Well, I’ve made a second visit to Second Life, I completed the orientation area and seem to be getting along quite well. The system is not the fastest or most stable thing and as the content is streamed from Linden Labs servers, the look can often leave a bit to be desired as things play catch up. I can’t help thinking they might’ve been better off using the Quake 3 engine.

It seems that a number of educational institutions (e.g. the Open University) and companies (e.g. IBM) already have a presence in Second Life, there is also an economy of sorts. The currency is called “Linden Dollars” and apparently can be changed for US Dollars, there are people who actually earn a living through working in Second Life.

There seem to be areas catering to all sorts of pursuits, from adventure, to education and even more adult pursuits.

The whole thing seems to be very open ended to me, and I feel that if you go in thinking it’s a goal oriented game, you’ll be disappointed, free exploration seems to be the order of the day.

OK, this could get interesting. I downloaded the Linux Client for Second Life last night. It’s been a while since I last wandered into SL, and that was only a brief trip right before Duran Duran did a concert in there.

As my system is a bit meatier than the last one I tried this with, I decided to give it another go. As it turns out there are Buddhists in there and I’m sure there are many places of interest to visit.

It seems that Second Life is aiming to be a 3d complement to the 2d web, admittedly my limited experience so far is the orientation island, but so far I’m finding it easier than previously and I have to say it’s growing on me a lot more this time than it did last time.

Let the journey begin…..

I was pondering Right Speech the other day, I had expressed an opinion to a friend and was a little less than diplomatic in getting my point across. I make no apologies for this, I was blunt because I was concerned.

When we think of Right Speech, we think of sweet words and gentle diplomacy. This is one way of seeing Right Speech and it’s a good one, I wish this was the only kind of speech I ever had to hear or use. The best managers are like this, you don’t even realise you’ve been told off. Occasionally though, it’s better to blunt,you need to just say it.

Right Speech is, in my view, more about the underlying intention. What motivation underlies your speech itself? This is more important than the words themselves, softly spoken words with an unwholesome intent are far more harmful than bluntness, even swearing, but done with wholesome intent. I’ve said this before, we need to try and look beyond the actual style of the delivery to the substance of the message.

But I’m being one pointed, Right Speech could easily have been called Right Communication as fully half of it is listening, how can you respond to a person in Right Speech if you don’t hear with they’re saying? I think here we have to honestly recognise that a lot of the time we hear what we want to hear, not what is really being said.

Think about my example above of the swearing, imagine outspoken comedians; these folks can have a message, Bill Hicks certainly did, but it’s easier to dismiss them because of the language used. This failure to hear, does not, in my view, constitute Right Speech.

I think the bit of right speech I identify with is “if you can’t improve on silence, say nothing” or as I have heard the Greeks say “he who knows best says nothing”, I think often we talk too much and have too much to say about nothing, it’s the reason I keep my blog posts short and if I find I have more to say I just make follow on posts.

My last thought for now on Right Speech then, is to shamelessly pinch a quote from the Gnostics, they were talking about the name of their true god, but it fits my purposes quite nicely as well: “You will hear it in the silence”.

Photo by Joshua Davies.

After my conversation with Metta (see the comments on my previous post), I started thinking about ethics. I’ve always been uncomfortable with people trying to turn ethics in a list of rules and nail it down too much, in my opinion this can encourage people not to think, simply to follow.

This was one of the main things that turned me away from mainstream Christianity, the view that the book, the list of rules, is the final word on everything. There’s no account of the situation, of the moment, just the unbending rules. An example given to me was imagine that you are in an occupied country during the second world war, harbouring a family of Jews. Your ethical system has several commandments, including being forbidden to kill or cause a death and being forbidden to lie.

One day, the Gestapo turn up at your door looking for Jews, putting you in a paradox, keeping one of your commandments involves breaking another. Being truthful kills several people, saving the family involves lying, either option compromises your ethics in some way. Of course, if those commandments were guidelines, thus recognising that there are exceptional situations, there wouldn’t as much of a problem.

I remember an atheist from the Orkney islands demonstrating an breathtakingly simple paradox that demonstrates the problem with the idea that the book is the final word on everything and cannot be disagreed with. Admittedly he used it to invalidate the way the Christianity is currently practised, but more on that another time.

This is one of the things that moved me to look at Zen Buddhism, the emphasis is on the day to day practice not so much on the literature. That, for me, is the point that a rigid ethical system misses, ethics are applied in the moment. A ethical system has to be flexible, there has to be give and take I prefer to stick to a few basic guidelines and then take it from there.

It goes a little deeper than that consider the way we usually compartmentalise our ethics, the classic example is the cats and birds scenario. Cats hunt and eat birds and other small animals, now suppose we decide that the the ethical thing to do is to stop the cats killing these animals, sounds good yes? No more cute little furry animals die and we’re all happy.

Hmm. Are we though? By compartmentalising our ethics and failing to see the wider view, we’ve missed the point that predation by cats kept the populations of smaller animals in check. Unchecked, their populations will expand rapidly outstripping the food supply, they’ll starve.

It seems to me that the best way to hold an ethical course is to be flexible and to try and keep an eye on the bigger picture.

I had a dangerous experience on the way to work today. Part of doing meditation is having old emotions released, I personally have found that it doesn’t always happen during the sitting though. This happened to me today while driving, a blast of anger and impatience that almost caused an accident.

So I took a look round Blackle and found something very interesting. Most talk of meditation and emotions is in terms that I personally consider to be less than ideal, the words ‘control’ and ‘cure’ are used and I personally think that this isn’t the way to approach this.

I feel that the word ‘control’ can lead to repression, something I have been guilty of in the past, that’s not the way to go. I have similar feelings about the idea of “cure”, as if emotion is a disease of some sort, something to get rid of.

Emotions are a part of our being and while we may not like or feel proud of some of them, they are not an enemy to be controlled or a malady to be removed, they’re an integral part of who we are. I’ve found that the best method is to allow them to arise, then try to observe them, nothing more, just observe. The act of observing moves you a little more in the third party and allows you to let go of the emotion when appropriate. This sounds a heck of a lot easier than it is, mind you, but I’ve found that a regular meditation practice stands you in good stead.

That, for me is the ticket, that releasing. Think about it, if you’re trying to control or cure or dominate your emotions, then you’re not letting them go when they’re no longer appropriate; that sounds like a sure way to cause emotional problems to me.

There’s a saying “Knowledge is power”, I’ve been starting to disagree with it recently. I don’t know about you, but in my line of work a great deal of emphasis is given to skills and certifications. Do you know this package or operating system? The field of IT changes rapidly and it can be a full time job trying to keep up with it, furthermore it’s almost seen as an unforgivable transgression not to know something, you can never admit to that. But, I’m reminded of some old anecdotes from a friend in the industry of certified “IT Professionals” who were frankly useless at the job. They had the knowledge, they were certified, but still……

The Maasai people have a saying, “One head cannot contain all knowledge”, I think we need to take a different approach; not only in order to cope and keep pace with change, but to get past this fixation with knowledge.

I’ve found that the best approach is practise the basics, whilst taking the view “I don’t need to know everything, but I know how to find out if I need to.” You have to try to put aside the ego driven desire for more knowledge for the sake of it. In short, I’ve come to the opinion that it’s not knowledge, but the attitude of the individual. Knowledge isn’t power, the ability to apply knowledge is where the true power lies, this is why I admire the Zen approach of emphasising real world daily experience in the moment over abstract knowledge.

We apply knowledge in the moment, not in the past or the future, in my IT experience I’ve found a solid knowledge of the basics can go a heck of a long way when combined with good experience.

Thanks to Dragonphoenix over at My 2.2 Cents, I’ve been nominated for a Thinking Blogger award, which I accept humbly and gratefully.

You can find out more about this award at The Thinking Blog. Interesting to read that it cheesed off Technorati, does that make us part of a Counterculture of some sort? It’s an amusing thought isn’t it?

Part of the deal is that I nominate 5 blogs of my own (in no particular order), so here goes:

Drops of Water. Becca’s blog, gentle and deceptively powerful like flowing water.

A Barefootman. Lewis’s blog, inactive now, though I hope he returns to blogging, we are much poorer without him.

Surfing the Tao. Imagine you are Neo, the words “Wake up Neo, the Matrix has you” appear on your screen. Meet the woman doing the typing, Angela’s blog is truly eye and mind opening.

The Buddha Diaries PeteratLarge, evolving from The Bush Diaries, he’s right Buddha is much better company, deeply insightful.

ThinkBuddha.org The wayward blog of Will Buckingham. Decidedly Buddish, and very thought provoking.

Well that’s me done. Time to get some Faithless onto Rhythmbox….