Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.
Just another day at the gym.As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.
From The New York Times, August 24, 2010
It’s remarkable how this story seems to contradict basic meditation lessons on how we avoid boredom and look for entertainment and productivity. Sometimes at Dharma/Arte we wonder how pervasive and intensive the so-called “multitasking” truly is. Are situations like the one described by The New York Times a piece of fiction? Or are they more common than not?
How do you relate with technology and multitasking? Is your personal experience as intensive as Dianne’s? Do you feel it’s truly productive?
One tires of living in the country, and moves to the city; one tires of one’s native land, and travels abroad; one tires of Europe and goes to America, and so on; finally one indulges in the sentimental hope of endless journeyings from star to star. Or the movement is different but still extensive. One tires of porcelain dishes and eats on silver; one tires of silver and turns to gold; one burns half of Rome to get an idea of the burning of Troy. But this method defeats itself, it is plain endlessness.
My own method does not consist in such a change of field, but rather resembles the true rotation method in changing the crop and the mode of cultivation, rather than the field. Here we have the principle of limitation, the only saving principle in the world. The more you limit yourself, the more fertile you become in imagination.
Søren Kierkegaard, quoted by Bill Scheffel in The drala principle
Over a thousand years ago, Padmasambhava, the great teacher who brought Buddhism from India to Tibet, predicted that this particular dark age would be distinguished by our increasing cleverness. Our discursive minds would run rampant. We would create myriad ways to keep ourselves entertained, becoming experts in how to spend free time. We would use our intellect not for betterment but for hanging out in one form of distraction or another, constantly on holiday. Padmasambhava predicted that as we became more shrewd and clever, compassion would seem increasingly futile, and we would lose the knowledge of how to bring meaning to our lives. Our windhorse would weaken. At the same time, the number of weapons, diseases, and starving people would grow. Our negative emotions would increase as our motivation to lead a meaningful life—a life of virtue—waned. Our physical appearance would deteriorate as we processed this negativity.
It is startling to see the eerie accuracy of these predictions. Over the last hundred years, our increasing cleverness has resulted in technologies that have improved our lives in many ways. At the same time, it has also increased our capacity to distract our minds. We are trapped in a belief that acquiring things will make us happy. Fear threatens to color everything we do. Fear produces cowardice; compassion seems less realistic, and anger seems more practical. When we allow discursiveness and negative emotions to run unchecked, we weaken windhorse and produce our own dark age. In this particular dark age, our distraction often manifests as speed. Speed kills the space in which we could appreciate what we’re doing. That frantic quality creates its own power and momentum, which begin to rule us. Because we can’t rest in the present moment, we can’t be satisfied; we conduct our life aggressively. We employ jealousy, competition, fixation, and irritation to chase after appointments, phone calls, and meetings—whatever it takes to get us where we think we need to go. When our day runs rough, it’s because these negative emotions are creating “me” bumps in the road. Like speed bumps, they are telling us to slow us down and use payu. But without the meekness of the tiger, we’re not able to hear them. Mastering our life begins with the ability to see how we block the way to our own contentment. In sitting practice, we’re trying to penetrate our speedy exterior by reducing our activities temporarily and stabilizing our ability to be present. Then we carry that practice energy into our day, continually reflecting on what to cultivate and what to discard in order to strengthen windhorse. We realize that wanting to be anywhere but where we are, doing anything but what we’re doing, is an unnecessary move that throws us off balance. Using payu is how we bring our balance back. With the discernment of the tiger, we learn to slow down, look at where we are, and appreciate our options.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Ruling your world
