Re: My Experience with Buddhism (was: Re: less sex, more brains!)

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 00:57:42 MDT


Nicq,

Thank you for sharing this. It is especially appreciated by me
as I have long sought a balance or integration between the type
of deep peace and sanity of meditation and various spirtual
practices and my transhumanist leanings and dreams. Many times
I have been tempted to chuck life in the Valley and head off to
some convent or cabin deep in the woods indefinitely. Sometimes
the world outside of meditation and going within seems
fundamentally broken and unfixable by definition at its own
level. Often it looks to me like the fundamental shift
necessary for a saner and healthier world is internal. The
technology is necessary for implementation but without a shift
in consciousness it often looks as if the tech can only speed up
and intensify the insanity.

For me though I find the spiritual/meditative path dangerous
also. It is too easy to do either-or, to believe I must do only
it if I am truly to find what I seek or that I must focus on a
more naturalist/materialist worldview where if I want
transcendence it will come largely through building, and
enabling the building of various types of technology. It is
truly a razor's edge attempting to find and live in balance.
When I go into spirituality/meditation I tend to get sucked in
so deeply that I lose my edge on the technological/scientific
side. But if I stay away too long I lose my center and
eventually am not happy with myself or very pleasant to be around.

I know what the taste of eternity is like. One such taste
dominated my life for some years. And yet, I too was not
ready/willing/able to stay in that space.

One thing I have noticed and find very curious is that the
meditation head space, if maintained for more than a certain
amount of time (or depth?) per day, seems very different from
and almost antithetical to certain types of
mathemtical/engineering/programming mindset. My intuition is
that entering into that "no-thought" space quiets the brain of
some types of chatter and interplay that some forms of thinking
require or are strengthened by. This is a tenuous idea from my
own experience and watching things other engineers and
scientists have gone through when they become serious
meditators. It would be really good to test this scientifically.

I would not say that a monk or nun avoids the world necessarily.
It is rather that they see most of the work as being within
rather than without. They attempt to first "clean up their own
house".

I think there are many technological boddhisattvas around here.
  Many are dedicated to transcending the human condition and
dilemna and to enabling everyone to do the same. A boddhisattva
vows to not rest, to not except their own full liberation and
transcendence, until all beings are so liberated. The vow is to
perfect oneself so that one may most be of use in the liberation
of all beings. That is not very different from the core
motivations and dedications of some of us here. What is the
phrase in Buddhism? Ah. It is a matter of "skillful means".
Most transhumanists believe most of the best, most avaialable
and most dependable means are technological/rational.

- samantha



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