During a recent tour of Buddhist monasteries in Sikkim and Bhutan, I found myself reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, a whopper of a book about the imminent fusion of biological and technological intelligence.
Along with his description of what would essentially be a new species of being, Kurzweil also talks about the onset of a virtual reality that would be essentially indistinguishable from what we currently call reality -- i.e. a direct access to our inner fields of perception (via our brain) from inputs other than the external phenomenal world we live in.
Between my sessions of reading about this visionary high tech future (on our rickety old bus traveling down monsoon-soaked, single-lane, cow/goat/monkey-sharing, cliff-dangling, so-called "roads") our group would periodically dismount and swarm (like a small group of bees) into some of the most awesome and impressive Tibetan style Buddhist monasteries in the world. They were replete with stunning wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling representations of the pantheon of Tantric Deities, said to be representations of our own layers of consciousness, but also readable as an alternate and parallel "virtual" reality of its own.
Huge blue and red and green rupas (statues with multiple arms, heads, ornaments), thangkas (paintings) and mandalas (symbolic representations of different Buddha fields) seemed to invite the viewer to step through a portal in his/her own mind into a sensuous, vivid and somewhat other-worldly realm in which enlightened beings with their full manifestation and retinues are completely present and manifest.
Buddhists who practice these disciplines (increasingly available in our modern Western culture) can spend hours a day and weeks or months on retreats conjuring visual (visualizations) and audio (mantra) of these environments, and at some point begin to recognize that the world which we take to be flat, ordinary, confusing, painful and uninspiring is actually the playground of these deities, and that we ourselves are in fact actual embodiments of them. Talk about virtual reality!
On our trip, I wondered about the future of our species, the nature of the singularity (near or far), and the future of a Buddhist country like Bhutan (whose 28-year-old leader is empowered as a Buddhist chogyal -- dharma king -- and who is a Harvard graduate). Technology is present in Bhutan (even the monks have cell phones) but many traditional methods of agriculture, crafts and daily life are still in place. In some sense Bhutan has the potential to work out a balance of social concerns, ecology, spiritual practice and material well being that could well be a model for future civilizations on this planet.
My hat is off to Ray Kurzweil for having the audacity to back up his ground-breaking vision of the future with considerable scientific and mathematical data. His view is something that at least every geek and nerd on the planet should be aware of, and should be of considerable interest to the rest of us ordinary folk, whether we buy into it or not.
And my hat is off to the people of Bhutan who were lovely, cheerful and very hospitable. They are also "keeping the faith" for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners worldwide.
May all beings, before and after the singularity, whether "actual" or "virtual," be safe, happy, healthy and at ease!
And hey, if you want to meet non-virtually, Cyndi and I are teaching Yoga Body Buddha Mind 2 (The Heart of Enlightenment) up at Kripalu Nov. 19-21. Blogging is great but we would love to meet some of you in the flesh!
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buddhism is an interesting religion.
some believe in souls some dont.
one buddhist book I have the monk states that human life is not only worthless but disgusting.
to most buddhists the idea is to get out of here as fast as possible. rebirth is a bummer all suffering.
but like all religions it is a worthwhile study. even a path.
they sure dont seem to be into wars and hate like many of the christians and muslims.
Oddly a lot of your posts remind me of Zen. (minus the "P"word of course)
You're right, at the present time Buddhist aren't at war with anyone. There were a lot involved in the WW2 ,China/Japan ,and later in SE Asia.
How do men of such a gentle , thoughtfull belief come to kill each other ?
Of course understanding this makes if easier to understand how the Christians and Islamist kill each other.
BTW. Which book said human life is worthless and disgusting ? I would like to hear his words I'm sure I could learn a lot from him. ;)
Peace.
Exactly right on. This is where we are going. Everyone is God. There's nothing else to be. Heaven is where we make it so. We have the power. The power of love. Love is power. Real power.
regard this phantom world
as a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp - a phantom - and a dream."
~Vairacchedika 32; Diamond Sutra
since everything is but an apparition,
perfect in being what it is,
having nothing to do with good or bad,
acceptance or rejection
you might as well burst out laughing!
~Longchepa
Issa's Haiku:
The couple's first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write this haiku (translated by Lewis Mackenzie):
露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara
The world of dew --
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .
Plato set his virtual reality in the cave; Kant in the categories, Leibniz in his Monadology, Berkeley in his esse est percipi.
St. Augustine had already established time and space as mental relationships in the fourth century.
The question does not center so much on the spirituality of reality but on the reality and continued existence of spirit.
Does the individual- the "I"- the soul- the seat of self-conscious, endure forever? Is it, as Buddhism holds, ultimately annihilated or "blown out", or does it face ultimate and eternal responsibility for the choices it makes within time? Does the Buddhist wheel eternally revolve or does the cross stand still while the world turns? Can one, to paraphrase Thoreau, "kill time and not injure eternity?"
These are all fascinating questions.
Q: So there is in fact something that exists independently of us. And the moon is also there when I'm not looking at it.
AZ: Something exists, but it is not directly accessible to us. Only indirectly. And whether this thing must really be called the "moon" is another question. That is also a construct.
@ http://www.signandsight.com/features/614.html
With respect to the Western philosophers, you suggest a parallel, but I think it's misleading in a similar way. Take Kant: the Kantian categories are *necessary* or *essential* features of reality for rational beings. They may not be ultimately real (which sounds like Buddhism), but they are not transcendable. Likewise Berkeley, Leibniz, et al. posit metaphysical *necessities*. But the whole point of Buddhism is that the kleshas or defilements--presumably the Buddhist analogue to the Western a priori dimension of experience--are (ultimately illusory) obstacles to clear seeing that can be eliminated. That is the whole purpose of Buddhist practice.
The point is while I believe there may be important parallels between Buddhism and philosophy, emphasizing the idealism angle in this way obscures matters.
The western concept would be that, despite the illusory appearance of things, the things themselves are real; the east would hold that the things have no self and are merely temporary illusions in a stream of consciousness which is itself illusory.
The eastern attributes this to the Dream dreaming the dreamer; the west to the Dreamer dreaming the dream.
Truth in the east is a transient and incomplete stream of illusory vicissitudes; in the west it is the conformity of thought and thing.
I believe that some individuals can learn to do some dreaming while awake or in a semi-sleep state. I do not find that worth learning how to do, since dreaming is nothing extraordinary. I am satisfied that mystifying explanations of dreams are not helpful. They may be enjoyable, but they are phony not real. Although we have learned to refer to "virtual reality," that degrades the meaning of the word "reality."
I am aware that dream states have been interpreted as anything from predictions of the future to visits with 'spirits' no longer alive. As I do not believe in ghosts or need an ability to predict the future, such explanations no longer interest me. I can benefit from better understanding of who I am becoming, and I do depend on others to aid me in that process. I have no desire to go looking anywhere other than what I can find in my own culture. Such a search would be a distraction.
Castaneda created a work of fiction, passing it off as scientific field work. His genius was in 'hypnotizing' his readers into believing his work was real. In the E. Indian rope trick, no one climb the rope; the shaman hypnotizes himself and his audience. I pass myself off in HufPo as a post-Jungian (James Hillman) therapist of mature years—maybe I’m not. If I am crazy and believe this to be true, I am not lying to myself. If you then come to me for therapy, perhaps you can be healed by this ‘fiction’ we share.
Re 'who I am becoming' vs. integrating who I ‘was’. 'All' mental illness results from a mind that is too strong--it doesn't listen to the body, resulting in PTSD, etc (see my permalink, yesterday). Good therapy (including practice of Zen, etc.) is not about the future or happiness, but about learning to 'fall' backward into one's past, which has duration-in-time as a 'dreamy' state. A therapist is often needed as a lifeguard while monsters from childhood are med (Suchness = dread, terror; the life of a kid, and shamans, in touch with ‘nature’ is that of pure terror, see D. Noel). The goal of dreams is wholeness, now. The Catholic Purgatory is the virtual reality where dreams, as past ‘facts’, are forcibly integrated (vs. PTSD, where bad events become perpetual, disturbing ‘dreams’).
Among my personal experiences were several years in regular psychodrama, during which there were for me healing moments. I assume also for other participants. I assume my dreams use old material as well. The public acting out, even while only role playing, is more potent as I experienced it. I recall especially some postponed grieving for my father I needed to do in the psychodrama setting. It helped me.
Quantum be upon you during the trying times ahead.
Best, DN
That is that ALL experience is "virtual". Our naive experience of "the world out there" is a product of our own function as observing organisms reacting to energy patterns that impinge on our sensory organs. Anyone who knows how our sensory nervous system works knows that our experience is a construction based on limited data. We don't have direct experience of a "chair" : we create within ourselves a hallucination of an external object called a "chair" based on the integration of a large number of sensory inputs. That's just basic cognitive science.
And in that sense, the "reconstruction" that our mind creates of a "world out there" is no more "real" in "actual reality" than it is in "virtual reality." In that sense, all experience is virtual because experience itself is a property of the observer, not of the observed.
((;
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Varela,Thompson,Rosch_91.html
Absolutely a fantastic work.
Shiva Sutra: "Nothing perceived is independent of perception, and perception differs not from the perciever. Thus, the universe is none other than the perceiver."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chaplain-mark-r-johnston/military-suicides-a-trage_b_781895.html#comments
I remember an Ashram in Koetney Lake Canada, British Columbia. Swami Roda a gorgeous personage.
I had been doing Kriya yoga, but did not know what an Ashram was. As we passed the sign my first wife said. I was hoping you would not ask. She was into read Edgar Casey and had read Autobiography of a Yoga. Which I of course never read, but have follow the methods and techniques of Yoganada for 40 years. Which also irked her.
To our surprise the a bookstore with Tibetan Buddhism Yoga, Hindu Yoga, Buddhism, on and on.
It was an opportunity that did not bare fruit, unfortunately.
But what a place it set me on my path even further. At another time they offered to let us build a married community away from their main community. Because they were. But we still did not.
But we plugged into the great energy every time we were there. My face hurt from smiling after visiting there for weeks.
OM SAT TAT
That's all I got right now. Peace.
http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/
There you go.... DN
no attachments.
I don't know if you should be looking towards the future so eagerly. Personally, I think the modern innovations of the internet & virtual reality are making us human beings less and less capable of fixing our attention on any object for a long time.
Browsing the internet is probably the closest opposite for meditation !
People who are addicted to these chaotic lifestyles - flipping the remote on TV, flipping the hyperlinks on the browser, panicking about their posts and updates on social websites - they feel more agitated and frustrated than usual.. Not surprisingly. People have already stopped writing long letters, and many people have stopped reading poetry or reading long books. We are evolving into a twitterverse populated with people having microscopic attention spans.
What happens with continued evolution of the internet & VR technologies is that this frustration would only increase. I find myself partially guilty because I am working on making these technologies happen.
In such a future, achieving the stillness or Nirvana through meditative practices will be harder and harder. But may be, we humans will find a way out. We are, after all, creative beings.
4000 years ago the knew more because the observed nature more. They had lots of time.
I sore through astro space, but not with technology. Maybe a scientific technique, but I would not call the technology. With technology we travel faster, but we go no ware they did not go 4000 years ago. We still are on earth. Faster material movement does not open up the universe that lies within each atom. Why travel when the truth is within all things