98.10.28 Revisions of Slavery What the Web accomplishes that neither Hollywood filmmakers nor PBS documentarists can. 98.10.21 Liberty and Linux for All Microsoft's worst nightmare may not be a courtroom in Washington, D.C. 98.10.15 Everything for Sale In the world of online auctions, anything (and everything) goes on the block. 98.10.08 The Numbers Game Baseball's days as our national pastime may be numbered. 98.09.30 Neurodiversity On the neurological underpinnings of geekdom. 98.09.23 It's the Medium, Stupid Amidst all the clamor over the Starr Report, one Webzine reminds us what journalism on the Net was supposed to promise. 98.09.16 Psychotherapy on the Net Boldly going where Freud never went. 98.09.10 Celebrity Trades With the market in turmoil, the only safe bets may be at the box office. For more, see the complete Web Citations Index. |
Dharma Geeks November 5, 1998 Consider the Buddhist properties intrinsic to the Internet. In Buddhist cosmology, there's no beginning, no middle, no end. Instead, everything is contingent upon everything else. And on the Net, too, there's no top, middle, or bottom. All nodes are equidistant from each other -- and potentially interlinked. Buddha would put it thus: As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes. ![]() Evidence of this can be found even in the light-hearted submissions to a Webzine's recent "Error-Message Haiku" competition, where Buddhist and Taoist imagery was prevalent. Jason Willoughby, for example, is obviously no stranger to BuddhaLand, as he begins his entry with a traditional Buddhist catch phrase for material reality ("the ten thousand things") and goes on to evoke the Buddhist recognition of the impermanence of all things: Ian Hughes's entry (technically, these are not really haiku) equates Buddhism and computer usage as mental states:The ten thousand things, And then there's Bill Torcaso's metaphysical entry:Serious error. The Tao that is seen ![]() Meanwhile, just as the first known application for movable type was a Buddhist canon, so are today's Buddhists spreading the word (or the wordless) online. Anonymous cybermonks build Internet retreats, monasteries, and libraries without walls. Buddhist activists engage the Net. Buddhist sites, Webrings, mailing lists, Webzines, and chats proliferate. There are even such cross-posted apocrypha as Alt.Wisdom.Scripture.Is.Is.Is, Buddha's teaching translated into GeekSpeak. Like the man said: no beginning, no middle, no end ... --Gary Gach Join the conversation in the Technology & Digital Culture conference of Post & Riposte. Gary Gach is editor of What Book!? -- Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop, which continues on as What Web?!. Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. Image of Buddha from eDharma. Animated mandala by Lisa Konrad. | ||||||||||||
|