Inside NJ2 in New Jersey. Attention is now shifting to making servers less energy intensive and to spurring innovation in the design and form of the data center itself (Image: New York Times/Simon Norfolk).
The Buddha, and by extension Buddhist teachings, are constantly making an unspoken distinction. That divide is between conventional and ultimate truth. Of course, the Internet exists. We're communicating over it right now. However, in a deep and profound way, many people already understand that the Net is not anything, not anywhere, certainly not everywhere, and nowhere in particular.
Things exist for a moment in the ether -- as binary impulses, as blips on a server, as magneto-resonant waves, or flashes of light. But what constitutes the "Net" really? What can it not do without; what is superfluous, what is essential?
To understand the profundity of this question is to glimpse the liberating truth of
anatta (non-self, impersonality, egolessness). It is the "emptiness" at the heart of the world-famous
Heart Sutra. "Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form." The
Dharma, or Buddhist Teaching overall, is distinct in a few regards:
It teaches the Noble Eightfold Path.
It contains enlightened individuals.
And it expounds the doctrine of egolessness.
This third distinction is the exclusive teaching of buddhas ("fully awakened ones"). Such a teaching is to be found in no other philosophical system or religious tradition. But if there is no Internet, what is there? There must be something happening on the screen.
Indeed, there is something happening. However, there is no identity to the process. Simply flux, there is an interplay of changing factors. Nearly everyone can understand that on a particle- level, in physics, of course it's all change and motion, phases and submoments. That's all the Net is. With only a little more effort, the contents of the Net may be understood to be constantly moving, altering, being revised, retrieved, or lost. Even a complete photograph of a single moment of the life of the Net, if such a thing were possible (say by a massive CIA spying software), would not be that moment.
Where is the essence, the self, the soul, the identity of a person?
The following New York Times Magazine slideshow illustrates components that momentarily make up a fraction of what is experienced as the "Internet." In each part -- now no longer seen as a compact singularity but a composite and conditional thing -- no whole can be found. In the whole, only changing parts.
It is from not understanding this truth with intuitive
insight, born of a lucid and undefiled consciousness -- that beings wander along in
Samsara. They are, in fact, never "being" but in a constant state of
becoming, a small but important distinction between conventional and ultimate reality. They suffer here and feel dissatisfied there. They lose everything, hurtling towards destruction, leaving everything wished-for thing behind.
Buddhism is extremely optimistic. Why? The Buddha, having outlined the somber dilemma beings find themselves in, does so only to point out a solution: virtue, concentration (mental purification cleansed of distraction), leading onward to liberating-wisdom. It is possible. Had the Buddha not determined that it is possible for the average person to realize it, he would not have made the Dharma known.
The "Dharma," then, should be understood not as a "set of beliefs to adopt" but rather as "practices that enable direct realization."
The Buddha explained to his final personal disciple, Ven. Subhadda, that in teachings where the Noble Eightfold Path was not found, there also enlightened individuals were not found (DN 16). He went on to point out that here in this dispensation (in the Buddha-Dharma) there was the teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path. And here, too, were to be found enlightened individuals of the first, second, third, and fourth degrees:
Once-Returners
Non-Returners
Whereas the first three have glimpsed or "touched" nirvana and are assured of full enlightenment within seven lives, the fourth is already fully-realized and has brought all future suffering to a complete end. (And this is more than can be said of the incessantly resurrected and reborn "Internet," constantly changing and delighting, frustrating and disappointing, and ever wandering on like the spin of a hard drive that's set just
off center).
Indeed, there is something happening. However, there is no identity to the process. Simply flux, there is an interplay of changing factors. Nearly everyone can understand that on a particle- level, in physics, of course it's all change and motion, phases and submoments. That's all the Net is. With only a little more effort, the contents of the Net may be understood to be constantly moving, altering, being revised, retrieved, or lost. Even a complete photograph of a single moment of the life of the Net, if such a thing were possible (say by a massive CIA spying software), would not be that moment.
Buddhism is extremely optimistic. Why? The Buddha, having outlined the somber dilemma beings find themselves in, does so only to point out a solution: virtue, concentration (mental purification cleansed of distraction), leading onward to liberating-wisdom. It is possible. Had the Buddha not determined that it is possible for the average person to realize it, he would not have made the Dharma known.
