Virtual dualities

One hot dusk sometime last year, I remember having finished up a period of walking meditation. Sitting down at one end of the sand lane I picked up a stick that was lying nearby and in the sand, somewhat idly, I drew a line. Almost instantly a thought broke in the mind, bright and sharp like lightning.  Draw a line and you start a war.

As a) a committed Dhamma practitioner and b) someone who looks at the role of the web as part of my job there are two wars, two dualities that I come across all the time.  In this post I hope to outline why I consider their being even considered dualities is an error and also the remarkable similarities between the two.  The two pairs of which I speak are:

1. retreat vs ‘daily life’
2. online vs offline

Yes it’s that old classic.  The question that is always asked at the end of a residential retreat – but how do I take what I have developed here to the ‘real world”.  Ultimately the problem may be in the question itself.  The Buddha was no idiot (somewhat of an understatement) and it’s perhaps no concidence that Right View, the emphasis on having a skilful framework of understanding, is the first factor of the ennobling eightfold path.  By splitting off retreat time and ‘the real world’ we compartmentalise the practice and that will inevitably at some point get us stuck.

Please don’t get me wrong.  Spending time on retreat is perhaps one of the most valuable things a human being can do and I myself try to do as much as I can.  Formal sitting and walking, whatever the location, will always be the foundation of a fruitful practice.  The view I am trying to challenge here is simply that there is more often than not an unfair weighting towards retreat time, where practice outside of retreat is considered maintenance more than equivalently powerful grounds for development.

This is actually often a view proliferated by teachers at retreat centres where when the question I mentioned above about practice outside of retreat they often answer by emphasising establishing a routine of daily formal practice.  Again, let me make it clear that I think this is great and valuable.  But I think this should never be considered the whole picture since to do so would be to miss a massive opportunity.  For what they are implying is that you should treat that daily 45mins or so as equivalent to retreat and any practice you do “in daily life” should be that you do everything mindfully.  That’s great but for people can too often hear this unskilfully since doing everything mindfully sounds like a LOT of work since for them, mindfulness is associated with the hothouse retreat or formal sitting and walking practices.  Is there a way of de-emphasizing the aspects of practice which seem so distant from the ordinary realities of our lives while still including them in a wide embrace?

In my own practice I simply cannot afford Dhamma practice to be something special.  I cannot afford it to be something that lives on a cushion or in a retreat centre.  The only reason meditation should ever have a capital M should be if it is the first word in a sentence.  But I am ready to make it central to my life.  I believe that to truly live a life dedicated to awakening in our times, everything must be included. Yes, clearly formal periods and the retreat environment are incredibly useful but that is not because they are intrinsically different.  All conditions live on a spectrum from those very conducive to practice to those not so useful.  But that is not the end of the story is it?…for the unconditioned is not dependent on conditions.  I read a quote from U Pandita recently that sums this up nicely… form is useful but it is awareness that liberates. When the great sages tell us that everything is teaching us and that each moment is an opportunity for awakeness – they are not just saying it so that one day it might be made into a t-shirt.  They are saying it because the ability to hold all things in the heart is absolutely essential.

The retreat/daily life duality has clear origins.  The main Buddhist schools, and especially the Theravada, are deeply monastic traditions.  And on top of that the insight community in the West has been mostly influenced by Burmese schools which place massive emphasis on hothouse retreat practice.  No wonder Joe Schmoe who holds down a regular job in a regular family looks and sees this split.  Add to that the fact that most of the teachers have spent their formative years training in longterm intensive retreats and there you go!  One big fat duality.

So to duality #2 – online vs offline.  This is also known as virtual vs real or even cyberspace vs meatspace.  This too I believe is a mistake if you want to live an integrated life.  The achingly clever Clay Shirky, wonderfully describes this particular duality as “an accident of history”.  Only because people have been able to watch compuer technology in front of their eyes does the split exist at all.  Does a 9 year old make a difference between a web-based experience and a place-based experience?  It must have been pretty freaky when telephones first kicked into the culture – being able to speak to your grandmother in Idaho by holding onto and talking into a piece of metal must have been nuts.  But today do we consider a phonecall a virtual experience?  No of course not.  It’s just a tool which we use and is included in our life.  So to, internet or web-based activity is just part of life – no split.  Can you see the parallels with Dhamma practice?

Remember we are at the cusp of a big change in both domains.  As web technologies become more pervasive and become more connected through the development of the Semantic Web, the perceived boundaries between online and offline can only become more blurred.  Alternate Reality Games and the movement from explicitly web-only social networks to geo-social variants will only accelerate this.

And in Dhamma practice, the translation of a monastic hothouse tradition will more and more begin to include authentic portable styles, raising the importance of everywhere-practice.  For if the goal of this path is to realise the non-dual nature of awareness and the intrinsically interdependent nature of experience, then let’s not create any dualities in the name of practice.  It’ll just be more work – and trust me, there’s enough as it is.