Buddhanet Aids Quest For A Computer Nirvana
The Age
Monday April 25, 1994
MOST of us have pretty well overlooked the computer as an instrument for spiritual enlightenment. This is probably because we have been ensnared by our egos.
Once you get stuck like that with your ego, you fail to appreciate the profound message that your PC delivers on those all-too-frequent occasions when it crashes, loses your files, or simply refuses to do what the manual says it should do.
The Western ego naturally assumes, quite ridiculously, that there's something personal in this, and the PC, or perhaps the programmer, or maybe even the entire civilised world has got it in for you.
Consequently one totally loses the plot, and incidentally fails to escape the never-ending cycle of birth, death and rebirth, redeath etc that is one of the most depressing tenets of Eastern religion.
It is only after a decade or so of rigid meditative practice that the ego gets so thoroughly bored that the intellect begins to perceive that the computer has had a bum rap.
At this point - a point that Lost Clusters has not yet reached - it is possible to understand that the PC is actually instructing us in the teachings of the Buddha, and that all suffering arises from the search for perfection. Or something like that.
This, no doubt, is why Buddhists appear to have taken to the PC like Christians vis a vis Easter Eggs. All over the world, Buddhists are quietly pursuing the spiritual path, while graphics of Tibetan prayer wheels revolve on their computer screens. Their PCs are playing back .WAV files of the sound of a meditation bell - TING! - or the chanting of the Dalai Llama.
In the past you could have downloaded these sorts of things, and communicated with other Buddhists, on the Body (sic) Dharma On-Line BBS, otherwise known as DharmaNet, in (where else?) Berkeley, California (phone 0011 1 510 836 4717), or its Californian offshoot, BodhiNet.
Now, however, you can get an Australian feed from a system called BuddhaNet, which a Buddhist monk and part-time computer buff, Ven Pannyavaro, has set up in Sydney.
``I felt the need for it," Pannyavaro reflected recently, ``because people are not connecting. That's what it's all about, connectivity."
We haven't yet been able to identify any texts in which the Buddha actually mentioned connectivity, but there are many others on-line, awaiting download. They range from the Mangala Sutta - a very early Theravada scripture that translates as ``a discourse on blessings", to How to Do the Meditation Rock, which is a poem by Alan Ginsberg.
Lost Clusters was delighted to discover that the modem that makes it all possible (it communicates at up to 14.4kbps), is branded, quite incidentally, Spirit II. Ven Pannyavaro hadn't appreciated the significance of that. No doubt he's now meditating on it. You might like to connect with him, between the hours of 8pm and 8am on (02) 660 3518.
Let it rock.
THEY're the sort of band who lend meaning to the routine of our everyday lives. In Westboro, Massachusetts, six systems engineers cum salesmen from Data General got together and formed a rock group called The Talking Propellerheads. They turned up for the annual sales meeting with guitars, keyboards and percussion, and delivered a string of high-tech classic rock parodies, such as `Psycho Salesrep', set to the tune of `Psycho Killer', by Talking Heads.
Or there was `Cobol Wizard', sung to the tune of `Pinball Wizard', from the Who's rock opera, `Tommy'. The words are truly compelling: ``Ever since I was a young boy, I used to write Cobol, `From mainframes down to micros I must have done them all, `But I ain't seen nothing like it in any coding hall, `That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure writes a mean Cobol.' With lyrics like that, you can understand why they were an immediate hit. Last year, in Boston, they won the Lotus World ``Battle of the Bands" fundraiser, against similar groups from Lotus, DEC and ComputerVision.
This month, at the UniForum trade show in San Fancisco, they played songs like `Unix on the Desktop', which was not totally unlike the Police's `Message in a Bottle': ``Just an old OS, isolating me - oh and I must confess better than NT ..."
``We represent the heart and soul of the computer industry," Talking Propellerheads' keyboardist and bass guitarist, Dan Fennelly explains.
Which is why they now produce rock training videos and songs to orientate new Data General employees.
Lost Clusters has been so inspired by their success that it is offering a not inconsiderable prize of one Microsoft Professional Office Suite - which includes Microsoft Word for Windows, Excel, Power Point, Microsoft Mail and Access, for the best new words set to a classic hit. Titles like `DOSperado', from The Eagles' `Desperado', or perhaps `Bridge Over Troubled Router', from the Simon and Garfunkle hit, spring immediately to our minds.
You have two weeks to come up with something outstanding. The best will be reprinted in Computer Age. Anything particularly inspiring might even warrant a live performance. Perhaps we might be able to arrange something at PC94.
© 1994 The Age
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