My virtual wanderings and a comment by Peter on my previous post started me thinking.  It’s amazing how much of our daily world doesn’t actually exist.

Take a bank account, imagine that I put £200  into an account.  OK, all good so far.  So I can walk into any branch, or up to a cashpoint and take out that £200.  But what does that say about the actual existence of that £200?  The £200 I get back isn’t the physical notes I put in, if I walked in a month later and ask to see “my £200″, I imagine I’d get a very odd look.

However, even those notes were only the promise of £200, when you read them it says “I promise to pay the bearer on demand”, etc, etc.  So all it is is promises, not reality.

Another example is a church.  Now, a church isn’t a church till it’s consecrated, if it’s deconsecrated the church isn’t there anymore.  Even though the building is there, it’s just a place that a Church can be said to exist.  But in my view, the Church only really exists in our heads.  If you separate out the components, you’ll get lots of pews, glass windows, rafters, doors, etc.  But where’s the Church?  It doesn’t exist outside our heads.

My final example is our employers.  Many people work for a company, a company has assets (buildings, furniture,etc) and it’s staff and contracts and legal existence.  But if you do the separation thing on your company, and yes you can use dynamite if you really want, but it’s nothing to do with me 3;-), again lots of assets, some staff, some buildings, but where’s the company?  Again, it’s in our heads.  It amazes me how much of our daily world doesn’t exist, it’s just fairy tales that we’ve all agreed to buy into.

From a Buddhist perspective, I think I shouldn’t be surprised, we are told that all things are impermanent, and warned against attachment.  I’m realising now how bad it is that we get ourselves so worked up and stressed over clinging to things that don’t have any real existence.  Blimey, how much of a mess are we in?

I’ve had a little time off from work this week, so as well as my favourite holiday pastime of not getting out of bed. I spent a little time asking and maybe answering a question. What good is Second Life and can a person who is interested in spiritual awakening make any use of it? I think the answer is a definite yes. Read on…..

There are several groups of Buddhists in Second Life, I joined “SL Buddhists” and later “Skeptical Buddhists”. A quick search turned up some meditation gardens and even a whole island devoted to dharma. I’ll write about Bodhi Island first.

Bodhi Island is run by a non profit group, it’s an entire island in Second Life (hereafter SL) devoted to Buddhist teachings, as a quick aside, SL is made up of large islands, which are subdivided into plots so residents can own and/or rent property of their own. teleported straight to the island and was deposited on a Lotus flower amid some trees. After taking in my surroundings and touching a few landmarks for more information, I started to explore. As I wandered the island, I found gems embedded in the landscape which when touched gave me snippets of Buddhist teachings in the Theravada tradition. As I reached one point in the landscape, a Dharma talk started streaming, i found it pleasing to just sit and listen for a while.

There are hidden areas all over the island for the determined visitor to find, which made my subsequent visits very enjoyable, as I found more hidden nooks that I’d missed. I think that this island just shows what can be achieved when someone thinks creatively, further, there are examples of architecture on this island that most visitors will probably never get to see up close. I’ve illustrated two of these in the screenshots, but there are more. Second Life has been criticised for being frivolous and of little value, but I’m finding that it can provide new and interesting ways of putting information across. I would never have had the chance to walk round and examine the buildings and structures I’ve seen faithfully reproduced on Bodhi island with using Second Life.

While wandering in SL I had the  good fortune to find a Buddhist sangha, The Skeptical Buddhists,  that meets regulary for both discussion and meditation and was able to join them for a discussion meeting.  Once again this brought home the fact that SL is a new angle on communication, reference notes were distributed quickly and effectively and we were able to review the history of what had been said. I found it particularly gratifying, given my sometime unreliable memory, to be able to copy and paste the chat into a text document so I can reread it later!

I think this has been a good start, I’m looking forward to seeing where this journey leads me!