Computer Science
Buddhism is the study of the way the mind works
The mental structures that are used in computer science, particularly in working with relational database and artificial intelligence, are very similar to exercises that are done in Buddhist monasteries. If you’re studying computer science, it’s literally like studying Buddhism, as you study, you will find that it will develop your mind. It makes your mind very strong.
“…in the beginning, it’s explained to the student as simply meditating, leading a happy, bright, life, accessing higher energy fields, moving the kundalini through the chakras and so on. That’s all true, of course, in the preliminary stages. But as you advance in practice, it’s necessary to develop certain faculties of mental discrimination. One has to be able to hold a large number of relational concepts simultaneously in the mind, and in the more advanced states, it’s necessary to be able to grid, to literally unlock realities and dimensions with the power of your mind. It isn’t just a physical power that does this. It’s an intelligence. And you have to become very subtle to do this; your mind has to be extremely flexible.”
Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
In Buddhist practice in monasteries, there are many exercises that we do to develop our mental powers so that we can meditate extremely well and go into other dimensions and other states of mind that are ecstatic and lead to enlightenment. It’s necessary, if you are really going to meditate well, to do those exercises, which is why people always lived in monasteries–so they’d have the time. And also there’s an environment that’s helpful for practice, and teachers are available.
In the Buddhist monasteries, normally a great deal of time is spent practicing mandala meditation. You learn to visualize and hold simultaneous concepts, usually visual concepts, in the mind during meditation. And after many years of doing this, the mind is developed in a specific way that enables you to pass through the dimensions into the higher planes of light and into the enlightened stages of attention.
Relational database work, artificial intelligence and related fields in computer science, really involve the same mindset, particularly artificial intelligence. What you are doing in AI is creating a mind, hopefully as pure a mind as possible, for a computer. You are replicating the way the mind works. And the mathematical fields that are adjacent to computer science, chaos theory, things like that – and also just the ability to program at that level – requires a high degree of development. If you combine that with the practice of morning and evening meditation, you will advance very rapidly in spiritual practice, and at the same time, you will work in an environment that is not as draining as many careers are, and it’s extremely lucrative and it’s fun.
“What I’m suggesting is that life is like a giant computer. The computer is nothing without the software. The computer is just a big piece of metal, tubes, transistors, chips, diodes, and it sits there and it doesn’t do much. What gives the computer life is the software, the programs that we run on the computer. Now, there is no such thing as a program. A program is a dream. We dream a context in an alphanumeric sense. We create a reality through designing a program. This is why I think computer programming is so fascinating and such a good art for a person who practices meditation, because it’s advanced dreaming. When you write a program, you are practicing dreaming.”
Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
It’s a real service to humanity and the world to be a good programmer, and particularly if you design great products. You make it easier for everybody–everybody has less headaches and their businesses work better and their life is better and, of course, you get rich and develop your mind in a yogic way, in a Buddhist way.
You are being paid $ 50 an hour, $ 150 an hour, depending upon your level, to play games all day, to solve puzzles.
And for a person who’s interested in meditation, that’s the way their mind works.
It is a profession that gives you a tremendous amount of money with which you can buy space around yourself, you can meet all your expenses, have a wonderful life in the material sense–aid others, if you’d like to do that. Computer science is a very lucrative field. It’s a very clean and non-polluting field. And you are literally doing Buddhist exercises all day long.