Twitter -- my path to enlightenment

Some people consider my new found Twittering to be a useless waste of time. By "some people" I mainly mean my wife.

She hasn't realized yet, as I have, that Twitter is much more than an easy means for me to cast 140 characters or less of what I'm doing into cyberspace on a whim.

Clearly, it is my path to enlightenment.

I say this after having pursued daily meditation, vegetarianism, and other spiritual practices for some forty years (longer, if one considers that being almost continually stoned on pot or psychedelics in college is a spiritual practice).

Now, of course, I tweet about my meditation. Plus other minutia of daily life, such as the mystery of dog pooping behavior.

Thus I have embraced the Zen emphasis on here and now. Which, updating a famous aphorism, may be stated as "Chop wood and carry water -- then tell your Twitter followers: Just chopped wood and carried water."

Well, some people (let's name them Laurel) might say that simply doing something is more Buddhist'ly present in the moment than doing it and also telling the Twitter world what you've done.

Perhaps. But this presumes a distinction between (1) reality and (2) 140 character or less descriptions of reality.

Does not the Heart Sutra tell us that emptiness is form, and form emptiness? So how is posting a tweet about my life different from my life? Eventually I am confident that a Twitter satori will lead to a realization: My Twittering is me, and I am my Twittering.

Additionally, I am learning humility and furthering ego-loss. Currently I have six Twitter followers on OregonBrian. John McCain has 334,591.

Yet only a few times a day, around a couple of dozen (before noon, I mean; more times later), do I lament how few followers I have, and wonder why my pleadings to almost everyone I come in contact with ("paper or plastic?" "I don't care, just follow me on Twitter") have fallen on such deaf ears.

Like a prophet who is unrecognized in his own land, but continues to preach to the empty desert, I send a daily tweet out into the barrenness of my Twitter realm.

I scoff at John Mayer's assertion that "Twitter is silly and dumb." Especially this quote of his:

"If you really think that Twitter is the pathway to spiritual enlightenment, well...It’s one step away from sending pictures of your poop."

Ah, Mr. Mayer, I have been so close to taking that step. (When I wrote that post I toyed with the idea of posting an image of the inside of my colon, the source of my poop, but ended up deciding against it -- though if I hear a chorus of demands, I'd be glad to reconsider.)

So apparently I'm just the sort of person who will be able to achieve enlightenment through Twittering.

Which reminds me...I've got to put up a tweet about this blog post!

Comments

[Randy]

Twitter is the new haiku

[Brian]

Randy, so true. And immediate. I could find another guy also pissed about missing the first half of Lost on DirecTV tonight:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=lost+directv

The search feature is a cool part of Twitter. Should be more prominently displayed.