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Modern Technology Presents Our Best Chance for Mass Enlightenment
Make the most of it.
I was once in the middle of a ten-day silent meditation retreat, deep in the Canadian wilderness. Six days in with no phone; no method to return to the outside world. No one to talk to except my teacher.
All I had was hour after hour of settling the mind in meditation.
Yet there I was, looking out the window, getting excited and distracted about nothing at all. Snowfall here, pebbles there — no ‘stimulation’.
But the mind darted around, grasping & clinging to anything & everything. There was no Zuckerburg engineering my delusions here. No UX design team dedicated to keeping my attention hooked.
I was experiencing what Buddhist texts call ‘connate mental afflictions’ — tendencies of fragmentation, forgetting, sinking, & getting carried away.
Although born with them, we can purify them, and in doing so, attain true wisdom.
That’s when I realized our current paradigm around mental development needed to be demolished.