You have all met the new, cool, calculating computer generation, about which I have an observation. And it is truly the human right of every soul on the planet, at this time in the Kali Yuga, to make observations and comment on them. Furthermore, it is the duty of concerned men and women to speak out on what they observe, to thus reaffirm the dharma. My observation is that learning from computers is taking youth in the opposite direction from sampradāya, the imparting of wisdom person to person, heart to heart, mind to mind, teacher to student, satguru to śishya. The teacher passes on not only information, but the mature refinements of attitude and behavior through personal guidance and healthy association. ¶Young people used to love and respect, honor and extol their teachers. They would work to qualify to get into prestigious schools and vie with one another for the privilege of sitting before an Einstein or a Bose. Now they can buy advanced teachings on a CD or order them up freely on the World Wide Web. Maybe soon they will be able to download their diploma, to sign, frame and hang on the wall! ¶In 1993, Prodigy, one of the largest producers of computer educational material, said that 300,000 of its two million online users are children. There they find encyclopedias, games, chat forums and interactive books and magazines, such as NOVA, National Geographic and more. There are several “homework helpers” that can access volumes of data at the click of a mouse. The Software Publisher’s Association, a research group based in Washington, D.C., says the market for CD-ROM educational software is skyrocketing. For example, entranced before the computer, a child can explore every inch of an eighteenth century warship, displayed in cross-sectional views, meet the crew, study navigational tools and search for the young stowaway hidden somewhere in the hull. ¶“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. In itself, nothing. I am not against computers. We have dozens of them in our monasteries. My concern is that the student who learns predominantly from the computer receives too little person-to-person nourishment, and is not even obliged to express human feelings anymore. The feelings of love and appreciation, respect and adulation, of thankfulness, acceptance and responsibility can all be suppressed or, worse, never developed during the formative years of life. ¶Since the computer craze began, when Apple produced the Macintosh and Microsoft began marketing software, I have observed the impact on youths of learning mainly from computers rather than people. The outcome is a cool, calculating, almost robotic individual with a blank look in his eyes. He can just turn the computer off anytime and be the smartest one in the family. Does anyone really yet know what registers in the objective and subjective mind of a youth being educated by the computer, who spends nearly all of his waking hours glued to a computer screen? Does anyone care?§
A human teacher would know the student’s state of mind and special gifts or needs, and society would guide him. While teaching English, French, German or any of the fourteen major languages of India, all the teacher’s good qualities go into the student, enriching and blessing him, along with the experience the teacher has gained through the years. When the magic happens, a certain amount “rubs off,” and a life is transformed. This is real education. This is training through sampradāya—people to people, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. This is how it used to be and how it still can be. ¶In a student-teacher relationship, the novice must deal directly with a human, talk to a human, be with a human, and love or hate this human, as the case may be, depending on the student’s evolution or spiritual development, not to mention that teacher’s own personal qualities. But school classes, from the lower grades to the highest are tending to dispense with human contact by replacing humans with machines. These are not just machines to write letters on, design buildings with or do the many other things this remarkable technology can do, but machines of learning that do not have a heart, machines which the child has total control over, machines which parents and teachers sometimes use to subdue or occupy a child for hours, and thus simplify their own duties. ¶That’s the big problem—the complete isolation. He can turn it on. He can turn it off. He can disagree with what is being taught or totally misunderstand, and no one ever knows. These children are deprived of life’s most precious gift, the passing down of knowledge, with respect and love for the knowledge imparted, at certain psychological moments in a child’s life. These children are deprived of the fulfillment gained by learning from a person with a heart, a person yearning to fulfill dharma and pass on his knowledge and, most importantly, his knowing earned through experience and his passion about the subject he ardently wishes to convey to youthful minds. This can never, ever be programmed into any software on the Internet or burned into a CD-ROM. ¶The Information Highway is an uncensored, unsupervised world. In all previous methods of conveying knowledge to children, there was a responsible adult involved, be it a teacher or librarian or parent. But the Internet’s vast spectrum of information is equally available to every individual with access—at last count hundreds of millions. Sadly, we are developing a generation—or two generations, for one is already established—of heartless children, deprived of love: an unhugging, cool, calculating, computer generation exposed to worldly sights that even most adults did not encounter ten years ago. Where will it all lead? That is a question Hindu families around the world are beginning to ask.§
Nintendo—it’s a toy, but it’s not a game. Toys have real influence in shaping young minds and emotions, more than parents realize. When kids play in an open field or in the woods, they are experiencing nature and learning how to relate to natural things. So many messages are going into their minds, so much information is being absorbed. It’s very different when our kids spend their hours alone with popular video games like Nintendo, which work within the subterranean stratum of the subjective mind, aligning vāsanās in the chitta to kill, kill, kill. ¶Nintendo—it awakens the desires to succeed through intimidation and force. Nintendo—it teaches kids that the world is full of enemies to be slayed, opponents to be conquered, attackers to be attacked first. Nintendo—it complements a strategy to develop a nation of terrorists within every home that harbors this asuric mechanism. For those who don’t know, Nintendo is a Japanese-produced video computer system that plays a variety of arcade-type games. And there are many other such games that you can buy on CD-ROM or play interactively on the Internet. ¶To develop sattvic youth for a brave new world, we have recently asked moms and dads and the youths themselves to disarm themselves of toy guns and knives, and of Nintendo and all other kinds of computerized killer games. Among the families in our fellowship, this has been accomplished. Lots of seven-year-old children have burned their guns and dismantled or sold their Nintendos in the name of ahiṁsā, the dharmic principle of not harming others—even in one’s mind, even in one’s dreams—physically, mentally or emotionally. The big games, Nintendo and Genesis, and all the similar computer and video games and toy guns and knives and cannons have been taken out of my followers’ homes and thrown into the garbage cans. ¶Instead of learning the “us-versus-them” world, our children are learning about the “us-helping-them” world of civilized society. It took a little courage, because these games are amazingly popular, and children become attached to them, even addicted. But our homes have all been disarmed, with no more violence masquerading as fun. What about your home? These video and computer games, as well as toy guns and knives and other weapons of death and destruction, educate children that this is the way to live on planet Earth. They learn that to solve a problem, it’s “bang, bang, bang, you’re dead.” You don’t have to reason with anyone, negotiate, compromise or use any form of intelligence. “Bang, bang, bang, you’re dead” solves the problem. Is that what we want them to learn? Playing like this hour after hour teaches children that life is cheap, meaningless. Those with the bang-bang-you’re-dead subconscious mind, how will they ever learn that life is precious? How will we ever teach them that living with asuras is different from living with Śiva? §
The subconscious mind consists of all of our memory patterns. Especially potent are those that are bound to emotions. It is a rather dumb state, for it records and holds only that which is put into it. These memory banks are like a recordable CD or DVD, which for a baby freshly born has nothing upon it at first. But with that first cry, the subconscious is activated and begins to record all the impressions. Those that get there first shape the experiences of later life. ¶Of course, there are positive and creative computer games, but not that many. More are needed. Perhaps there are among our readers programmers who could develop a series of games based on dharma. That would be nice. In the meantime, we may think a Nintendo game or a toy gun is harmless because it does not actually kill anybody. But what it does do is give permission to kill and makes psychological preparations to kill, and that is very dangerous. Survival and conquest by ruthless elimination of competitors become the inner goals. As their vocabulary develops, little ones are speaking of invasion, commandos, assault, combat, war, battle, destruction, using all the words of hurtfulness and violence. No wonder they argue and fight with sisters and brothers instead of getting along. That’s what they learned from their heroes. ¶A Sri Lankan citizen told me a story that shows how war toys and real-life conflicts are not unrelated. For generations there were no war toys in the Hindu communities of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. But when the ethnic clashes began in 1983, guns became popular among kids. They played soldier in the streets, like the big boys, and when they grew up, moved on to real guns. Toy imports from Europe supplied the need, and soon many homes had a toy gun collection. ¶When the Sinhalese army moved through Tamil homes looking for hidden weapons, they were sometimes fooled by the realistic plastic guns. This caused them so much trouble, they took to beating the men of households that had toy guns. Soon the toys became less popular. The world of toys and the world of real war are not always separated. ¶Technology today, especially computer technology, the Internet, can enhance everything you want to do. It is not unlike the ākāśic memory banks of the inner world. Tuning in to the Internet, you can find out almost anything you want to know within a split second. We are communicating electronically and instantaneously with āśramas in the Himalayas and the jungles of South America. It used to take a letter one month to arrive, and we would sometimes wait two to three months to get a reply, if any ever came. Now we are communicating with Rishikesh, high in the Himalayas, and receiving e-mail back within a day, sometimes within minutes. The e-media has enhanced communication tremendously. ¶It has also enhanced pornography. It has enhanced terrorism. It will enhance anything that you want. It is up to you and your powers of decision to decide what you want to put into your subconscious mind and live with, perhaps for the rest of your life. We are not in the agricultural era anymore. We are in the technological age. We are in the communication age. It’s the age of the mind, where the mind is in technology, working through technology. We can’t change that. It’s not going to go away. It is up to each individual to decide within himself how he wants to use the technology available to him. ¶The computer is just like the mind. It has memory, a certain amount of reasoning ability, a certain motivation. But it doesn’t have the controls that you, as a human, are able to exert within yourself, such as willpower and the power of viveka, discrimination, which is so central to our religious tenets. Therefore, ask yourself, what is spirituality to you? What is important to you? What do you want to impress in your inner mind to perhaps manifest in this or your next life? You can use these tools to enhance what is important to you, and thereby benefit not only your own life but the lives of others. §
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/ No, that’s not a typographical error or a foreign language. It’s HINDUISM TODAY’s World Wide Web address. If you have access to a computer, you can read our Hindu family magazine from any of Earth’s hundreds of millions of Internet nodes, for free. True, you would not get all those wonderful photos or art, but the text is there for anyone searching the net for dharma. Years ago, before the Internet really took off, I meditated on what it would mean for Sanātana Dharma and could see a time when Hindus would all be connected on the Internet. An āśrama in Fiji could download explanations for saṁskāras. A yoga society in Orissa would be able to locate graphical information about chakras for a public slide show. A pilgrim could call up a home page with all the sacred sites, temples, tīrthas and āśramas his family can visit on their way back to Bhārat, complete with maps, train schedules and cost of A/C rooms. I saw more, much more. A pañchāngam, sacred Hindu calendar, we all use together, would be available, listing the holy days and festivals. I noted that our own timeline of Hindu history, from Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism, was already on the Net. It has stirred historians to write us many letters and discuss the new way India’s history is being understood. Even now you can access it and search for when Ramakrishna was born, when the Vedas were written down or when South Indian Chola kings set sail for Indonesia. ¶I foresaw interactive courses. A teacher in South Africa could download wonderful resources to enrich the lessons she prepares for her students—photos, maps, Vedic verses, illustrations and sounds, all the things that interest children. How about an encyclopedia of Hinduism online? How about a library of dharma graphics which anyone could log onto, find that perfect piece of art for illustrating a brochure, download it and never leave their desk? The possibilities are endless. ¶Say your daughter just had a new baby and you want a special name. What to do? Search for Hindu names on the Net, through thousands of names on numerous sites, for the perfect name, with the meaning and the right pronunciation. Need a good time to start a business, sign an important contract or leave on a trip? Just call up the WWW home page on astrology for a computer analysis of the auspicious moment. §
The World Wide Web is difficult to say fast, all those w’s one after another. It comes out “wurlwyewep.” The pros just call it the Web. But what is it? I have been learning a little about the Web. It took me a while to get the Internet connection on my Power Macintosh working right, and the monks had to install some special software for me. But soon I was out there on the Infobahn, in the slow lane. I found that the Web is the first user-friendly, interactive global information medium. It extends any individual’s reach, facilitating everything from the sharing of information to finding it. Soon, we hope, all the religionists of the Global Forum for Human Survival and Parliament of World Religions will communicate their thoughts, programs and knowledge on the Web. I remember when in Moscow and Rio de Janiero, at Global Forum gatherings of political and religious leaders, the former US Vice President Al Gore unveiled his vision to expand the Internet, previously only available to the government and universities, into an Information Highway to tie the world together. Congratulations, Mr. Gore. Just three years later your vision of a digital superhighway adds four new users every minute, and we are among them. ¶From HINDUISM TODAY’s home page, by a click of a button you can bring up a page that allows you to write an instant, postage-free letter to the editor. Another click sends you into the vastness of cyberspace. It’s that easy, and easy to get lost, too. Give it a try. They say the Web has changed things completely. The old Internet was OK for physicists, but it was an unfriendly, type-only, black-and-white technical world. The Web added images, color, a variety of typefaces, pictures, designs, animation and buttons that lead to the next destination. Now it’s everybody’s tool. Click on a button and go to a home page of Vedic verses in Bangalore. Click a button there about astrology and suddenly you’re in San Francisco or browsing a London database on āyurveda. Click again and you’re reading a page on Sanskrit studies in Durban. It’s called hyperlinking. I learned how to make bookmarks yesterday—links to connections you have made, kept by a program in case you want to return but don’t recall the address. Just click and you’re there again. Easy. Another nice thing is the Web is so democratic. Whether you are Birla Pvt. Ltd., IBM or Mrs. Bhatt, a poetess from Pune, everyone is equal on the Web. ¶Electronic mail is like having the post office in your house. Messages come and go through the phone lines and can be read almost immediately anywhere in the world. Our institutions use the Web to connect the missions we oversee in several countries. We put new information on the home page in Hawaii, and members in Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka or Germany can access it instantly. Not only that, it’s nearly free. Most of those big fax and phone bills are gone. Hindu institutions are working hard to upgrade to the Web, driven by an amazing group of Hindu engineers who have become a driving force in the Internet world. These cyberspace networks are all interconnected, but totally disorganized and decentralized, just like Hinduism, so everyone will feel at home there! Let’s meet on the “wurlwyewep” and share our experience, vision and tools. ¶The editor of a Jain magazine in London once asked, “Gurudeva, how do you feel about using all this modern technology to promote religion?” I said, we marvel at our ancient handwritten scriptures. The stylus and the olai leaf were modern technology at one point in time, the pen and paper at another, as was the old typewriter at yet another point in time. Now we have computers and the Internet—modern technology capable of bringing the spiritual beings and all religious people of the world closely together wherever they live. This one thing the typewriter could not do, the pen and paper could not do, the stylus and olai leaf did not do. §
Building up the spiritual vibration in the home requires a control of the computers. Here at our Śaivite Hindu monastery in Hawaii, all of the monastics have a computer. When they take their vows, they are given their robes, their beads, their staff of tapas and their Macintosh! This enables us to serve the very best that we can from our tiny little island. At this āśrama we look at our technology as our tools. We control these tools. They do not control us. We use these tools to enhance our religious work, to amplify the Sanātana Dharma and bring it out into the Western world and throughout the world through written publications and on the Internet. Our tools do not dominate our life. We turn them on at a certain time. We turn them off at a certain time. At twelve noon they are turned off and not turned on again until 3:00PM. At 6:30PM, they’re turned off again and not turned on until after worship and intense guided meditation the next morning. On retreat days—two days each week—we don’t use them at all, except possibly for an hour on rare occasions and only for very important things. What does this do? It allows everyone to talk with everyone else, to communicate, to share, to appreciate each other, to work together for the good of all. It allows us to live a balanced life, a human life in which the spirit within us can shine through and we have time to enjoy the sunset on our 459-acre spiritual sanctuary on the Garden Island of Kauai, to listen to the song of a bird, to meditate and enjoy the company of one another, even in this technological age. ¶Perhaps the most prevalent electronic media is television. A family watching television together is a togetherness, provided the program is a wholesome choice that everyone enjoys. You can laugh and talk together and discuss what you watched afterwards. But there should be an afterwards and a before. That balances the mesmerizing capacity of television. Television shouldn’t consume all of the family’s time. Before the TV is turned on in the evening, the family should sit together, talk about the day, acknowledge or praise each other and mutually decide what will be viewed. Afterwards, some time should be taken to discuss what was watched and to explain it to the children, especially if they are young, allowing them to partake of the wisdom of the parents. Especially if they see a program you don’t approve of, sit them down afterwards and talk it over with them, discuss the values portrayed in relation to our Śaivite values. Let them be aware of other points of view. This is your duty. ¶Treat the television like you would going to a movie: the whole family gets in the car as if they are going to a big event. They drive to the movie house, buy the tickets, some popcorn and soda, have a wonderful time and come home and enjoy one another’s company. ¶Children should not be allowed to watch TV constantly, but made to live a balanced life that includes exercise, games and outdoor activities. Some children can and do watch TV for many hours each day, filling their minds with all kinds of ideas and neglecting their studies. It is up to the parents to set wise rules for TV and to enforce those rules for the benefit of the child’s mind. One such wise rule is to limit daily watching to one or two hours. ¶Use television if you wish, but use it wisely and you will avoid these problems. Learn to control television. Realize that it is a great instrument for entertainment, but a dangerous instrument if it overcomes you, if it fills up your subconscious mind, if it brings alien thoughts into your home and upsets your family. ¶While TV has enormous negative potential, music does as well. The type of music played in the home and the message it delivers is crucial. Ideally, it should be beautiful Hindu music played on traditional instruments by Śaiva souls. Great care should be exercised to exclude the crass music and lyrics of lower consciousness. Whatever you listen to brings you into one state of consciousness or another. §