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With earnest effort hold the senses in check.
Controlling the breath, regulate the vital activities. As a charioteer
holds back his restive horses, so does a persevering aspirant restrain
his mind.
Krishna Yajur Veda, Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 2.9. UPP, P. 192

Monday
LESSON 211
The Computer Generation
You have all met the new, cool, calculating computer
generation, about which I have an observation. And it is truly the
human right of every soul on the planet, at this time in the Kali Yuga,
to make observations and comment on them. Furthermore, it is the duty
of concerned men and women to speak out on what they observe, to thus
reaffirm the dharma. My observation is that learning from computers is taking youth in the opposite direction from sampradaya, the imparting of wisdom person to person, heart to heart, mind to mind, teacher to student, satguru to shishya.
The teacher passes on not only information, but the mature refinements
of attitude and behavior through personal guidance and healthy
association.
Young people used to love and respect, honor and
extol their teachers. They would work to qualify to get into
prestigious schools and vie with one another for the privilege of
sitting before an Einstein or a Bose. Now they can buy advanced
teachings on a CD or order them up freely on the World Wide Web. Maybe
soon they will be able to download their diploma, to sign, frame and
hang on the wall!
In 1993, Prodigy, one of the largest
producers of computer educational material, said that 300,000 of its
two million online users are children. There they find encyclopedias,
games, chat forums and interactive books and magazines, such as NOVA, National Geographic
and more. There are several "homework helpers" that can access volumes
of data at the click of a mouse. The Software Publisher's Association,
a research group based in Washington, D.C., says the market for CD-ROM
educational software is skyrocketing. For example, entranced before the
computer, a child can explore every inch of an eighteenth century
warship, displayed in cross-sectional views, meet the crew, study
navigational tools and search for the young stowaway hidden somewhere
in the hull.
"What's wrong with that?" you might ask. In
itself, nothing. I am not against computers. We have dozens of them in
our monasteries. My concern is that the student who learns
predominantly from the computer receives too little person-to-person
nourishment, and is not even obliged to express human feelings anymore.
The feelings of love and appreciation, respect and adulation, of
thankfulness, acceptance and responsibility can all be suppressed or,
worse, never developed during the formative years of life.
Since
the computer craze began, when Apple produced the Macintosh and
Microsoft began marketing software, I have observed the impact on
youths of learning mainly from computers rather than people. The
outcome is a cool, calculating, almost robotic individual with a blank
look in his eyes. He can just turn the computer off anytime and be the
smartest one in the family. Does anyone really yet know what registers
in the objective and subjective mind of a youth being educated by the
computer, who spends nearly all of his waking hours glued to a computer
screen? Does anyone care?
Tuesday
LESSON 212
Robotic Learning
A human teacher would know the student's state of
mind and special gifts or needs, and society would guide him. While
teaching English, French, German or any of the fourteen major languages
of India, all the teacher's good qualities go into the student,
enriching and blessing him, along with the experience the teacher has
gained through the years. When the magic happens, a certain amount
"rubs off," and a life is transformed. This is real education. This is
training through sampradaya -- people to people, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. This is how it used to be and how it still can be.
In
a student-teacher relationship, the novice must deal directly with a
human, talk to a human, be with a human, and love or hate this human,
as the case may be, depending on the student's evolution or spiritual
development, not to mention that teacher's own personal qualities. But
school classes, from the lower grades to the highest are tending to
dispense with human contact by replacing humans with machines. These
are not just machines to write letters on, design buildings with or do
the many other things this remarkable technology can do, but machines
of learning that do not have a heart, machines which the child has
total control over, machines which parents and teachers sometimes use
to subdue or occupy a child for hours, and thus simplify their own
duties.
That's the big problem -- the complete isolation. He
can turn it on. He can turn it off. He can disagree with what is being
taught or totally misunderstand, and no one ever knows. These children
are deprived of life's most precious gift, the passing down of
knowledge, with respect and love for the knowledge imparted, at certain
psychological moments in a child's life. These children are deprived of
the fulfillment gained by learning from a person with a heart, a person
yearning to fulfill dharma and pass on his knowledge and, most
importantly, his knowing earned through experience and his passion
about the subject he ardently wishes to convey to youthful minds. This
can never, ever be programmed into any software on the Internet or
burned into a CD-ROM.
The Information Highway is an
uncensored, unsupervised world. In all previous methods of conveying
knowledge to children, there was a responsible adult involved, be it a
teacher or librarian or parent. But the Internet's vast spectrum of
information is equally available to every individual with access -- at
last count hundreds of millions. Sadly, we are developing a generation
-- or two generations, for one is already established -- of heartless
children, deprived of love: an unhugging, cool, calculating, computer
generation exposed to worldly sights that even most adults did not
encounter ten years ago. Where will it all lead? That is a question
Hindu families around the world are beginning to ask.
Wednesday
LESSON 213
Games That Kill
Nintendo -- it's a toy, but it's not a game. Toys
have real influence in shaping young minds and emotions, more than
parents realize. When kids play in an open field or in the woods, they
are experiencing nature and learning how to relate to natural things.
So many messages are going into their minds, so much information is
being absorbed. It's very different when our kids spend their hours
alone with popular video games like Nintendo, which work within the
subterranean stratum of the subjective mind, aligning vasanas in the chitta to kill, kill, kill.
Nintendo
-- it awakens the desires to succeed through intimidation and force.
Nintendo -- it teaches kids that the world is full of enemies to be
slayed, opponents to be conquered, attackers to be attacked first.
Nintendo -- it complements a strategy to develop a nation of terrorists
within every home that harbors this asuric mechanism. For those who
don't know, Nintendo is a Japanese-produced video computer system that
plays a variety of arcade-type games. And there are many other such
games that you can buy on CD-ROM or play interactively on the Internet.
To develop sattvic youth for a brave new world, we have
recently asked moms and dads and the youths themselves to disarm
themselves of toy guns and knives, and of Nintendo and all other kinds
of computerized killer games. Among the families in our fellowship,
this has been accomplished. Lots of seven-year-old children have burned
their guns and dismantled or sold their Nintendos in the name of ahimsa, the dharmic
principle of not harming others -- even in one's mind, even in one's
dreams -- physically, mentally or emotionally. The big games, Nintendo
and Genesis, and all the similar computer and video games and toy guns
and knives and cannons have been taken out of my followers' homes and
thrown into the garbage cans.
Instead of learning the
"us-versus-them" world, our children are learning about the
"us-helping-them" world of civilized society. It took a little courage,
because these games are amazingly popular, and children become attached
to them, even addicted. But our homes have all been disarmed, with no
more violence masquerading as fun. What about your home? These video
and computer games, as well as toy guns and knives and other weapons of
death and destruction, educate children that this is the way to live on
planet Earth. They learn that to solve a problem, it's "bang, bang,
bang, you're dead." You don't have to reason with anyone, negotiate,
compromise or use any form of intelligence. "Bang, bang, bang, you're
dead" solves the problem. Is that what we want them to learn? Playing
like this hour after hour teaches children that life is cheap,
meaningless. Those with the bang-bang-you're-dead subconscious mind,
how will they ever learn that life is precious? How will we ever teach
them that living with asuras is different from living with Siva?
Thursday
LESSON 214
War Toys And Real War
The subconscious mind consists of all of our memory
patterns. Especially potent are those that are bound to emotions. It is
a rather dumb state, for it records and holds only that which is put
into it. These memory banks are like a recordable CD or DVD, which for
a baby freshly born has nothing upon it at first. But with that first
cry, the subconscious is activated and begins to record all the
impressions. Those that get there first shape the experiences of later
life.
Of course, there are positive and creative computer
games, but not that many. More are needed. Perhaps there are among our
readers programmers who could develop a series of games based on dharma.
That would be nice. In the meantime, we may think a Nintendo game or a
toy gun is harmless because it does not actually kill anybody. But what
it does do is give permission to kill and makes psychological
preparations to kill, and that is very dangerous. Survival and conquest
by ruthless elimination of competitors become the inner goals. As their
vocabulary develops, little ones are speaking of invasion, commandos,
assault, combat, war, battle, destruction, using all the words of
hurtfulness and violence. No wonder they argue and fight with sisters
and brothers instead of getting along. That's what they learned from
their heroes.
A Sri Lankan citizen told me a story that shows
how war toys and real-life conflicts are not unrelated. For generations
there were no war toys in the Hindu communities of northern and eastern
Sri Lanka. But when the ethnic clashes began in 1983, guns became
popular among kids. They played soldier in the streets, like the big
boys, and when they grew up, moved on to real guns. Toy imports from
Europe supplied the need, and soon many homes had a toy gun collection.
When the Sinhalese army moved through Tamil homes looking for
hidden weapons, they were sometimes fooled by the realistic plastic
guns. This caused them so much trouble, they took to beating the men of
households that had toy guns. Soon the toys became less popular. The
world of toys and the world of real war are not always separated.
Technology today, especially computer technology, the Internet, can enhance everything you want to do. It is not unlike the akashic
memory banks of the inner world. Tuning in to the Internet, you can
find out almost anything you want to know within a split second. We are
communicating electronically and instantaneously with ashramas
in the Himalayas and the jungles of South America. It used to take a
letter one month to arrive, and we would sometimes wait two to three
months to get a reply, if any ever came. Now we are communicating with
Rishikesh, high in the Himalayas, and receiving e-mail back within a
day, sometimes within minutes. The e-media has enhanced communication
tremendously.
It has also enhanced pornography. It has
enhanced terrorism. It will enhance anything that you want. It is up to
you and your powers of decision to decide what you want to put into
your subconscious mind and live with, perhaps for the rest of your
life. We are not in the agricultural era anymore. We are in the
technological age. We are in the communication age. It's the age of the
mind, where the mind is in technology, working through technology. We
can't change that. It's not going to go away. It is up to each
individual to decide within himself how he wants to use the technology
available to him.
The computer is just like the mind. It has
memory, a certain amount of reasoning ability, a certain motivation.
But it doesn't have the controls that you, as a human, are able to
exert within yourself, such as willpower and the power of viveka,
discrimination, which is so central to our religious tenets. Therefore,
ask yourself, what is spirituality to you? What is important to you?
What do you want to impress in your inner mind to perhaps manifest in
this or your next life? You can use these tools to enhance what is
important to you, and thereby benefit not only your own life but the
lives of others.
Friday
LESSON 215
The Web's Vast Potential
http://www.HinduismToday.com/ No, that's not a
typographical error or a foreign language. It's HINDUISM TODAY'S World
Wide Web address. If you have access to a computer, you can read our
Hindu family magazine from any of Earth's hundreds of millions of
Internet nodes, for free. True, you would not get all those wonderful
photos or art, but the text is there for anyone searching the net for dharma.
Years ago, before the Internet really took off, I meditated on what it
would mean for Sanatana Dharma and could see a time when Hindus would
all be connected on the Internet. An ashrama in Fiji could download explanations for samskaras. A yoga society in Orissa would be able to locate graphical information about chakras for a public slide show. A pilgrim could call up a home page with all the sacred sites, temples, tirthas and ashramas
his family can visit on their way back to Bharat, complete with maps,
train schedules and cost of A/C rooms. I saw more, much more. A panchangam,
sacred Hindu calendar, we all use together, would be available, listing
the holy days and festivals. I noted that our own timeline of Hindu
history, from Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism, was already on
the Net. It has stirred historians to write us many letters and discuss
the new way India's history is being understood. Even now you can
access it and search for when Ramakrishna was born, when the Vedas were written down or when South Indian Chola kings set sail for Indonesia.
I
foresaw interactive courses. A teacher in South Africa could download
wonderful resources to enrich the lessons she prepares for her students
-- photos, maps, Vedic verses, illustrations and sounds, all the things
that interest children. How about an encyclopedia of Hinduism online?
How about a library of dharma graphics which anyone could log
onto, find that perfect piece of art for illustrating a brochure,
download it and never leave their desk? The possibilities are endless.
Say
your daughter just had a new baby and you want a special name. What to
do? Search for Hindu names on the Net, through thousands of names on
numerous sites, for the perfect name, with the meaning and the right
pronunciation. Need a good time to start a business, sign an important
contract or leave on a trip? Just call up the WWW home page on
astrology for a computer analysis of the auspicious moment.
Saturday
LESSON 216
Hinduism On the Net
The World Wide Web is difficult to say fast, all
those w's one after another. It comes out "wurlwyewep." The pros just
call it the Web. But what is it? I have been learning a little about
the Web. It took me a while to get the Internet connection on my Power
Macintosh working right, and the monks had to install some special
software for me. But soon I was out there on the Infobahn, in the slow
lane. I found that the Web is the first user-friendly, interactive
global information medium. It extends any individual's reach,
facilitating everything from the sharing of information to finding it.
Soon, we hope, all the religionists of the Global Forum for Human
Survival and Parliament of World Religions will communicate their
thoughts, programs and knowledge on the Web. I remember when in Moscow
and Rio de Janiero, at Global Forum gatherings of political and
religious leaders, the former US Vice President Al Gore unveiled his
vision to expand the Internet, previously only available to the
government and universities, into an Information Highway to tie the
world together. Congratulations, Mr. Gore. Just three years later your
vision of a digital superhighway adds four new users every minute, and
we are among them.
From HINDUISM TODAY's home page, by a click
of a button you can bring up a page that allows you to write an
instant, postage-free letter to the editor. Another click sends you
into the vastness of cyberspace. It's that easy, and easy to get lost,
too. Give it a try. They say the Web has changed things completely. The
old Internet was OK for physicists, but it was an unfriendly,
type-only, black-and-white technical world. The Web added images,
color, a variety of typefaces, pictures, designs, animation and buttons
that lead to the next destination. Now it's everybody's tool. Click on
a button and go to a home page of Vedic verses in Bangalore. Click a
button there about astrology and suddenly you're in San Francisco or
browsing a London database on ayurveda. Click again and you're
reading a page on Sanskrit studies in Durban. It's called hyperlinking.
I learned how to make bookmarks yesterday -- links to connections you
have made, kept by a program in case you want to return but don't
recall the address. Just click and you're there again. Easy. Another
nice thing is the Web is so democratic. Whether you are Birla Pvt.
Ltd., IBM or Mrs. Bhatt, a poetess from Pune, everyone is equal on the
Web.
Electronic mail is like having the post office in your
house. Messages come and go through the phone lines and can be read
almost immediately anywhere in the world. Our institutions use the Web
to connect the missions we oversee in several countries. We put new
information on the home page in Hawaii, and members in Mauritius,
India, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka or Germany can access it
instantly. Not only that, it's nearly free. Most of those big fax and
phone bills are gone. Hindu institutions are working hard to upgrade to
the Web, driven by an amazing group of Hindu engineers who have become
a driving force in the Internet world. These cyberspace networks are
all interconnected, but totally disorganized and decentralized, just
like Hinduism, so everyone will feel at home there! Let's meet on the
"wurlwyewep" and share our experience, vision and tools.
The
editor of a Jain magazine in London once asked, "Gurudeva, how do you
feel about using all this modern technology to promote religion?" I
said, we marvel at our ancient handwritten scriptures. The stylus and
the olai leaf were modern technology at one point in time, the
pen and paper at another, as was the old typewriter at yet another
point in time. Now we have computers and the Internet -- modern
technology capable of bringing the spiritual beings and all religious
people of the world closely together wherever they live. This one thing
the typewriter could not do, the pen and paper could not do, the stylus
and olai leaf did not do.
Sunday
LESSON 217
HarnessingTechnology
Building up the spiritual vibration in the home
requires a control of the computers. Here at our Saivite Hindu
monastery in Hawaii, all of the monastics have a computer. When they
take their vows, they are given their robes, their beads, their staff
of tapas and their Macintosh! This enables us to serve the very best that we can from our tiny little island. At this ashrama we
look at our technology as our tools. We control these tools. They do
not control us. We use these tools to enhance our religious work, to
amplify the Sanatana Dharma and bring it out into the Western world and
throughout the world through written publications and on the Internet.
Our tools do not dominate our life. We turn them on at a certain time.
We turn them off at a certain time. At twelve noon they are turned off
and not turned on again until 3:00PM. At 6:30PM, they're turned off
again and not turned on until after worship and intense guided
meditation the next morning. On retreat days -- two days each week --
we don't use them at all, except possibly for an hour on rare occasions
and only for very important things. What does this do? It allows
everyone to talk with everyone else, to communicate, to share, to
appreciate each other, to work together for the good of all. It allows
us to live a balanced life, a human life in which the spirit within us
can shine through and we have time to enjoy the sunset on our 459-acre
spiritual sanctuary on the Garden Island of Kauai, to listen to the
song of a bird, to meditate and enjoy the company of one another, even
in this technological age.
Perhaps the most prevalent
electronic media is television. A family watching television together
is a togetherness, provided the program is a wholesome choice that
everyone enjoys. You can laugh and talk together and discuss what you
watched afterwards. But there should be an afterwards and a before.
That balances the mesmerizing capacity of television. Television
shouldn't consume all of the family's time. Before the TV is turned on
in the evening, the family should sit together, talk about the day,
acknowledge or praise each other and mutually decide what will be
viewed. Afterwards, some time should be taken to discuss what was
watched and to explain it to the children, especially if they are
young, allowing them to partake of the wisdom of the parents.
Especially if they see a program you don't approve of, sit them down
afterwards and talk it over with them, discuss the values portrayed in
relation to our Saivite values. Let them be aware of other points of
view. This is your duty.
Treat the television like you would
going to a movie: the whole family gets in the car as if they are going
to a big event. They drive to the movie house, buy the tickets, some
popcorn and soda, have a wonderful time and come home and enjoy one
another's company.
Children should not be allowed to watch TV
constantly, but made to live a balanced life that includes exercise,
games and outdoor activities. Some children can and do watch TV for
many hours each day, filling their minds with all kinds of ideas and
neglecting their studies. It is up to the parents to set wise rules for
TV and to enforce those rules for the benefit of the child's mind. One
such wise rule is to limit daily watching to one or two hours.
Use
television if you wish, but use it wisely and you will avoid these
problems. Learn to control television. Realize that it is a great
instrument for entertainment, but a dangerous instrument if it
overcomes you, if it fills up your subconscious mind, if it brings
alien thoughts into your home and upsets your family.
While TV
has enormous negative potential, music does as well. The type of music
played in the home and the message it delivers is crucial. Ideally, it
should be beautiful Hindu music played on traditional instruments by
Saiva souls. Great care should be exercised to exclude the crass music
and lyrics of lower consciousness. Whatever you listen to brings you
into one state of consciousness or another.
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