Digital Dharma

Often I wonder if the digital, distracting, e-life is at all compatible with zazen and realization. Not that I am a Luddite; I have many electronic e-gadgets (computers, cell phone, ipod, camera, pager) at home and at work. But the fragmented existence they seem to draw me into (or I am drawing them into....?) feels terribly unfocused and counterproductive. On the one hand, zazen awakens us to the interconnectedness of all things. And yet, living the digital dharma so that any sentient being can reach you any time of day or night, and they often do, feels utterly antithetical to opening one's spiritual eye. Wide awake, attentive, and staring at an LCD monitor... Is there a Middle Way in the binary world?

Children and the Dharma of Change

Children embody the dharma of change, and transmit that dharma mind-to-mind to their householder parents. I experience this most acutely when some new hungry ghost appears in my house. Who switched my kid? Or more directly, who is this child now? Who? The Dharma of Change stands before you, persistent and noisy, demanding that you be mindful of it. Wake up, look, show me mu! This often appears as some new attachment, desire, or aversion. But when I watch closely, the thing that I assumed was a poison changes, and my child is again transformed. Even the meta-patterns of these transformations change. We were all once these children, and still are. Thus manifests one unique benefit of parent-householder practice, reality bonking me over the head with a stuffed animal, even though I would like to hide from that reality by doing zazen in the zendo right now. Like our children, we all walk on the Path, even if we do not know it.