Ray Dalio reveals the surprising 'single most important reason' he's succeeded in investing-and it has nothing to do with finance | Fortune

"Dalio often describes major crises and events in terms of cycles, and he referenced meditation as the thing that lets him step outside himself long enough to see reality clearly, rather than get caught up in headlines. But in the Odd Lots interview, he also made it clear what he does with that clarity: he uses it to map out cause-and-effect relationships."

"For Dalio, meditation creates the mental distance he needs to see events-markets, politics, human conflict-as linked chains rather than emotional shocks. That lens is so central to his worldview that he referenced it over and over: "If you understand the cause-effect relationships... you can be ahead of the game. The causes happen before the effects." He talks about politics this way, too. Instead of seeing polarization as chaos, he thinks about the "mechanics" that produce it: incentives, cycles, interest groups, constraints. He isn't judging them morally; he's trying to understand how each variable begets the others."

"Meditation, he says, is what lets him make that shift away from the instinct to react. "You align the subliminal and the intellectual mind... while still feeling the emotions, but being able to look down on them and ask: How does reality work?""

Regular meditation provided equanimity and mental distance that enabled stepping back to perceive long arcs and lifecycle dynamics. That clarity allowed mapping of cause-and-effect relationships across markets, politics, and human conflict, treating events as linked chains rather than isolated emotional shocks. Understanding causes before effects enabled anticipatory positioning. The same mechanics applied to political polarization, framed as incentives, cycles, interest groups, and constraints that produce predictable outcomes without moral judgment. The mental practice aligns subliminal and intellectual processes, permitting emotions to be felt while being observed and analyzed. The perspective parallels Buddhist dependent origination, viewing the world as interdependent causes and conditions.

Read at Fortune