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REFLECTIONS | EASTERN HORIZON 51

ago with practitioners connecting online via messaging thus creating new mindful-hybrid approaches (such
boards, and then in the mid-2000s progressed to digital as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy within
media (blogs, books and podcasts). In the last few years, contemporary psychotherapy). It has also brought about
online video software has increasingly made it possible many criticisms and concerns regarding mindfulness
for folks to interact in real time. This has brought about losing its liberative potential or becoming subsumed by
a growing community of practitioners who connect the more negative aspects of capitalist culture.
online and who may get all of their support from cloud-
based sanghas. In the coming years, look for additional elements of
Buddhism to become unbundled — such as compassion,
In the years to come, look for this trend to continue concentration and even meditative insight.
and for the geocentric community model, i.e., the
notion that people get together to practice primarily 3. Contemplative Technologies
in physical space, to wane (though probably not The final trend that relates to the convergence of
disappear). It is hard to imagine it now, but virtual- Buddhism with the Internet Age is in the development
reality and augmented-reality technologies are poised of a whole host of new contemplative technologies —
to bring about a level of immersiveness that feels what could also be called technodelics. These
nearly indistinguishable from in-person interactions. technologies are in an early stage of development right
Whole sanghas will migrate online, and many new ones now and are still relatively unimpressive in comparison
will start there. The benefits for these communities to traditional techniques done over long periods
include being able to organize around ideas and people of time. Emerging technodelics include things such
rather than geographical location. Other advantages as meditation apps, electroencephalography (EEG)
also include the ability to participate in genuinely headsets (such as those you might have seen in photos
international groups, with a variety of perspectives in recent years wired up to the scalps of Tibetan monks
coming to bear that were typically only available in very in Western neuroscience experiments), and physical
large cities. It will also lower the cost of participation, sensors measuring different aspects of our biology,
as there is a much lower fixed cost associated with such as breathing, heart rate and skin conductance
maintaining virtual spaces than with physical ones. (measuring the amount of sweat on the skin).

2. Buddhism Unbundled As the field of contemplative science continues to
The second trend has to do with the observation develop and as our increasing understanding of
that Buddhism is currently being unbundled. This the biology of contemplation converges with next-
unbundling started with meditation being pulled generation hardware — tools such as virtual-reality
out from the three trainings of ethics, meditation headsets, wearable computers, increasingly powerful
and wisdom. This happened in modern Burma with EEG headsets and direct-current brain stimulation
the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition (see Erik Braun’s devices — be prepared to see the emergence of
recent book, The Birth of Insight), and also with the technologies that can actually enhance our ability
longstanding emphasis in the Ch’an and Zen traditions to meditate. Several early prototypes and finished
on the central importance of meditation. Such changes products in this field point to enormous possibilities,
laid the groundwork for the extremely popular including an app called “Calm” that uses neurofeedback
mindfulness movement and the further unbundling in the form of particular sights and sounds to help move
of mindfulness, one of the dimensions of meditation you toward the state programmed into the app that
training, from Buddhist meditation itself. corresponds with a calm experience.
This unbundling has enabled all kinds of new
possibilities — including these typically religious In the realm of finding even more digital calm, Yale
mind-training techniques entering various aspects of researcher Judson Brewer is at work on one of the
secular culture and recombining with new disciplines, most exciting EEG projects currently in development: