Thursday24 May 01:39 PM
towards a tantra of interwebbing, part 1 | re pro duct i on
What one sees with the mind, that is thy own self,
What one hears with the ears, that is thy own self.
Oft quoted by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
You know it's all happening right now. The entirety of time and experience, all possible pasts and plausible futures are swimming around here, right now. No shit, yo. Just Google it. The stories that we have heard throughout our lives bind us to particular threads of this confusing fabric. They shape our understanding of the world.
Let's just deconstruct this moment right now. You are (perhaps) gazing a a computer screen deciphering markings from the light which form words and codes and language. That is, you are reading a blog entry. The technology which enables this, and further binds us to this moment, has its own complex story. It is a story of war and factories and logic and communication.
Still we sit here and gaze at a screen. In a sense we are meditating. Inasmuch as we remember that we are looking at a computer into the weird and sticky fabric of attractions and repulsions and fascinations, in this way we are meditating. When we get lost within the drama, the information, the seeking, the finding, the sharing, the hoarding... When we forget that we are sitting and breathing, we have lost track of our meditation.
Here's another mediation exercise — take a look at every single thing that you have Googled for the past week, or the past month. What does this tell you about where your attention runs?
It may be true that the Kali Yuga is chock full of all sorts of feature-rich attention-grabbing delights —yummy, pathetic, hideous, wonderful, forgetfulness-producing — all these and more are ensconced deeply within the forests of the interwebs. And it may be for these reasons that the ancient wisdom seers warned us of these dark ages. (Well that and the dearth of quality attention upon trusted, exalted egregores...but we'll save that mythographical explanation-adventure for another day..)
In this era, however, we are also quite fortunate, because the beacons and mechanisms of Reality are fairly blatant. The man behind the curtain really is right there in plain view. Let's take our daily experience on the internet to be a metaphor for our experience of reality as a whole. For inspiration and a little bit of detailing, I give you the late, great, Alan Watts (just remember, "I am sitting and breathing watching a tiny YouTube video that I focus upon through a computer screen...") —
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