By Diana Winston

My first dream of the internet, August, 1999:

The black box inside my head morphed without warning, lighting up into a computer screen. At first the images flew by, bright displays of graphics, reds and yellows and fluorescent blues. I hit a button and with a click, took control of the innerscape. I was the webmaster, the owner-operator, the moderator. I programmed the world as I liked, flashing on this, then on that, unfolding pages into themselves, links coming apart in silence and show. I was master of my techno-destiny. I woke up sweating.

The Buddha made no prescription against the internet because there was no internet 2,500 years ago. A literalist reader might say, and therefore, the internet is to be embraced. But if the Buddha were around now, don‘t you think he would say something about this technology? Doesn‘t the internet oppose his teachings of moderation, restraint, non-confusion, and non-greed? What about the Buddhist precept against clouding or confusing the mind with intoxicants? Is the internet an intoxicant, sending us deeper into the delusion of separateness, wanting, control, and self?

“Having purified the great delusion, the radiant light of the unobscured sun continually rises“ –Dudjom Rinpoche

Filling Our Heads
Does it matter what we fill our heads with? From a Buddhist perspective the answer is unquestionably yes. Every mind-moment can be wholesome or unwholesome, a lot is neutral. The great Buddhist masters say our mind is inherently pure like a vast blue sky. But the sky is often filled with clouds – thoughts, emotions, worries, opinions, facts and information, which pass by and temporarily obscure our true sky-like nature. If Buddhists are committed to developing a radiant, clear mind, is the internet obscuring it with endless, useless or neutral information?

I now am privy to vast new fields of information, stories, poems, bad jokes, sites, commentary, porn, pet projects, hoaxes, dating opportunities, music, chat rooms, sweepstakes offers, commercials, products, advertisements… to add to my already full mind. Do I need more stuff in there?

I remember when I instantly recalled, without effort, an acquaintance‘s email address. Oh yes, she‘s misfit@hopeless.com. I thrilled to now more information packed away tightly in my brain for appropriate access. But what happens to the other stuff? When do we jettison ethics, traffic laws, conversation skills, or how to love in favor of new URLs?

I have hundreds of books I have never even read. I have interesting friends whose brains I haven‘t yet picked. And libraries (remember them?)… Why do I need more? Worse, massive amounts of information juxtaposed against even more information, flattens out all of it. There is no sorting mechanism. How can I distinguish the importance of a treatise on sexual liberation from a porn site?

They (whoever they may be) say it doesn‘t matter what goes into our minds. In my strident feminist days, we debated over pornography and whether it led to rape. Porn is the theory, rape is the practice, one humorless, earnest cry went. The pro-porn feminists said,”No, no – reappropriate the means of production!“ (Good luck!) The link is not so simple. Watching violence on television does not necessarily reproduce violent acts in the real world, they say. After all, we have natural filters, we humans are infinitely adaptable, and smart to boot. We‘ll just forget the unimportant or horrific stuff and retain what really matters, like which cable station is which number on the channel changer.

Now I cannot help but think internet thoughts. I reference links and URLs and sites. Once I commented to a friend that our conversation had become a website. We head in one direction and a tangent sent us off in another, which led to another and so on. We were clicking conversational links.”Would you hit ﾔBack‘?“ he asked me,”I‘m lost.“

But my own experience– spending hours and hours watching my mind– has shown me without a shadow of a doubt that we are affected by what enters our minds.

Here are the results of a couple of years of meditating under silent, isolated retreat conditions, where I was not supposed to talk to anyone, read, write, watch TV, open a newspaper, or go online: In all that residual mental space, everything I ever ingested floated to the surface. Yes, it was still in there, although hard to say where.

On this long retreat, I remembered the tiniest supposedly insignificant experiences like the time I fought with my friend Karen when we were four because she wanted to color the entire coloring book red and I wished for a little variety; the time at 18 I threw up because I drank too much Jim Beams; the wallpaper in my bedroom at nine and the way the light shined in between the tree leaves and created moving shadow puppets on the wall; the time Jocelyn and I called up OB Tampons and asked if they were related to Obi Wan Kenobe; and the time I first kissed that boy who shall remain nameless… But no, this mind has not forgotten it. It is all in there, especially strong and violent stuff.

An avid fan of Salman Rushdie, once I snatched up his former wife Marianne Wiggin‘s first novel with anticipation. Great minds must think alike, I theorized. The colorful cover drew me in. Before long I found myself enmeshed in and unable to put down an oeuvre on cannibalism. The plot chronicled a group of young girls and their school mistress who, shipwrecked on a desert island, resort to cannibalism. The little girls gleefully roasting the forearms of the ship captain and devouring these ghastly skewers was one of the most horrific descriptions in literature I have encountered. I quickly put it out of my mind. Or so I thought.

A few years later in the midst of three months of intensive silent meditation retreat (14 hours a day of sitting and walking meditation) graphic replays from Wiggin‘s book tortured me. For a week I walked the halls of the meditation center like a wraith, tormented by images I couldn‘t exorcise. Ultimately they played themselves out. I followed the experience with a heartfelt vow: from this day on I will never go to another horror movie.

As a meditator, my mind has surfaced, at all hours of the day, without relief, unending rounds of seventies commercials, television jingles, Broadway musicals,”The Brady Bunch“ and other TV theme songs, bad rock and roll, previous discussions, good rock and roll, songs from summer camp…. the ants go marching one by one hurrah, hurrah… They do not go away. Worse, when I try to sit still to find peace and calm (ha,ha), they come back to haunt me.

Meditating is like going to the dump. We may not like what we see in there when we go to the dump, which is why meditators are encouraged to hold down a basic level of ethics. If we are morally in good shape, we are not spending hours on the cushion engaged in remorse, regret, and guilt. I should never have slept with him, he was married for God‘s sake, or I should never have shoplifted the Bonne Bell lip gloss from CVS in 1978; the ants go marching three by three hurrah, hurrah…

What do we want in our minds? More junk? If so, log on. Do we really want to keep jamming in this useless, vaguely entertaining, often not even true, never-ending, my God when will it stop, information. Yes, yes, I know, we can learn very important things. Alternative press has flourished on the internet. I have access to new studies, papers, left-wing critiques of the war on Afghanistan. They used it in Chiapas. They organized with it in Seattle. I am not denying any of this. If you think I‘m only complaining you‘re missing my point. The question is will it all make us better people? Will it make us more ethical, kinder, or compassionate? Will it help us understand our true, radiant nature? Will it make our minds and lives more spacious and relaxed?

Or will it fulfil every want and desire at the click of the mouse?

On the day I realized that I could have anything I wanted over the internet, I bought ten new books, a subscription to a simple living magazine, a pair of black leather boots, and sent myself the daily quotes of the Buddha.
The Buddha told about the law of karma. He said actions have results. If I plant a plum pit I will get a plum tree. If I practice greed, I will be more greedy. If I practice generosity, I will be more generous. Buddhism 101.

Mesmerized by the sheer variety of appearances, beings wander endlessly adrift in samsara‘s vicious cycle. – Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

Dependent (or not) Origination
The Buddhist teachings explain on a microscopic level how our minds work: We encounter a desirable object, and at the moment of visual, aural, or touch contact with that object, a pleasant feeling arises in our minds or bodies. This pleasant feeling comes from a variety of places – past habit, training, media, standards of cool, socioeconomics, karma (Buddhists say), and so on. We have associated this pleasant feeling with the object, so we think we need to get the object in order to sustain the feeling. The feeling itself is wonderful. Then we cling to it tightly, and then, dare I say, buy it.

Another way of saying this is we feel something nice (pleasant), we reach out for it (wanting) then grasp our hand tightly around it and don‘t let go (clinging). Buddhists call this chain, dependent origination. This chain of events is happening continuously at such a rapid rate that we are seldom aware of this process. All we know is that we have to have the new DVD player.

Dependent origination teaches that we are robots on automatic pilot grabbing out for things to end the aching and sustain the pleasantness. How hopeless. We are robots. But this is where mindful awareness comes in. Through the power of mindfulness, it is possible to short circuit the cycle and prevent the automatic response. If at any moment we apply mindful awareness to the cycle of contact with an object, pleasant feelings, wanting, and clinging, we need not move on to the next link of the chain.

We can notice Wow, I want this shirt. We can feel the feeling of desire in our minds and bodies and notice the accompanying thoughts. Then we can apply the Buddhist wisdom that a desire doesn‘t have to be fulfilled to make it go away. We can recognize and let go of the desire. We can break the chain. The revolutionary piece brought to us by the Buddha is that actually it is painful to want. Letting go of wanting stops the pain. Getting what we want only temporarily soothes the wound.

All we have to do is catch a single point on the cycle. Oh look, there‘s pleasant contact! Oh wanting! If we can bring mindfulness here we can break the chain. It is up to us; we are not slaves to an automatic process.

Here‘s the cyber-catch
What happens when reflection time is inhibited? Part of breaking the chain depends upon our ability to have some space for reflection. What happens when we throw the speed of internet into this equation? What does it mean when all desire can be satisfied? When getting an object is taken for granted in the wanting of it?

We are losing the space between the desire and the satisfaction of desire. Back in the Stone Age (before 1994, when the internet was just a toy for computer geeks and the military), if you wanted something, there would be a process. You could think about it, visualize the image, strategize to get it. Yes, there were mail-order catalogues, and I suppose even the shopping channel existed back then, but there was some struggle in the process to get. Not that this would deter you, but in those halcyon days, purchasing an object required getting off your ass.

You asked a friend to join you, drove (alas) to the shop, found parking, discovered perhaps the desired object wasn‘t there, or they didn‘t have your style, browsed other things, talked with a salesperson, stopped for a late lunch, and finally, upon noticing your desired object, perhaps reneged– well this may not be exactly what I want after all.

Now, you peruse the internet, you log onto a neat-o site. You want something–anything really. There it is. Great. You type in your credit card (or your computer– in true Orwellian fashion– remembers my number), hit a button, and it is yours.
There is the pleasant feeling, the wanting feeling, and we act. There is no time for mindfulness to prevent the inevitable purchase. We have no time to get free.

What happens when space and distance is removed? What happens when every possible desire can be fulfilled at the blink of a mouse? In the new millennium, thanks to the internet, the process is so sped up that we have no physical moment to break the cycle. The profusion of objects is endless, we attain them at lightning speed. This is not good news, contrary to all the press.

Bertrand Russell states that one of the aspects of society that keeps us whole and ethical is its ability to delay gratification. This is a learned response. I imagine it is what keeps us sane. We covet our next door neighbor‘s new SUV, the impulse arises that it would be so easy to go over there, hot wire it, and suddenly it‘s ours. Some kind of internal wiring reminds us that we don‘t need to do that, that we a) shouldn‘t steal and b) don‘t really need HIS car to be happy, we can work to make money for our own, or it was a silly idea in the first place. We let it be. Thus society stays saner and healthier. Delayed gratification is something we teach a child early on… I know you want the cookie, Sally, but you can‘t have it till after dinner. Simple. Eat healthy food and then you can have what you want.

What happens now in internet culture where we can have dessert anytime we want, at the flick of a mouse? The delayed gratification that holds it in place is unraveling. Is the internet and the commercial end of it contributing to the breakdown of the social fabric? What happens when millions of tiny minds are taught that they can have anything they want whenever they want it? What kind of seeds are they sowing (plums beget plums…)? What happens when they grow up? Where are those sweet Buddhist values of non-greed, compassion, and generosity?

And yet?
My friend Jamie says thanks to the internet he is more generous. It is true. Anytime he wants he can log onto a site, purchase a new best selling book, and have Amazon.com ship it overseas to his friend Glenn in Prague. Amazon deals with customs, tariffs, all the hassles. So Jamie is more likely to act generously.

From a Buddhist perspective, this is a good thing, since developing generosity is considered a spiritual quality, a very important and foundational one at that. See, there I go undermining myself. I said the internet fosters greed, yet here is a very good example ALMOST proving otherwise.

And yet, yet?
What are the larger implications of purchasing from a megacorporation that has driven independent booksellers out of business? Does this negate Jamie‘s act of generosity? Is purchasing from Amazon creating more suffering – the loss of livelihood, the corporatization and homogenization of the world? Does this outweigh the positive karma that comes from generosity? Can you really compare suffering? What if Jamie is unaware of the effects of his purchase? These are all ethical questions that Buddhists like myself are taking up amidst the technological revolution. I don‘t have any answers yet, but I have lots of questions.

* * *

A few years ago, the New York Times reported the release of three Amish boys, who had been arrested for a drunken vandalism spree and placed in the county jail. The article said that the sheriffs decided jail was not a good place for these two boys because they were spending too much time watching television and playing computer video games.

That in the twenty first century there could be a westerner not already fully indoctrinated by technology seemed unbelievable. This naivete was obviously recognized by these sheriffs, who out of something, I will first name compassion, decided to spare these boys from their descent into the everyday world. These sheriffs had the divine power to keep these boys from turning into sinners, into information junkies… well really, into the rest of us.

And in the great act of charity, these boys were sent home to their Amish villages where telephones, electricity, and computers are unheard of and life is like it always has been for 400 years.

I‘ll bet the boys were furious.

What did they want? I‘ll ask, because I am sure they were having the time of their lives.

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Diana Winston is a writer, activist, and teacher, and the founder of the Buddhist Alliance for Social Engagement (BASE) Program. Her writings have appeared in Tricycle, Turning Wheel, Inquiring Mind, and other publications. She is Associate Director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, California and is working on a book, due out in 2003, Wide Awake: Buddhism for a New Generation.

ReVision – A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation Spring 2002 Volume 24, Number 4
Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.
Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1802. http://www.heldref.org/html/rev.html
Copyright ｩ 2002