A lot of people wonder what the equation between spirituality and technology should be. On the one hand science and its various spinoffs are seen as a form of all permeating materialism that is antagonistic to the dedicated life. That’s because for such people there’s little if any interface with the wondrous speculations inherent in, say, cosmology or the deep understandings engendered in the study of living systems.
Instead, they are only exposed to the trickle-down artefacts that scientific inquiry generates – stuff like equations, formulae and graphs — and the whole thing seems simply too greasy and nuts-and-boltsy for them. Perhaps even too ugly.
On the other hand there are those who will not admit any impediments in the marriage of two minds. To that end they continue to produce and devour any number of books like The Dancing Wu Li Masters or The Tao of Physics that espouse the so-called underlying connectivity between the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and Zen Buddhism.
But it’s just an unnecessary attempt to drag either side up to the perceived level of the other in the hope that an ancient animosity would be rectified. Nothing of the sort happens because nothing like it is needed.
The fact is, great spiritual leaders have never actually opposed technology. On the contrary, they’ve seamlessly integrated it into their lives without making a big hullabaloo about it.
Take Jesus for instance. His father was a carpenter and he too, we are told, learned the trade early in his life. He may not have possessed electric sanders, motorised lathes and rechargeable hammer drills as technology has delivered them to us today but his tools were still the high-tech of that given day. And, as far as it’s known, he never derided the technique or countered the use of its implements.
The right path therefore is the Middle Way. Philosopher and popular interpreter of religions, Alan Watts, was as fond of comparing the infinitely beautiful craftsmanship that went into the creation of folk art, as he was of admiring the equally gorgeous layout of microelectronic circuitry.
However, no one got it so right as the New York based Village Voice. While reviewing Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance it said the book “ . . . seduces one into loving motorcycles (which are) as tender in their pistons as the petals in the Buddha’s dawn lotus.”
(This piece first appeared in The Economic Times)