On Space, Time, and Primordial Awareness.
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Marshall McLuhan
Recently, I introduced a Grade 4 class to Buddhism. A few days after, a curious student approached me in the hallway, asking with genuine interest, “Who do you meditate for?” Having just studied theistic religions, he might have envisioned my meditation as a gesture towards some divine entity, or perhaps to satisfy family expectations.
I responded simply: “I meditate for myself.”
Perhaps a better retort would have been, “Who do you eat for?” Just as we eat daily for our physical nourishment, we meditate daily to nourish our connection to our inner self.
As Aristotle writes, excellence is not an act, but a habit. It is what we do regularly that shapes our character. And so, we must meditate daily to permanently remind ourselves of what we really are. In turn, our very cognition is altered by this daily reorientation. Just as a hammer influences how we engage with our surroundings, meditation has a similar impact. In this context, meditation can be viewed as a type of technology, as can all habitual behaviors. A habit is a repetition, and, I see all technology as repetition. To understand this perspective, we must start with a broad definition of technology…
