Hi.
As you all know by know, there's going to be an "all online priest ordination" over on the treeleaf sangha.
The general public hasn't really caught up and some may not even care enough of it.
One who has on the other hand is Nathan over at Dangerous harvest.
The interesting is not what he writes, but what there is discussed in the commentsection of the blogpost.
The heart of the discussion, i think, is about the real-virtual world being more real than the virtual-real world.
The real-virtual world being where we live our lives and the virtual-real world being the interbased world we also live our lives, so to speak.
The discussion being presented there is much as expected where people are more or less stuck in their own views of how things should be, not as they are.
But think about where it would lead us if we dropped all thoughts of here/there, real/virtual and now/then.
Where would that lead us?
The other thing they bring up is the teacher-student relationship, which i think is really interesting.
What makes an real-virtual teacher better than an virtual-real teacher?
Don't get me wrong, in some cases, so far as i've seen, one teacher is better in some instances, the other in other.
What they are remains to be seen.
Another question is why it so important to some people about having an real-virtual teacher rather than an virtual-real one?
With the technologies used today, there is not much difference in having an virtual-real or an real-virtual teacher in many aspects.
As one of those that has been intearcting with several virtual-real teachers, there is not much you can't do, short of being physically prodded by the teacher or being hit with the kyosaku.
Maybe that's one app you can get for your computer, a small tazerthing..
Mtfbwy
Fugen
I'm interested in seeing what happens with all of this. It's often foolish to dismiss things before they even happen - which is what some are doing.
SvaraRaderaBut I do think the resistance online practice in general, and to priest ordination in particular, is pretty steep. I mentioned online practice to my sangha's teacher, who said she was interested in all this, but it's "only surface practice." Another sangha member mentioned online sesshin, and our teacher said "why don't these people just get over here and sit in the flesh and blood already!" Her views are commonplace I think, so whatever happens online in the near future, I'd expect there will be a lot of instant negative judgment or just ignoring going on.