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Can technology lead to enlightenment?

betaboybetaboy Veteran
edited July 2011 in General Banter
Namaste,

In the future, can technology/drugs create the same effect as meditation - freedom from the chattering mind, from desire, and therefore from dukka as well? Technology has done so much already, so why can't enlightenment be within its grasp?

BB

Comments

  • taiyakitaiyaki Veteran
    because you already are.
    cut thinking, then you see clearly.
    if one can take a drug to attain enlightenment then one must depend on drugs.
    what is an enlightenment that comes and goes? i had it and i lost it.

    the funny thing is that you are already free. you just believe otherwise. emphasis on the word believe.

    all technologies have to be abandoned. drugs and even meditation. the very ground you stand is enlightenment.
  • SheppardSheppard
    Perhaps. Not in our lifetime, though. After all this time, we are still in a stage where the more we learn about the brain the more we realize things we do not know. For every door we open, we find 4 new ones that are locked.

    There are so many interpretations of consciousness now making the round in physics, trying to solve the "problem" of the "Observer" in quantum physics. Some are are fun concepts to play around with.

    One I'm fond of is by Stephen Penrose, that the brain might be a construct like the lung, but instead of air it processes consciousness, and that consciousness is all pervasive, everywhere, in everything, interconnected (entangled) with everything, as a fundamental part of the universe. Extrapolating out of that, that we humans are the means by which the universe observes itself, how it itself adapts, and it itself learns and grows. That we are all expressions of one and the same all encompassing mind.

    Fascinating times, as always :)
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    No because liberation is unconditioned. Technology can be used to create peace, but not enlightenment.

    Think if you were a buddha because of your robotic implant and then that implant broke. Or for that matter suppose your adrenal glands malfunctioned and you started having stress hormones in your body. Would that make you not a buddha?

    You have to think about what enlightenment means. If someone crushes your sandcastle do you pout and cease to be a buddha?
  • VincenziVincenzi Veteran
    no, its use may 'tough...

    imagine a "tecno-buddha"... probably a hacker?
  • justsheajustshea Explorer
    binaural beats on my i-pod silences my chattering mind...doesn't touch the clinging though... :p
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