Sensei

Look up! Look around, look inward. That computer won't help you find The Way.

Technology is an extension, a derivitive of your little selves. Not the big Self but the person who calls himself Carson. Willis. Eli Sensei. Technology is just you and me; it doesn't exist without us, it has dependent origination and will die. It comes out of language - we can't create what we can't conceptualize! - so it's as limited as our human-built language. We're just cheating ourselves with these machines, saying "Everything will be better." They promise to fix everything! Can't remember? Note it down in the computer! Can't draw? Get a program to do it. Can't write? Can't think? These are all mundane concerns, ego concerns, and we have ego-tools to help.

What's that? artificial limb, heart, what? No, that's just the same point. When your heart can't beat, time to go. Why do you want to live some more, if living's all about building more things to sustain you and not about life itself! Technology is just us cheating ourselves, doing the thinking for us when the last thing we need is more thinking! Tell me one thing technology has solved. Travel? Sure, I can go around the world, but I'm still an ass hole nobody wants to have visit - Ha Ha! - and I still kill and hate and all that. What else, water? Oh, water purifiers? Now nobody can stand the taste of fresh water from a stream - all the bugs in it will kill you... but they didn't kill your parents' parents. The Ganges doesn't kill millions of Indians. Antibiotics, chemicals, we cause as much harm as good.

You're right Mike, I'm wearing manufactured linen, living in a manufactured building. Is that bad? No! Don't stop the technology, just realize where it's coming from, what it is. It's just you! Your phone, your computer, the due date on your taxes - those things are dreams. Wake up from the dream. Technology may point you in the right direction, may provide a translation to a sutra you are studying, but it isn't the end. Look through the lens of technology, look past the things and content and words.