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creating an application that gives real-time feedback on I know it may sound like science fiction, as it did to me
the activity levels of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) several years ago, but I suspect these contemplative
area in the brain. I spoke recently with a long-term technologies could usher in a new era of interest in
meditator who has tried versions of the Yale/Brewer consciousness that may make the human potential
app. He was stunned to find that the feedback from his movement of the ’60s and ’70s pale in comparison.
latest session was clearly related to an experience of
selfless perception. The opportunity I see for Buddhism is to provide a
context of deep meaning, time-tested practices for
Meditation teacher Shinzen Young has raved about working with difficulties, communities of intimate
the prospects of a technology called transcranial learning that can support the wise use of these
direct-current stimulation (tDCS) — a form of technologies, and a space for continuing to explore
neuromodulation technology that can activate and what awakening means in this time and place. That
deactivate particular areas of the brain with a mild these Internet Age forms of Buddhism will often look
electrical current: radically different from today’s forms is hard to doubt.
But I think the focus will continue, by and large, to
Our current systematic ways of bringing people to be on the diminishment of human suffering and the
stream entry could be described generically as two- awakening of the most profound aspects of the heart
component systems. We give people certain ideas and mind.
(darshana), and we give people certain practices
(sādhanā). I envisage the possibility that, in the future, Vincent Horn is part of a new generation of teachers
there might be a third component added: science/ & thinkers translating age-old wisdom into 21st
technology-based boosters (modern upāya). — century code. He podcasts @Buddhist Geeks and
Shinzen’s Blog, shinzenyoung.blogspot.com, July 25, teaches virtually through Meditate.io and locally at The
2012 Asheville Heart of Insight Community.

Originally published at www.buddhistgeeks.com on
August 3, 2015. EH