More on a Fast Paced Life

 I feel that I would like to go back to some of Master Sheng Yen's teachings, particularly his Tea Words Volume II, as some of what he is writing about touches upon the fast paced world that I am living in today.
   When a person refers to "fast paced", what do they mean exactly? Today, I was sharing with some of the Grade 4 students about Frankenstein, a story which at one point was dubbed as "The Modern Prometheus, and how it's sometimes perceived as a warning against trying to control nature too much. I also reflect that from the perspective of the scientist, Frankenstein, this story might be an allegory for the ways in which one's creations end up controlling them, in many respects. How this relates to today's fast paced world might be expressed in the form of a paradox: the easier we make things to be, the more those things can influence a person. A good example might be the "addiction" to connecting on Facebook. When a person becomes attached to the idea of being recognized or having one's pictures "liked", a kind of short circuiting situation arises. One Dharma teacher, Guo Gu has remarked, "our need to be seen, heard and loved is greatly exploited by technologies that purport to meet those needs" (p.26). Why is it that apps and other online tools are so powerfully addictive? I think in some ways it's because they short circuit the long process that comes with connection by offering an easy substitute that feels like "being liked" or being recognized. In a scary sort of way, these technologies have a way of reminding us that the feeling of being recognized is really an internal one, not even something that people "share" necessarily, but something that I might feel when certain conditions are there in the environment. Whether it's coming from an app, a road sign or wherever, the function of these signs is to provide us with a somewhat illusory sense of uniqueness or "protection" from hostile elements in the world that might not necessarily have our interests in mind. In a way, recognition is a form of temporary immunity from a pervasive feeling of indifference or perhaps even a sense of fragility and contingency in one's perceptions.
  To go back to Tea Words Volume II, Master Sheng Yen remarks:

 There was a time when people were not so busy, and they had more time to know themselves and understand what their lives were about. Now, we are sometimes even unfamiliar to ourselves. We may be confused by such questions, “What are you doing with your life?” or “Where do you think you are going and what will you be doing in the future?”" (p.18)

Here, Master Sheng Yen is referencing the pace of life as something that prevents people from sitting down and reflecting on life's purpose. But what is Master Sheng Yen's recommendation to deal with this kind of fast paced life, from the perspective of Buddhadharma? Master Sheng Yen reflects:

Buddhadharma teaches that the world we live in is only a very small portion of the universe, like a grain of sand in the Ganges River, or a grain of sand in countless Ganges Rivers. Even if we feel that the world is as small as an egg, we can take heart in the vastness of the universe (p.19)

This is a very interesting perspective shift, and one worth noting as well. I believe that it refers to how the world could be seen as so vast that even the "busyness" we engage in is nothing compared to its miraculous vastness. It is not so necessary to dwell on these things we do daily when the universe is so much larger. Another way of looking at this is to say, what will one's world be twenty or thirty years from now? Are all the worries related to accumulating things and getting things done today, going to make a difference at that time? Most likely, the majority of things are only going to be temporarily known or recognized, only to be replaced by newer experiences.

Master Sheng Yen continues, "We may not be able to roam through it in its entirety at this point, but we need not feel any claustrophobia or oppression because the Earth feels small to us now. With a method of practice, we can discover a great world inside of us that is limitless, like the world around us. There is no measure of the space within and without." (ibid). Again, the sense of oppression that Master Sheng Yen is referring to is none other than the view that my "self" is limited to this body and the things it is able to do in a tiny stretch of time. In aligning myself to a greater vastness of the mind, all these thoughts start to diminish in their overall magnitude

Sheng Yen (2013). Tea Words Volume II. Elmhurst, NY: Dharma Drum Publications