I just got back from the first ever Buddhist Geeks Conference held at University of the West in Rosemead, a suburb of L.A.
It’s four minutes past midnight, and in 6 hours I will be on the road, in everybody’s least favorite jam: traffic. I really shouldn’t be up blogging, but, 1) I just had a big bowl of pho, 2) Hokai told us to (you don’t say no to Hokai), and 3) I want to capture a few things while they’re fresh on my mind before I procrastinate and *think* about writing but actually never do.
What are those things? In no particular order, they are:
- Nerd/Geek culture and Buddhism
- The concept of being a Buddhist
- Getting in on the ground floor
Nerd/Geek culture and Buddhism
The two groups, or sub-cultures, I frequent the most are Design/Technology and Yoga/Buddhist. To break it down further, in the Design/Tech world, I feel most comfortable in the Internet culture of memes, web 2.0, and startups. In the Yoga/Buddhist world, I’m a mutt with a Vipassana bent. Without telling you my practice history, suffice it to say that I have been following Shinzen Young’s teaching closely for about 5 years.
I don’t, or at least didn’t, think there’d be a group of people who are so interested, informed, and invested in both of these worlds, that I could meet up and banter with. I know they are out there, but they are far and few in between. There are two others in the Seattle area that I’ve found who fit the bill: David Tolmie (@dtolmie) and Rommel de Leon (@c4chaos), and the three of us made the trek to Buddhist Geeks together. But really, that’s 3 of us, in a metropolitan area of 600,000+ people. That’s roughly 0.000005% of the population.
I even have two separate Twitter accounts, @yogageekgirl for all yoga and spiritual related stuff, and @dragonc for all occasions, including my life, technology, entrepreneurialship, design, rock climbing, soccer, etc. I have two blogs, one at nikkichau.com and one at nikkiyoga.com, and I actually had a hard time deciding where to publish this post (#firstworldproblems).
When asked why, I often say that it’s to not inundate one group of people with something that they at least don’t care about and at worst offended by. (Insert your duality, non-duality jokes here.)
At Buddhist Geeks 11, however, my system fell apart, because the conference was a collision of the circles that I’ve drawn apart. It was now a Venn Diagram. David asked me what Twitter account I would be tweeting from, and I said I didn’t know. My confusion reached its height when Rohan Gunatillake mentioned the Satipatthana Sutta *and* Y Combinator in his talk. Mind. blown.
To demonstrate this to you, I sent a tweet earlier tonight asking if it would be obnoxious to have a shirt that says “Meditation, it works, bitches” in the same spirit as xkcd’s “Science, it works, bitches“. I tweeted as @yogageekgirl, and in hindsight, I should have tweeted from @dragonc. I should have known that some of my followers on @yogageekgirl would object to my use of “bitches”, but I was afraid that some of my followers on @dragonc would roll their eyes at the idea that meditation works (it does, bitches).
The results were what you might expect, from Works For Me (abbreviated, of course), to, “Omg so offensive and not yogic!”
In any case, being at the Buddhist Geeks conference, I felt… relief. I still had to figure out whom I was talking to, to some degree, but I felt more free talking about Ceiling Cat and Double Rainbows in the same sentence as dharma, and that, is a really great feeling. It’s like when Diane Musho Hamilton said, “It’s good I can say karmic in this room without explaining or apologizing.”
I’m thinking of that scene in X-Men, First Class, when the mutants found each other and realized that they didn’t have to hide who they are, or a part of who they are, and that they did belong to something.
The concept of being a Buddhist
I have never considered myself to be a Buddhist, and it’s possible I’m simply in denial. I’ve listened to Joseph Goldstein’s “Abiding in Mindfulness” in the past year in my car commuting to and from work until the CDs scratched up. Rommel and I once played a game where he asked me to identify when Shinzen Young said what in his 20-hour lecture: The Science of Enlightenment.
I’m not saying that listening to some MP3s is analogous to doing or putting anything to practice, and I have, as Robert Frost would say, miles to go before I sleep (or wake). I’m saying that I’m highly influenced by the teaching of the Buddha, and I’m committed to not merely treat it as intellectual entertainment, but train and put it to good use. Does this make me a Buddhist? Well, if walks like a duck…
I think I’m afraid of calling myself a Buddhist because I don’t want to be thought of as being religious, or rather, a religious fundamentalist. I’m deathly afraid of being clumped with the dogma of the church, of the temple, or the mosque.
One of the most impressionable things I’ve ever read is Voltaire’s Priere a Dieu, Prayer to God, where he asks God that “those who cover themselves in a white robe to say we must love God do not hate those who say the same thing under a black coat.” “que ceux qui couvrent leur robe d’une toile blanche pour dire qu’il faut t’aimer ne détestent pas ceux qui disent la même chose sous un manteau de laine noire”.
I’m quite aware that religions, at their roots, teach the same thing, for us to love one another. But I’d rather not be associated with their antics, with their ways about doing it. I’d rather be Godless and try to live as a sane, decent human. Besides, I worshipped Alanis Morisette plenty in my teenage angst in the 90s already.
But back to Buddhism, is it a religion? Am I a Buddhist? If I went to a Buddhist Conference, does that turn me into one? Does it out me from the Buddhist closet? Needless to say, I had my reservations about going. But, I saw that Shinzen Young was going to be there, and it was going to be my chance of finally meeting him in person (or, meatspace), so I thought, what the heck. And I’m really glad I did.
Have I resolved my Atheist-Buddist Complex? I don’t know. But I do know that tomorrow, I’ll be more comfortable telling people how I spent my weekend, maybe while blasting Nina Simone, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, don’t let me be misunderstood.”
It’s good to get in on the ground floor
This is what Shinzen Young said in his opening keynote when he was referring to the beginning of the convergence of Buddhist thoughts and scientific discovery. For me, this also means that it’s good to get in on the ground floor of the Buddhist Geeks Conference.
The conference was impeccably planned and executed. The organizers, the volunteers, everything worked like clockwork. The whole thing was seamless. Even the “Time Machine could not complete backup” message that popped up in the middle of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s closing keynote seemed serendipitously, or suspiciously, planned.
Jonathan Ive once said, “We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.” The Buddhist Geeks team seemed to have embodied that spirit in hosting us. Major kudos to them.
I appreciated the small and intimate size of the conference. There were only about 160 or so of us. It was possible, if you were really motivated, to talk to everybody, or nearly everybody. There was a distinct lack of commercialism, which was a breath of fresh air. There was a small room where you could buy Buddhist type books, sure, but it wasn’t blatantly in your face. You didn’t have to walk through lines of “new, specialized, temperature-sensitive zafu”, or “jade mala beads blessed by the priests in the lost mountains of the Himalayas” to get to the auditorium.
This conference is fantastic, and I do hope Vince and Co do it again, and again and again and again. And yet, I already mourn the seemingly-inevitable exhibition hall that one might see at a Yoga Journal conference, where “superstar spiritual teachers” came with an entourage and didn’t stand in the same coffee line as you talking about where they grew up.
Hey, I’m no fool. I’m just a girl standing (sitting?) next to another girl chasing after a dollar like most of us. (Well, maybe I am a fool after all). I’m all for capitalism and investment and sponsors and whatever it takes to get something like this going long and strong (TWSS).
I’m saying that it is nice to witness the first incarnation of the conference, because one of these days, it just might well be held at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, where thousands and thousands of people will come, and we will look back and say, remember when this rock band used to play in a coffee shop in the burb to an audience of five? Yeah, those were the days.
In the meantime, did I say I’m glad I went? Yes, only 50 times, Nikki. Hey, it’s almost 3 a.m., and I’ve been listening to people argue about Vajrayana and Mahamudra and Tantra and whether we should or should not mention the E word the past two days, give me a break.
What I would say is the most important thing I got out of the weekend is renewed vigor to practice. Once in a while, I need a kick in the pants, something to rouse my practice, and I’m really starting to understand why the third jewel is the Sangha. If nothing else, they keep you accountable, they keep you going.
When asked if the audience could hear no other teachings, what three things should they hear, Shinzen Young said, “Practice practice practice.” To that I say, Amen. How’s that for cross fertilization of Buddhism? (And now I want to go play FarmVille.)
P.S. next time, let’s do some hacking, like this! Hey, maybe like a Buddhist Geeks “B Combinator” Hackathon? (Hugh would approve.)
As I get older I’m less squeamish about talking about creativity in spiritual terms, rather than just “because it’s cool and sexy” terms. – Hugh MacLeod
