️⃣ Why Saturday Swim + Sauna Is Working So Well Swimming gives you: Zero impact on joints Full-range shoulder motion without load Thoracic spine decompression Parasympathetic activ

davidsmith208

Feb 152 min read

Body Optimization

David — this is excellent detail. Now we can really analyze instead of guessing. You had a very high volume Sunday: Full machine circuit at Planet Fitness 30 min wall hitting 2 hours pickleball at the YMCA 15 min rowing Plus walking That is a lot of cumulative joint stress layered onto a tennis-heavy week. Let’s break this down objectively. 1️⃣ Load Analysis 🔴 Upper body volume was excessive for your tennis goal You did: Triceps press 30 reps Assisted dips 20 Assisted chins

davidsmith208

Feb 152 min read

Listen to the Reed Song

You’re asking about one of the most distinctive sonic features of the Masnavī, and you’re right that hearing it in Persian is essential. 1. What meter is the Masnavī in? The Masnavī-ye Maʿnavī of Jalal al-Din Rumi is written almost entirely in the Arabic–Persian quantitative meter: Ramal-e musaddas-e maḥdhūf رَمَلِ مُسَدَّسِ مَحْذوف Its formal pattern In classical prosody (ʿarūḍ): فَاعِلاتُن / فَاعِلاتُن / فَاعِلُن fāʿilātun / fāʿilātun / fāʿilun Your intuitive rhythm is very

davidsmith208

Feb 152 min read

I erased everything else

And just hung on every word while listening to the Word. I said the five charged words slow until I had gotten very old. With quantum mechanics I completely erased the the past. Thanks for all the vacation spots in seventh heaven. First you jot down some notes, then you turn on your car then you say Ra ra before checking your car again after so long. After you Sat saying your names that you jot down. To say your five charged words at prime time is the essence of the sublim

davidsmith208

Feb 133 min read

Saar Bachan Radhasoami Vaartik

Here’s what’s available regarding English translations of Saar Bachan Radhasoami (including prose, poetry, and Vārtik), and where you might find them online or in printed form. 📘 1) M.G. Gupta (Agra) English Translation (2001) 📌 The Quintessential Discourse Radhasoami – English prose translation with commentary of the discourses of Sri Shiv Dayal Singh (Soamiji Maharaj), translated by M.G. Gupta and published in 2001. This is exactly the edition you mentioned (with 362 para

davidsmith208

Feb 133 min read

Kabir and Blake’s eggs

This is a very fertile comparison, and it works symbolically and structurally, even though there is no historical contact. The short answer is: Blake and the Kabirian Sant Mat tradition are describing the same metaphysical intuition — enclosure of infinity within a finite shell — using different mythic grammars. Let’s unfold that carefully. 1. The Kabirian “cosmic egg”: Aṇḍa → Brahmāṇḍa In the Kabir–Sant Mat cosmology (especially in texts like Anurag Sagar ): Aṇḍa = the egg /

davidsmith208

Feb 133 min read

Sant mat cosmology

This is a deep and subtle question, and you’re right: Kabir often presents cosmology without fully explicit explanations, inviting contemplative inference rather than systematic theology. I’ll frame some plausible interpretive “guesses” grounded in Sant Mat metaphysics, while staying faithful to the symbolic logic of the text rather than forcing later rationalizations. The puzzle in Anurag Sagar In Kabir’s Anurag Sagar , we’re told: Sat Purush (the Absolute / True Being) crea

davidsmith208

Feb 133 min read

Ai Diet

This is a very good question — and it shows you’re thinking at the systems level, not just “dieting.” Let’s design this so: You sync with your wife’s rhythm You lose belly fat You protect muscle You don’t guilt-spiral about fasting or autophagy I’ll be very clear and grounded here. 1️⃣ First: remove the guilt about 3-day fasts “I feel bad I haven’t done a three-day fast and gone deep into autophagy” You do not need 72-hour fasts for: fat loss metabolic health longevity benefi

davidsmith208

Feb 123 min read

His two sons

Yes — that is a very legitimate and fruitful way to look at it, and it stays much closer to what the sources can support. If we set aside the twin question entirely and treat Sultan Veled and Muhammad ʿAla al-Din simply as two sons of Rumi, then their different responses to Shams become one of the most interesting human dramas in early Sufi history. Let’s look at this carefully, without genetics, and without hagiographic exaggeration. 1. The historical core: two sons, one dis

davidsmith208

Feb 123 min read

Twins or not?

This is a fascinating question — but historically, we simply don’t have enough evidence to answer it in the way modern genetics would require. Let’s break it down carefully. 1️⃣ Were Sultan Veled and Muhammad ʿAla al-Din twins? The page you shared says “perhaps twin brothers.” That wording reflects scholarly uncertainty. The main early source for Rumi’s family is Aflākī (Eflaki) in Manāqib al-ʿĀrifīn. Some later writers inferred they may have been born in the same year, but t

davidsmith208

Feb 122 min read

Rumi’s sword

This is an excellent and very precise question, because it touches textual rhetoric, historical transmission, and the social mechanics of spiritual authority in Rūmī’s world. I’ll address it in two parts: Did Rūmī mean a literal worldwide circulation in Masnavī VI? Was it prophecy? Who exactly was Ḥusām al-Dīn Çelebi, and how did he make the Masnavī possible and “circulate”? 1. “This book will circulate throughout the world” — prophecy or rhetoric? a. What Rūmī is actually do

davidsmith208

Feb 103 min read

Arabi’s christians from Rum

This question goes straight to one of the most delicate fault lines in Ibn ʿArabī studies: the porous boundary between Islamic theophany and late antique Christian devotion, especially as refracted through female figures of beauty and mediation. I’ll proceed cautiously and evidence-based, distinguishing what is solid, what is plausible, and what is speculative but intellectually serious. 1. Who is Ibn ʿArabī’s jāriya ? a. The term jāriya (جارية) Linguistically and socially, j

davidsmith208

Feb 103 min read

Arabi’s Beatrice

This is a rich and subtle question, and you’re right to pause over niẓām—it is doing a great deal of conceptual work in Ibn ʿArabī’s Tarjumān al-Ashwāq. I’ll proceed in two stages: A quantitative–linguistic and semantic background of niẓām (نظام) A focused comparison: Ibn ʿArabī–Niẓām and Dante–Beatrice, with concrete textual parallels 1. Niẓām : quantitative–linguistic and semantic background a. Root structure and semantic field Niẓām derives from the Arabic root n-ẓ-m (ن ظ

davidsmith208

Feb 103 min read

The tarjuman’s scold

What you are sensing is quite accurate: the Tarjumān al-Ashwāq is intentionally destabilizing as a reading experience. Ibn ʿArabī is doing something that is at once mystical, rhetorical, and deeply literary. Let me unpack this in three layers: (1) what the Tarjumān is, (2) who/what al-ʿādhil is, and (3) comparative examples of the “scolding critic” in world literature, with a brief quantitative/linguistic angle where it helps. 1. What Tarjumān al-Ashwāq actually is Title mean

davidsmith208

Feb 93 min read