Nearly 15 years ago, "Second Life" Jundo, my avatar
as a guest teacher at a Zendo in that virtual world
(complete with 6-pack abs under those robes!
)Dear People (who may, even now, be more our own mentally created images of "people" than we usually realize),
Can enhanced reality, or fully simulated reality, be used to enhance Buddhist learning, Zen practice and (enhance, if not possibly replace) our full experience of life in general?
~~~
If so, it will not be the first time that new technologies have revolutionized Buddhist practice. The printing block in Asia made rare, sacred texts widely available to read and hold in one’s own hands. The airplane, telephone, sound and video recording, and then the Internet, allowed 20th century Buddhist teachers and ancient teachings to cross oceans without perilous sea journey, linking monasteries in Thailand, Tokyo and Tibet to practitioners in Texas, Tel Aviv and Trieste.
PCs are today’s parchment, Sutras fill screens, Chants pour through speakers, mystical visions are stored on disks. And whenever something is turned into media, it can be edited, enhanced, special effected, musically arranged with nice camera work and score, meditation joined with manipulation.
But does that mean that it is then something “false?”
Centuries ago, a great Zen fellow named Master Keizan had faith in the realness of his dreams, writing:
In my dream, Bodhidharma appeared and bathed me in pure water that sprang from the stones under his seat, in a pure, cold lake. As I was naked, he gave me a monk’s robe and I then produced the thought of awakening. … Maitreya appeared in my dream and gave me a blue lotus seat. I was reborn three times, and then I was carried through space. The deva, playing music, escorted me before Maitreya. He led me into the Inner Court of Tushita Heaven. Then I achieved the status of nonbacksliding. … Shakyamuni appeared in my dream, revealing himself in his body …. He expounded the doctrine of the Three Deliverances—deliverance from time, mind, and phenomena— during a period of fifty-eight years.
For generations of Buddhists, the borders between dream and waking states, legend and history, first-hand knowledge and heartfelt belief, fact, fancy, faith and fiction were far less solid than in our present world. Religions are typically based on ignoring such distinctions, whereby inner visions become deeply honored truths, folklore equals history, while rumors of miracles go unquestioned. Thus, anyone today arguing that simulated religious experiences are not “traditional” simply does not understand the “tradition” that apparitions, revelations, oracles, marvels, wonderous visualizations and inspired imagination have always enjoyed a central place in our Buddhist way.
In any case, modern neurobiology informs us that the world which we think of as “real” each day, and the so-called “virtual” world that shall seem so “real” tomorrow, are just the same to the brain. It remains a basic teaching of ‘Buddhism 101’ that all of our experiences of “this world” are already quite "virtual," if not fully so. When we combine modern understanding of the brain with ancient Buddhist insights, we are presented a model wherein our senses (known as Skandhas) are stimulated upon contact with incoming photons, inhaled molecules, vibrations and textures from external sources (the fields of “vision, sound, smell, taste, touch”), whereupon the resulting raw stimulations are chemo-electrically converted, transmitted, processed and interpreted within the lobes of the brain, resulting in conscious experiences (the “mind” Skandha), whereby we create a model of "reality" between the ears that we think of as “real.” Oh, the ancient Buddhists did not speak of “photons,” and “electro-chemistry,” it is true, but their description was otherwise much the same.
The result of the above processes is, at best, a “real” which usefully summarizes, simplifies and symbolizes, but does not truly reflect in all its features, the original source outside. Radical idealists propose the thought that there is nothing “outside” beyond our thoughts at all, but in any case, our perceived experiences likely bear only loose resemblance to the raw “out there” before we mentally mess and muck with it all. For example, there is fundamentally no "tall, beautiful, green tree" in your front garden: Not without your eye and synapses to create an experience of "greenness" from a particular light wavelength contacting the retina, processed by the brain into a color representation of that event. The mind then identifies and labels the image “a tree," picked out from the surrounding environment we call “a garden,” based upon certain remembered shapes, together with other shared characteristics and common functions to which we jointly append the name "trees." Ouala (as the French say) by qualia, we suddenly see a “tree that’s out there” where, from other measures, there might only be pulsing fields, vibrating atoms of certain chemical structure, and not much else at all. Next, we make our personal judgements of "beautiful" and “tall” by our heart’s emotional reactions and subjective measures, for the “tree” is in no way “beautiful” without our aesthetic weighing of its “beauty” (about which someone else might disagree), all as determined by our own heart’s standards, perhaps then for us to compose a poem on tree’s loveliness should we wish. It is not “tall” or “small” beyond comparisons we choose, size being relative, for next to a mountain, it is small, even if big to us or huge next to an ant.
I am sorry to inform you, but you have never, ever, directly met your own family members, your own children and spouse, nor seen your present house or your own left hand in any way other than as a simulation of each between your ears. What do they actually “look like, etc.” without your eyes, ears, fingers, nose and mouth, cerebrum and brain stem to see, hear and otherwise define them? Certainly not as they appear to you. Things are not as they seem. Neither are you what you seem to you, for “you” are also largely your own inner vision of what “you” are, your skin color, other appearances and level of beauty, where you "start" and "stop" compared to other things, all being modeled as your self-image of "you" between your ears (which ears you only know through that modeled experience.)
Thus, all of life is "virtual." But while Zen Buddhists know this, neither are we are left hopeless by such fact, not at all:
That is because we also know, when we drop from mind all concern about what is “right before our eyes” vs. “only within our skulls,” when we simply feel the uniqueness and special characteristics of each singular experience in our heart, that each and every thing, person and moment encountered is also as real as real can be as what it is, its own thing in that place and moment. Thus, the orange slice on my tongue, the cat in my lap, or the loved one I hold in my arms may all be ‘empty of actual reality’ from one perspective … yet each is sweet, soft and lovely to me. That is fulfilling enough, especially if I cannot determine convincingly that it is not a real orange, cat or loved one. For all intents and purposes, they are our reality of experience, and a mentally tasted orange is as orangey as it needs to be.
In practical terms, whether or not anything is really “there” with the shape and colors as I see it, or just “empty” of solid self-existence, things are still those lived experiences of things. When someone receives a telephone or video call from their mother far away, they do not typically think that they are talking only to electrons and photons which are traveling down a wire. When we watch a news report of a tragedy such as 9-11, we did not think it but pixels on a screen. We have faith and confidence that there is a reality on the other end. There is a real cat, our dear mother, falling Twin Towers, suffering people, beauty, love and tragedy there too.
In the future, if we can design a way to intercept, circumvent and replace our incoming sensory data somewhere before or between the eye, ear, tongue, nose and skin and the corresponding sections of the brain, we just will not know the difference. How could we? Nor might we care. If the AI driven data is sufficiently detailed and life-like (that’s the necessary key), life would be seen, heard, tasted, smelt and felt just as it is now, or even much more profoundly than now. Yes, new techniques might allow us to taste oranges, experience purring cats and savor the love of family each more intensely and profoundly than our present limited senses and range of emotions allow.
And thus, there will soon come a time when most of us, if only for a short time, will choose other “realities” over this one. However, it is also nothing new:
... (to be continued) ...
Second Life Buddhist Realms
Gassho, J
stlah
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