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We humans have been looking in the mirror for a long time, constructing selves that we project out to the world. It\u2019s an especially developed characteristic of our species \u2013 the particular ways we fake being somebody important \u2013 like male peacocks and their crazy tails.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve been focussed on studying Hakuin Zenji this past year, one of the striking things I\u2019ve noticed about him is how modern he was in just this way. The spread and availability of wood-block printing, the big technological breakthrough of his time, he used like a Tweet master, telling tall and wild stories, playing his audience, using exaggerated speech, presenting himself as a caricature of a Zen master in order to spread the truth of the buddhadharma that he discovered through his many awakenings.<\/p>\n
Hakuin was a very early adopter in what has become a necessary function of our modern social media mania. In yesterday\u2019s New York Times, Ruth Whippman has an excellent reflection piece about this:\u00a0Everything Is for Sale Now. Even Us<\/a>.\u00a0Whippman notes that she, like many of us, \u201c\u2026 Ambivalently \u2018maintain[s] a presence on social media,\u2019 attempting to sell a semi-fictional, much more appealing version of myself in the vain hope that this might somehow help me sell some actual stuff at some unspecified future time.\u201d<\/p>\n Hakuin, though, didn\u2019t seem to have been ambivalent at all. Indeed, he seems to have loved the show. Now, though, this capacity to project a social-media self construct, is more and more closely linked with livelihood.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think \u2018gig economy,\u2019 we tend to picture,\u201d writes Whippman, \u201can Uber driver or a TaskRabbit tasker rather than a lawyer or a doctor,\u00a0but in reality, this scrappy economic model \u2014 grubbing around for work, all big dreams and bad health insurance \u2014 will soon catch up with the bulk of America\u2019s middle class\u2026. Being sold to can be socially awkward, for sure, but when it comes to corrosive self-doubt, being the seller is a thousand times worse. The constant curation of a salable self demanded by the new economy can be a special\u00a0hellspring\u00a0of anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n When we think \u201cgig economy,\u201d we probably also don\u2019t think about Zen teachers, mindfulness instructors, or Tibetan lamas, but we\u2019re all in this thing together. Not long ago, Henry David Thoreau wrote (so quaintly now),<\/p>\n \u201cTo do things \u2018railroad fashion\u2019 is now the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos<\/a>, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.)\u201d<\/p>\n The train of the social-media self construct has and will continue to influence how the buddhadharma is presented and how teachers hustle their buddhadharma, how we deal with making a living. It is one big fat locomotive whirring down the track, encouraging inflation and even fictionalized bios as it whirs.Your teacher\u2019s \u201cmonastic training\u201d might be a long weekend at a motel in Vegas. Really. I am not making this up! Such wanton bio engorgement used to be a specialty of (mostly white) men, but now I also see women doing it too. And if our bios are inflated, then how about how the\u00a0social-media self construct impacts who, what, and how we teach?<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the future,\u201d writes Whippman, \u201cand research suggests that it\u2019s a rat race that is already taking a severe toll on our psyches.\u00a0A 2017 study<\/a>\u00a0suggests that this trend toward increasingly market-driven human interaction is making us paranoid, jittery, self-critical and judgmental.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah! You think dharma teaching is just zenning away in the white cloud of the absolute until the next teacher dana comes in? As for me, I\u2019m one of the lucky ones, able to live simply, and practice and teach full time, thanks to the Vine of Obstacles<\/a>. Living the dream, indeed.<\/p>\n When I look around, though, especially at the younger generation, I see a lot of hustle and anxiety. Instead of a life focussed on practicing zazen, studying the ancients, offering the buddhadharma to a community, and playing in dharma arts, many modern dharma teachers are stressed out like Whippman:<\/p>\n \u201cLike many modern workers, I find\u00a0that\u00a0only a small percentage of my job is now actually doing my job. The rest is performing a million acts of unpaid micro-labor that can easily add up to a full-time job in itself. Tweeting and sharing and schmoozing and blogging. Liking and commenting on others\u2019 tweets and shares and schmoozes and blogs.\u201d<\/p>\n What to do? One thing is to be like Hakuin and use the media rather than be used by it. That\u2019s so easy to say, but so hard to practice. I often say to my wife that when I really retire, I\u2019ll disconnect everything. She usually says something like, \u201cUh-huh,\u201d and rolls her eyes.<\/p>\n Because there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n