{"id":10820,"date":"2024-02-19T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/cyber-om-cyber-mani-cyber-padme-cyber-hum-where-cyber-buddhists-look-for-an-exit-from-samsara\/"},"modified":"2024-02-19T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T16:00:00","slug":"cyber-om-cyber-mani-cyber-padme-cyber-hum-where-cyber-buddhists-look-for-an-exit-from-samsara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/cyber-om-cyber-mani-cyber-padme-cyber-hum-where-cyber-buddhists-look-for-an-exit-from-samsara\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyber om, cyber mani, cyber padme, cyber hum: where cyber-Buddhists look for an exit from samsara"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you build a monastery in Minecraft and retreat into it with a VR headset? Who lives in neural networks: wrathful entities or the Buddha? And when, at long last, will the quantum Maitreya appear? Pondering these questions, ForkLog sought answers from Mikhail Matrekhin \u2014 a researcher of Eastern spiritual practices and author of the Telegram channel \u00ab<\/strong>\u0423 \u041f\u0443\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0422\u0440\u043e\u043d\u0430<\/strong><\/a>\u00bb.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cyber
Priyesh Trivedi, \u201cBowser\u201d. Data: Method Art Space<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ForkLog: We all know cyberpunk, dabble in the cybereconomy of cyberspace and spent more than a few hours fighting the Cyberdemon in Doom. But what is \u201ccyber-Buddhism\u201d? Is there a single definition, or is it just another word with a flashy prefix?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mikhail:<\/strong> Slap \u201ccyber\u201d on anything and it looks modish. But even plain \u201cBuddhism\u201d is an umbrella term for numerous religions, philosophies and psychopractices. \u201cCyber-Buddhism\u201d is another umbrella under which Buddhist concepts intersect with contemporary science, futurist worldviews and the aesthetics of cyberpunk \u2014 itself indebted in part to Eastern philosophies.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget the steady rise in popularity of psychotechniques borrowed from Buddhism and Hinduism. Inevitably, people try to graft them onto a modern Western life: say, slotting meditation into employees\u2019 schedules so they feel better and become more efficient on the building sites of capitalism. The religious aspect is tossed overboard. (Though I\u2019m sure that if belief in Buddhist deities boosted productivity, that would be kept too.) In a corporate setting, cyber-Buddhism can mean any hollowed-out Eastern practices repurposed for efficiency.<\/p>\n

Many researchers in neuroscience move the same way, finding efficacy in Buddhist techniques. Why are they called Buddhist at all? The Buddha didn\u2019t patent them two and a half millennia ago, but the first systematic forms \u2014 vipassana, shamatha, and the like \u2014 come via his teaching. They let you focus on your own experience and extract something from it. And to everyone\u2019s surprise, neuroscientists found they do work in some way. Now they have champions among atheists and even nihilists like Thomas Metzinger<\/a>, who has meditated for 30 years and argues in his works (popularised as the books \u201cBeing No One\u201d and \u201cThe Ego Tunnel\u201d) that the self does not exist. That too is cyber-Buddhism.<\/p>\n

There is also plenty of pure cultural pulp. The Matrix, Grant Morrison<\/a>\u2019s comics \u2014 proto-cyber-Buddhism that inspires people to erect their \u201coriginal\u201d ideas atop pop-cultural foundations. As art projects, fine. The Matrix is an endless source. I\u2019m not sure what exactly inspired the Wachowski sisters, then still brothers. Some say French philosophers.<\/p>\n

ForkLog: In the first film Neo apparently <\/strong>reads<\/strong><\/a> Jean Baudrillard\u2019s Simulacra and Simulation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mikhail:<\/strong> Exactly. But illusionist theories of reality surely played a part too. The idea, presented simply \u2014 a virtual world built for people grown as batteries \u2014 hits an unprepared mind hard. It becomes part of the cultural narrative and spawns new phenomena. People start asking what underpins The Matrix\u2019s universe. Conspiracy theories sprout that the film is true, and those who have gobbled some substance experience a \u201crevelation\u201d: \u201cOh gods, we\u2019re in the Matrix!\u201d From there they inevitably stumble onto digests of Buddhist ideas and start pushing their own cosmology online.<\/p>\n

All this blends into a chorus labelled \u201ccyber-Buddhism\u201d. In Russia there\u2019s even a cyber-Buddhist band, t_error404. They were clearly smitten and swerved from cybergoth to cyber-Buddhism.<\/p>\n