The Odoki Method draws on the Buddhist Ten Fetters teaching. In the Odoki Method, the Stage 4 inquiry tackles “reactivity”, particularly how to fundamentally undermine our ability to react. This is drawn from the insights in Ten Fetters of the fourth and fifth fetters of desire and ill will.

On top of this, with our inclusion of the “felt sense” in our way of working, suddenly unpicking reactivity becomes much simpler than it has been before.

But is it actually like to undermine reactivity? Is it just a mental game, or could it be a life changing shift?

I’ve recently been following the AI trend, but as a software engineer, I’ve been using an AI to write software. Sometimes, this AI creates amazing things - it fills in details that I wouldn’t have thought of. And, sometimes, it messes up bigtime. When this happens, it can ruin a piece of code, loosing all of the key elements (fortunately, there is always “undo”).

Recently, it did this. Awful mess, removing all nuance from the code. My response (partly in jest), was something like, “Oh for f**k’s sake you’ve totally ruined everything! Please make a smaller change.”

It’s response was simple. “I apologise. Let me try the same thing but with a smaller change.” Which it did very well.

This isn’t about AI though. This is about humans. What would it be like if we could respond to criticism like this AI did? The barbs don’t land, the swipes flow past us.

This is precisely what reactivity work aims to bring about. Life simply gets simpler, because we come to realise that the reaction actually an unhelpful way to respond. This is a deep realisation - one that actually changes our behaviour.

For me, this is the most interesting inquiry of the Odoki Method. It is the most life-changing. I can now sit and watch the craziness of life without being blown about by it.

And this is a key aspect of (but not the whole picture of) developing what we call Deep Wellbeing - a form of wellbeing that is independent of external circumstance.

To find out more about the Odoki Method, visit our website at https://odoki.com. You can sign up there - either to talk with us about what the Method is, or to dive right in with being guided.