Editorial - Macrimination 

Zen and Your Macintosh

By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor

There' s a story about the Buddha and farmer who came to visit him, seeking relief from his suffering. He explains all of his problems to the awakened one and waits for the Buddha to give him the magic answer.

The Buddha tells him he can't help him with his problems, however. Everyone has 83 problems, he said, including himself. Angry, the farmer asks him "What kind of a teacher are you? How is this supposed to help me?"

The Buddha told the farmer he might be able to help with the 84th problem he has. The farmer asks what that problem might be.

"You don't want to have any problems."

It may seem a bit strange to bring something like Buddhism into a column about computing, but it's not really. Admittedly, I kind of stumbled across the teachings of the Buddha recently through a dumbed-down book by Steve Hagen called Buddhism Plain and Simple. While not the exact teachings of the Buddhist Dharma, it explained all of the concepts in a way that made me realize I already carried some of the same thoughts about the world. It was like coming home, in a way.

All of us who use computers -- Mac users, PC users, Linux users, BeOS users -- are often like the farmer in that story. We come to computing expecting that the latest downloads and updates will take care of all of the machine's problems, and we get angry when they don't. If you don't believe me, join a computer-related e-mail list, or stop by the message boards on Apple's site, MacFixit or even on this site. Many people say OS X is terrible because it has this problem, or OS 9 was terrible because it had that problem.

A lot of our anger stems from the fact that we don't want to have any problems. If we acknowledge them and work through them in a logical manner, they eventually cease being problems.

But new bugs always pop up.

I'm going to really be simplifying things here, so I hope I don't offend anyone's beliefs with my newbie interpretations of the teachings of the Buddha. The Buddha taught of Four Noble Truths of life, which we will loosely apply to computing.

First, life means suffering. Your computer is impermanent, just as your life is. It will suffer from crashes, software will have bugs and eventually, it will be replaced by a newer and better one, or it will suffer an untimely death from a malfunctioning part (i.e., your fly-back transformer blows on one of the original iMacs). Your computer has good times and bad times, just as you do. You must accept this.

Second, the origin of suffering is attachment. You should not get too attached to your computer, and your computer has to be realistic in understanding that when the new IBM 970 chips start appearing in newer Macs, it will probably be replaced. This also goes for software and OS updates. Much of our suffering comes from our attachments to the way things are, and trying to exert too much control over our computers. Download software updates, it is necessary to fix the bugs, even though new ones will come. Do move on to newer computers and newer operating systems, such as OS X. By clinging to something old and irrelevant, you are denying the fact that your computer, and the way you use it, is always changing. There is no single computer, but they are all a part of the larger whole of the Universe, just as we are. There really is no difference between OS 9 and OS X -- or even Windows (OK, maybe I'm pushing it here).

Third, the cessation of suffering is attainable through this dispassion. Think of it as just accepting reality for what it is -- not trying to attach some sort of meaning or cause to it. When something is wrong with your computer or the way a program or an OS works, we often spend a lot of time on the discussion boards discussing whether it was Apple's fault, a third-party developer's fault or even a user's fault. Does it matter whose fault it is? Fix the problem. And don't be angry with yourself or others for arguing about fault -- this anger only causes the circle to keep going around and around. Have you ever been involved in one of those escalating e-mail list discussions that end in a huge, burning flame that gets a member kicked out by the List Mom?

Under the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, one can perfect his or her dispassion on many different levels until reaching Nirvana, something which those of us who have never attained will never understand.

The fourth truth is that there is a path to the cessation of suffering. It is the middle way between those who would over-indulge and those who would deny themselves. It is often called the Eightfold Path, which maybe I'll tackle in a future installment. This path can extend over many lifetimes -- or the owning of many different computers -- and will end in a release from the cycle of suffering caused by craving and ignorance.

Maybe I'm over-simplifying a bit here. But in a world where computer users are starting to define themselves by their choices in hardware and software, a world in which hot debate continues over whose vision of computing is better, maybe we're all looking in the wrong direction for the truth.

Since computers are a part of reality and created by us, they are just like us -- imperfect and impermanent. No amount of willing, anger or flaming will change this.

Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.