Is Modern Technology Good or Bad for Spirituality?
FOUR POWERFUL TEACHINGS BY H. E. TSEM RINPOCHE.
When technology advances, more people will lose interest in spirituality. This is because people look for instant gratification and superficial compliments. They don’t need to put in the effort to transform to being a better person which brings them longer lasting happiness.
Tsem Rinpoche’s explanations in video below were spot on with addressing the current phenomenon of technology and how it affects our general well-being.
What were we taught and conditioned in our culture and society? And how is it totally different in the monastic world?
Imprints, and how they are being triggered.
Clear and powerful explanations on Dharma Protectors, their types and functions, and why we need Dharma Protectors.
Please support us so that we can continue to bring you more Dharma:
If you are in the United States, please note that your offerings and contributions are tax deductible. ~ the tsemrinpoche.com blog team
Although technology, speeds things up for us, and enables communications, there is trade off, the trade off is that our relationships are a lot less stronger than we hoped it to be. We have a lot of relationships, that are enabled via technology or with the help of technology. How really strong and wholesome are such relationships.
This brings to mind an article I read before in some of those left wing, socialist magazines, in a village in Europe women folk used congregate at a fountain to get water for washing and cooking, and the exchanges at the fountain brought the community closer with one another, but with the advent of the technology of personal water faucets to homes, it made life easier, but made people more distant from one another.
That’s no good or bad ( Is Modern Technology Good or Bad for Spirituality? ). My personal thought is :
It only takes a click. Or a tap. It is so easy to grab the smart phone and go into another world. Unlike a book that requires your mind to fill in the blanks, sounds and sights bombard us with tragic news clips, acrobatic kittens, and amazing displays of human talent. While it is debatable as to how much this has improved the lives of modern people, one thing is certain. Spiritual growth requires more than a click. It requires a discipline and intentionality that our new media habits abhor. Whether shopping Amazon or surfing Facebook, immediate access to what we want is what we get. But, is all technology bad for our spiritual growth? What technology helps or hinders my spiritual growth?
Some of my personal thoughts after viewing the 4 great teachings above from Tsem Rinpoche.
#How sole dependence on Modern technology can affect our spirituality#
● We have to respect all sentient beings, whether we like it of not, because we are not going to survive independently without other sentient beings.
#To be alone is worse than hell#
●Incorrect perceptions on how life suppose to be have been forced into our brains once we are born etc., boy has to wear blue, girl has to wear pink. Someone set it and all of us just followe blindly. Why? Because it’s a social norm, when we don’t follow what the others are doing, we are going to be outgroup and alienated. We have been chasing things like kites which lead us to nowhere and random places. These kites are also play by someone else and we are happily and blindly chasing them. I’ve to laugh at myself because I did the same like the others.
● Are we living for ourselves for true happiness or are we living to fulfill others ‘ secular expectations etc., own a luxury life and become the others’ ‘admiration’. All things that we can think of in the secular world are like illusions, they will eventually fade off when we firgured the tricks after some times.
Etc., When we are becoming old and weak
Hence, we are going to be too old amd weak to reroute back to the right track.
● Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are who and what that we can fully rely on without doubt.
#Karma’s job is make you suffer#
● Imprints and Karmas, I think they work interdependently too. I always have doubts about whether we do have the ability to amend our future lives(Karma) because our karmas that we have collected in all of the previous lives(millions/ trillions of them?) are yet to open up. I’m thinking even if I’m doing good deeds and Dharma works in this life, it’s all linked to my previous life which I’ve did something good therefore I’m allow to do what am I doing now. Being alive is not just about to enjoy, live, sleep, eat and work. It’s much deeper than we can think about.
#Powerful explanation on Dharma protectors#
● Dharma protectors like Dorje Shugden will bless us and protect us regardless of race, religion, gender, and age.
● If we truly have faith and and do our parts to practice Buddhadharma, we will gain ultimate results.
●After that, what we need to pay back to the Buddha is to solely do our own parts and transform our negative minds. Pure earnings, I can’t see where to lose.
Thank you, Tsem Rinpoche for sharing and teaching us to be good tirelessly .
Thanks Rinpoche for the Dharma talks, what Rinpoche says make a lot of sense especially the part that mention modern technology has taken over the need of the spirituality but in the end it didn’t bring us anything.
I also agree on the “value” we are imprinted by general society that we need some outer thing such as relationship, career, beauty to make us feel valuable. Nothing make us valuable if we depends on others to give us happiness. Happiness arise from oneself when we focus out.
Practicing spirituality and develop inner self is always a better way and actually it’s the ultimate way of living as the only result of being dependent on outer things is sufferings.
Thank you..
Rinpoche explains how elementals help us with the rain. When we destroy the environment and only focus on profit and building, these elementals have no place to stay and will go away. But also when we hurt animals, kill them and so on, they don’t like it and will leave.
How is it that we think we can destroy the environment and nothing changes? I never knew how the raindance is connected but through Buddhism I have learned that there is so much more than we see. We need to make good conditions for the elementals to stay.
In the other video, Rinpoche teaches us about how important it is to many that we have a partner. I think it is sure ok to have a partner but we need to remember that we are born alone and we die alone. I think it is important how we live our life and that we develop our mind for the future.
Nowadays with Facebook and Google we become dependent on a machine, rely on google to give us answers, have virtual friends who we will never meet in person… These people will not support in daily life, if we are sick or need help. This is a good reminder on how we spend our days and what we do on a concrete level to help those around us, even if they are not our family.
We don’t know our Karma and it can open up any moment. So i think we should not condemn others and their lot but see how we can help them.
Thank you,
Pastor Antoinette
When we were young, we were being taught that we must study well, then only we can get a good job when we grown up, and have a good family with comfortable lifestyle, it has been the culture for many decades ago, but when we really study well and get good score, what are the possibilities that we are so sure to get a good job? and even when we have a good job, again what are the possibilities that we can have a happy relationship and family. Everything was so ideally perfect that was being taught, and after when we grown up, we found out that it is not as what we were told, even though we have done our best to live our life, obstacles still appear, problems come knocking our door, difficulties are like our shadow, no matter where we turn or go, it seems to be following so tightly.
When we faced so much stress and unhappiness, we tend to find another exit for ourselves to escape, and internet became one of the comfortable place where we can get to meet with the people we don’t know, we tell our problems and get ‘advice’, we get comfort, or even recognition without putting any effort into it, then slowly, we get to hang on to that comfort zone and ‘assumed’ that we have lots of friends who’s caring.
Another disadvantage of advance technology is everything became so easy and convenient and at times, we became dependent on the internet / technology, people become more lazy to think, whenever they came across anything they not familiar with, immediately they go onto internet to get the solution and in fact, that is not even difficult to solve at all.. Quick fix and quick answer is now what the people looking into. With this convenience, spirituality became not important and some people even look at it as a burden, or suffering to their comfortable and convenient life.
Modern technology can be good or bad depending on what we use it for. To get attention for something just to feed our needs does not help us in our ‘real’ life. This is just short term and it doesn’t help us. Instead it just feed our ego more.
But with spirituality, not only that it is long term, it is ‘real’ and it can be used to benefit others. To have a spiritual guide and protector to guide us on this path.
Using modern technology can help us but we must not depend too much on it till we lose focus on the real reasons of benefitting.
科技發達給人方便，卻讓許多人依賴科技藐視人文,科技一直以來都強調「用」，人很容易為它著迷, 它影响了人们的心灵.
科技發達也让现代人们容易放弃，把事情交给一个“银盘”，谷歌为他们提供任何东西，人们不再是坚持通过努力工作和决心去实现成功，有如仁波切所说人们变得懒惰了。
古时人们学习都需有老师的教导，甚至有些还需步行数千里向大师学习，所以都会感激老师和学以致用，反观现代点击一个按钮，就得到了直接教导，容易得来的，人们都不会欣赏或感激它，并且可能不会去实践， 学佛也是如止。
听这3个简短的教导，能让你对人生有不同的看法。
In this modern time a lot of people are looking for fast and easy way to get result. Modern technology allow this but a lot of people forgotten that spirituality is not about fast result from the technology but is about inner development for one to become a good person eventually becoming a happier person. We can see this very easily by looking into the education system in the school today and the behaviour of the parents that only want their child to excel in their education rather than spiritual development.
Actually by neglecting spirituality there are a lot of negative impact towards the individual. Without strong spiritual development one will easily mentally and emotionally breakdown due to wrong perception of what is real in this samsaric world.
Understanding karma will make us aware of the situation that happen to us and karma also give us the real picture how we should live our life in the right way. As we understand karma and believe in past, present and future lives then we know that we need a guide and a protector to help us create a conducive condition in this modern world for us to be more focus in our spiritual practice.
Nothing in the technology world is permanent but in spirituality, you can bring or have them with you in any form of changes in your life.
The analogies Rinpoche gave in the videos provided me easier understanding of the teachings. For example, how modern technology that seemingly gives us better knowledge and convenience of things degenerates secular and spiritual practices. Back in the old days before technology advanced we had to memorise or write down in a notebook the telephone number of our friends. But now we depend on our mobile phone memory instead of ours. Another example is we had to do mental calculations for maths but nowadays almost everyone depends on the use of calculators and now mobiles even have built in calculator. Yes, it is true that we are becoming lazier as technology advances.
Is modern technology good or bad for spirituality? Well, look at how people used to depend on ritual and pujas and prayers when they need help. For example calling for rain during drought. Where by today people can’t do that anymore. Why? The ritual is lost, people who do the ritual not spiritual anymore, the resources of the ritual are gone. People depend on technology when communicate, find out answers, solve the problems, they are comfortable staying at home living their lives alone but with technology like facebook, google, Instagram waiting for others to like you. Those likes comfortably became your friends. Confortable because you don’t have to deal with others ugliness. People lost contact with nature, with human and love. people even lied to themselves to make themselves feel good and believe that it’s ok to be like that and trust that they are happy. People get so comfortable and think that they don’t need spirituality. Soon they don’t even know and have a chance to experience spiritualilty anymore.
Those who think they are still spiritual, wanted to be spiritual, learning to be spiritual and even going all the way for spirituality are very blessed and have the merits and karma to do so. We are responsible to the lost of spirituality. We have the responsibility to preserve the spirituality in order connect to each other.
感恩仁波切的开示与教诲！
现代的发达科技，带领了整个社会迅速发展，无论在建筑，发展，科学，交通，甚至在宗教，也可以迅速的将讯息传到世界每一个角落！就如仁波切提到关于科技发达，就如“水可载舟，但也可覆舟”，科技也是一把双面刀，可以把好的讯息传播到世界各地，利益很多的人，但是相反的，也可以将坏的讯息或阴谋，迅速的传播到世界各地，我们不得不谨慎运用它们，造善业或恶业，完全操纵在自己的手里。
仁波切还开示关于为何我们要到殊胜的地方朝圣，那里会给我们殊胜的印记，我们前世所带来的“印记”，前世的印记如何影响这一世的生活，业果成熟后所带来的影响。还有，不善业如果业果成熟后，会带来何等不好的影响等等，大家应该花些时间看看，一定会给大家带来不同的领悟！
在此感恩仁波切的开示！
愿上师长寿，常转法论，吉祥如意！
感恩合十
Yeo Kwai Gin
This invigorating topic reminded me of a discussion that I have witnessed over the home TV some years ago, purportedly held at His Holiness, The Dalai Lama’s meeting Lounge in Dharmasala. As said, it was held informally between a group of western world scienctists and professors of intelligient sciences of western, European and U.S.A universities. Some of the very interesting views on this subject that can still be vividly remembered contained mostly of H.H. The Dalai Lama’s wisdomed expressed views on the affordsaid subject matter, as reproduced hereunder:- (1) The Dalai Lama expressed that it is most important for the tradition of sciences of both parties, consisting represntatives of the western and eastern world to work together, for the mental development of peace and happiness of sentient beings. (2) Many are of the impression that these two setups are different and incompatible, which the Dalai Lama reiterated it was not the case. (3) The Dalai Lama stressed to assertain that the kind of dialoque is extremely important to be used as a means of contributing something valuable and essential to future humanity. Such dialoques will enable each tradition to benefit in the long term. This is one essential requirement to work on for the benefit of both traditions. (4) The Dalai Lama then went on to mention that it is also very important to understand the latest scienctific findings concerning the nature of the mind and the relationship and the nature of conscientiousness between the mind and brain. There are subjects that we can discuss exaustively, but still not able to come to any definite conclusions – many things needed to be further researched from generations to generations. This, of course is the resposibility for us all to attempt on! In conclusion, the Dalai Lama added, that both the two traditions of the sciences should feel happy to be able to come together for such extrordinary reviews and discussions for the benefit of all concerned, and most importantly for happiness, peace and benefits of all beings on Mother Earth! Om Mani Padme Hung.
Thank you Rinpoche for the short teachings on Youtube. Modern technology has its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that when we rely too much technology to find an answer for eg. Google, then we will never bother to go and find it our ourselves in a real life scenario. The advantage of technology to spirituality is that it can reach the world by just a click on the mouse. After being in Kechara for a few years now, I notice that many people, young and old are not mindful. Sometimes, we just need to calm down our mind to look at things at a different angle.
With folded palms,
Vivian
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing the video. Technology nowadays really make a big influence and impact to current age. Especially to youngster. And many people nowadays tend to be not mindful. One could be rely too much on technology. However, if people can use technology wisely in a useful way, technology really helps a lot, be it in our daily life or spiritual practice. For example Rinpoche’s blog and facebook and youtube video. People from every corner of the world can learn Dharma online. We already have Kecharian attending group discussion and some other activity through Skype. If we apply it in a correct way, technology really benefit us even in spirituality.
Thank you again Rinpoche for sharing this teachings. This is a way technology assist in my spiritual path. 🙂 _/\_
Technology has done amazing and wonderful things to advance humanity in the last These days. Today, people have computers the size of post cards (cell phones) that are more powerful than anything that existed 20 years ago. People are consequently able to connect to other people and services very quickly. Technology makes things convenient and fast just Rinpoche’s blog millions of people are benefiting from this every moment , we just need to appreciate and learn..
Great Tsem Tulku!
I agree. Sole dependence on modern technology is definitely bad for spirituality!
The nature of modern technology is that it “makes things convenient and fast” and hence also give instant gratifications and create a habit of short term gratification that is addictive and habituating, so much so that we become attached to this immediate “happiness”, But alas, the same method also give immediate sadness and anger and what happiness we get is less and less satisfactory leading to us to spiral down this attachment to modern technology.
Like anything, we must view and use things wisely and not be attached to it. Hence, while sole dependence on modern technology is bad; it can also be use in a good way for spirituality; like this website.
Karma’s Job is to Make you suffer
It’s scary to have negative imprints and negative karmic energy, like stinginess. When we are habituated with it, we just generate it on a daily basis, even with a thought! The fear of not having that creates this negative karmic imprint is something that we need to deal with and bring under control. Otherwise, we create the cause to suffer when the karma ripens and opens up and we will not get even what we need, much as we plan and save and scrounge and take advantage of others so that we don’t have to spend our own money.
We should do a daily practice, do purification and collect merits/ create more positive imprints to counter it. Otherwise true enough karma will do its job and get us to suffer! We will grow old and not have even our basic needs to keep us going! When the karma opens, even if we have money, we will not be able to spend it! WE will be worrying 24 hours how to protect it! We continue to suffer. Ultimately, this energy of stinginess will destroy us.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing with us this three videos . Modern technology do bring a lot of convenient to our daily life and most people nowadays are really very much rely on all these technology look what happen people are so much in need of their hand phone , their phone is like a need and they must have it but in most time what most people like to access is information about their self cherishing wants I would said hardly you will see anyone go on line to read spiritual article and this the trend now , by right we should make use of all these technology to help us to advance in our spirituality but we use it in a wrong way.
I love these 3 short teachings. How technology is eroding spirituality and it is because of humans is now seeking for instant gratification rather than developing the inner self to feel gratitude. We live in the world now of where people give up easily and things are handed to them in a silver platter. No longer are people persevered to achieve success through hard work and determination. In the olden ways, the journey matters more that the result because it is through the journey we learn and grow.
The best example is like now where with a click of a button, we get the direct teachings from Tsem RInpoche. Because of the ease in receiving these teachings, people may not appreciate it as much and may not contemplate and practice. If we compare with the olden times, people travel travel thousands of miles to get to a guru in order to receive teachings. It is because of the hardship in travelling and the obstacles they face to reach the destination which makes them appreciate the teachings when they receive them. When they receive, they will surely practice. Therefore, modern technology does erode spirituality and mankind.
谢谢仁波切的教诲。
仁波切的教诲也充分的体现了“水能载舟，亦能覆舟”的道理。 在这个资讯和科学发达的时代， 现在的人比起以前的人生活变得更简单， 也更方便。 在佛法的好处就是我们可以简单在网上得到佛法的资料。 不好的地方就是会影响我们的修行。
不过仁波切说得对， 在我们死的那一刻， 所有我们世俗的成就一点也帮不到我们， 无论是我们的家人、财富、荣耀、或是在世间让我们方便的科技、谷歌都帮不到我们。 有的只是我们过度依赖科技而惰于修行的后悔， 不过那时候后悔已经帮不到我们了。
谢谢
When True Spirituality disappears, when people do not want to be compassionate, do not want to be benevolent, do not wish to take on the sufferings of others and not think of others, depression will set in.
Same as why the Rain Dances don’t work anymore – all the necessary elementals needed to achieve rain or true spirituality eroded and disappeared, hence the rain won’t come in during a Rain dance and similarly mind transformation and Enlightment won’t take place if we continue to degenrate the Dharma.
Technology do not equate happiness. Technology just gives an instant high, like drugs and alcohol, one needs to take more and more to keep it up. However if we practice Buddhism well Happiness will set in. Through the practice of Dharma we are keeping the elementals alive, we are keeping the lineage alive, we are creating the causes for Dharma to stay and grow to benefit more beings.
Thank you Rinpoche for the 3 short videos. The teachings are powerful and the short videos are effective and refreshing.
Thank you Rinpoche for these three powerful teachings.
To begin with, yes modern technology has affected the minds and psyche of people today. People everywhere are caught up in the promise of instant gratification that googling provides them for anything under the sun.Also social media enables them to garner ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ as if each ‘like’ or each ‘follower’ equates with someone out there admiring them and wanting to be their friend. The more ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ they have the more popular they think are!
Unfortunately, a day will come soon enough, when age catches up with you and you cannot continue to maintain this number of likes or followers. Then your euphoria or ‘high’ is over. You crash to the ground and suffer a hard landing. Then you realize you had not cushioned yourself to face all this. You have grown too old to pursue all this. Sickness sets in. loneliness sets in as you are deserted by all your fair-weather friends.
Real spirituality would have given you the inner cushioning that you now so badly need. Real spiritual practice in the form of mind transformation , developing compassion, patience, giving and the like.
Thank you for this wonderful teaching on technology vs spirituality. We often think science and technology are almighty. Science gives us proof to our doubts, technology help human to achieve the impossible, for instance a journey to the outer space. But does science really explains all our doubts? Has it proved every single question we have in our mind? Long before science proves meditation can calm our mind, many saints, yogis, Buddhas had already knew it. Before there is technology, our ancestor already knew the technique to build mega building like the pyramids. Perhaps our ancestors, due to lack of so-called science and technology was able to optimise the potential of our mind and power to do things we cannot even imagine.
As technology gets more advanced, we becomes lazier. How many of us actually remembers the phone numbers of the people on our phone list? Before there was mobile phone, we had to memorise the numbers. Now, our mind is busy scanning through information on the internet, not really remembering anything.
This teaching reinforces the spiritual journey that I am on. Thank you so much for making it available and free!
Listening to Rinpoche’s teachings, I realise how empty my life had been. Always aiming for the comfortable life, ie. career and financial stability, family and leisure to fill the in between. All these will change and evolve but never giving us permanent happiness or control of our next lives. Now with the advent of technology and gadgets, we have more to occupy our time, taking us further away from discovering spirituality within us. I really thank whatever merit I had to have met my Guru to receive his teachings and guidance to realise the futility of living only for this life and not thinking of what’s to come, Death and beyond. Since knowing that karma controls the conditions of every expect of our lives, our Guru gives us the method to control our karma. Being comfortable to be alone with ourselves and our minds will a good achievement into understanding that fulfilment does not depend on external distractions. It would mean we are able to go into extensive retreat to connect with the Buddhamind that is within us.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing these video teachings with us. Rinpoche constantly touch something in us and help us understand ourselves better.
Often we hear about how people are looking up to being an urbanite like NewYorker, Londoner, Parisian, Edokko etc because living in big cities equals to luxury, rich, culture, technology, freedom, convenience, opportunities, vibrant, you name it. What the society portrays success nowadays is actually to deepen our delusions, which is further away from the core of Buddha’s teaching. That’s why in big cities, the depression and suicidal cases are dramatically higher than in the rural area, because people are generally unhappy. Yet like what Rinpoche has mentioned, we cannot blame these people who does not have the opportunity to even hear Dharma teaching as their karma just did not allow them to be born in places where they could be near spirituality.
It’s rather ironic that the wealthier we are, the more stingy we become due to the fear of losing. The cycle of craving what we want and fear of losing it happens in every facets in our life – family, career, relationship etc. From Rinpoche’s teaching, i realised that being stingy does not only apply on monetary, but also emotions, that we always want to win, that we step on others and not wanting to look bad. This will definitely serve as a reminder for me to be more conscious when dealing with people. Thank you Rinpoche for such a wonderful and timely teaching, as always.
Thank you Rinpoche for this teaching and after listening to the three discourses and reflecting on my life’s journeys, I feel that it did stir up many of my dormant feelings. These reflection has somewhat made me realize that my life aspirations had seemingly eroded without me being consciously aware of it happening. I feel like it had robbed me of my mental equilibrium and I was not even aware that karma can play a very important role like being miserly and how it would end up hitting back.
Although I am aware that machines have dominated much of our life and the dependency on it is growing alarmingly but it has also developed in us a false sense of satisfaction without us realizing the impact it had created. While we need these machines to make our life function easier it had also robbed us our innate capabilities.
Therefore I strongly believe Rinpoche discourse is timely to make us realize that we must not be too dependent on machines and make us see that our spiritually need to be placed at a higher perspective and should not be weighed down by these modern equipment’s.
Thank you Rinpoche for loading up these precious teachings on Youtube & the blog. What Rinpoche has shared makes complete sense and is entirely logical. Not long ago, a group of western tourists climbed to the peak of one of our famous mountains, then at the summit, stripped and peed and chronicled their “achievement” complete with videos on social media, perhaps for a good laugh. The local people were outraged at the antics and said nobody should do such disrespectful things on what they believe is a sacred mountain where many ancient spiritual beings reside. Coincidentally or not, about a week later, a strong earthquake occured in the vicinity that killed some climbers and stranded or injured many others. The local people put the two and two together and believed that was the direct result. They then performed rituals and prayers to appease the angered beings. When this was reported, the western media scoffed, pooh-poohed and ridiculed at our third world mentality and spiritual hocus-pocus. Some were even angry that the locals blamed the innocent western visitors who did nothing wrong but were just having fun.
I’m not saying that these 2 incidents are linked or am I putting the blame on any of the tourists, but as Buddhist dharma teaches, we must acknowledge that we are not alone. The human race should not gloat and think they are invincible and superior beings, which is the usual stance as we see in Hollywood movies. Believe or don’t believe is not the point. The point is, whatever our beliefs, we should always respect other people’s culture and beliefs and not impose our own beliefs or non-beliefs on others. That would be arrogant and condescending.
It is common courtesy that when you visit someone’s territory, you should be mindful of how things are and not treat it as your own backyard and do whatever you like any way you like and leave a mess for your host to clean up. You’d be respectful, it is someone else’s territory, you’d observe their culture, you don’t deface and destroy things or at least be mindful and don’t offend. If you do, the hosts can be polite and not voice their displeasure or they could. Even the western world has this saying that when in Rome, do what the Romans do. It’s nothing to do with violating human rights. It’s to do with plain common courtesy.
Hi Echeah, I like what you said. Regardless what religion, cultures, family background or society status, we all as human beings, should be respectful to each other. Personally i do not think there’s distinction between people, whether you are from first world or third world country, whether u r rich or poor, instead, we should embrace the diversity of the society that we live in and look past the outer facade of someone’s background, religion, culture and tradition and just be kind to anyone. The world can be a better place when we all take responsibility as individuals.