How can meditators skilfully relate to digital devices? Should we try to maintain the continuity of body awareness, or touch points? Renunciation? Or perhaps just give ourselves over to the activity with good intentions and enter flow state? @NoaidiX @bodhidave3 @TodescatoFabien
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Years ago before touch screens we used typing as a focus technique. We are seldom aware of our fingers touching the keys as we type. Moving our attention into the tips of our fingers we sense each contact with the keys. An amazing degree of detail is revealed as we pay attention
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Replying to @memeristor @markcpr and
to the contact of key and finger. Working to increase the resolution sensing texture, pressure, speed the motion of the finger angle of the hand ect. Slowing the speed of typing changes the thinking. Our hands are amazingly sensitive tools ones that we are mostly asleep to.
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Replying to @memeristor @markcpr and
Digital devices function similarly to other sense objects, but perhaps even more intimately, often becoming both bodily and psychological extensions of ourselves. We seem to frequently use them mindlessly or unconsciously, subsuming these objects into awareness itself.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
In the same way that I may not be aware of a particular body part unless I intentionally orient my attention to it, I'm likewise unaware of my fingers scrolling on a touchscreen or typing on a keyboard. As objects, they are no longer distinct from awareness.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
Awareness narrows and contracts as I focus entirely on the content on the screen, as if absorbed in it. The device has been absorbed by awareness as awareness is absorbed in it. Peripheral sense objects fade into a dimly lit background. I'm no longer even aware of bodily space.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
Our relation to digital devices is dreamlike. While dreaming, I become absorbed in the contents, the story, the objects. If I cultivate lucidity in the dream, mindfulness and clear comprehension in relation to the experience itself, then awareness is disentangled from objects.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
Dream objects no longer hold any power over awareness. They cease to dictate its narrowing and contraction. By training these lucid qualities, I can then navigate the dream with expansive brightness evenly illuminating every corner. May we skillfully navigate awakening.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
I'm also reminded of the raft analogy for relating to digital devices and the broad utility of technology. A raft's function is to ferry beings to shore, but having arrived, there's no use in carrying it any further.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
Even at sea, what use is there in loading excess baggage onto the raft? Take only what will serve our making it to shore. Digital devices are similar - too clogged with unnecessary apps, bogged down with distractions, and our minds risk capsizing via the weight of attachment.
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Technology can be used skillfully as a means to ford the stream and cross the churning ocean, but needn't be treated as an end in itself.
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Replying to @NoaidiX @memeristor and
Access to the teachings, practice info, connecting with online sanghas, journaling are all boons of technology. But they never make devices an intrinsically good use of time and attention – two resources that technology consumes liberally and yet are critical for us.
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