The Jain philosophical tradition made a claim that sounds almost clinical at first: every act of knowing is also an act of obstruction. Their term for this is *āvaraṇa* — the covering or veiling that perception itself lays over reality. You don't just see the world; you see through the accumulated sediment of every conclusion you've already reached. This is more radical than the familiar point about bias. It means the very apparatus of understanding — your categories, your frameworks, your hard-won expertise — doubles as a filter that screens out what doesn't fit. For someone doing serious product work, the practical edge of this isn't about the product at all: it's about noticing that the person doing the evaluating is not a neutral instrument. Self-realization, in the Jain sense, isn't a destination you arrive at — it's the ongoing project of catching yourself in the act of veiling, and asking what you've quietly stopped being able to see because you got very good at something.

What did you become competent at — in work or in understanding yourself — that you now use more as a shield than a tool?

Drawing from Jain Epistemology (Anekāntavāda and the theory of perceptual obstruction) — Umāsvāti (Tattvārthasūtra, c. 2nd–5th century CE)