Upāsaka

A sign at Wat Pah Nanachat prohibits cameras and phones, and it's no surprise. In today's world, restricting the use of phones in monasteries and meditation centers is crucial to the development of an equanimous mind.

After reading Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, I realized that to fully practice the Buddha's teachings, one must limit their usage of the internet, specifically the web.

Carr's narrative brings together neuroscience and the history of technology to examine the effect that computers and the web have on our brains. Backed by research across several fields, Carr shows that when we go online, “we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.” He explains how connected computers offer “far more distractions than our ancestors had to contend with.” These distractions take time and energy away from meaningful pursuits.

Using the web almost every day for eight hours, sometimes more, has an effect on my mind that hinders the meditation practice, a time to bring the mind to a quiet focus, the complete opposite of what happens on the web. The more I use the web, the more I lose the ability to bring my mind to a contemplative state.

To remedy my overuse of the web, I added another rule to my previous post: to use devices with screens only between 8:00 and 16:00 (up to 8 hours per day). With work and school, I must make some exceptions, but in general this rule should help me stop scattering my mind.