Rectangles of Sadness

Soami Ji, the founder of the Radha Soami tradition, wrote in a prayer to his own Master:

Helpless and distraught, I cry out to you,
For my mind is fixed on you, on you alone.
You are the mainspring of my being –
_{Sar Bachan Poetry}

Soami Ji taught what all masters teach. Our hunger for God-realization must become intense, urgent, and focused. We need to remember who our protector is, who our guide is, who is our true and eternal companion.

No relationship is more important than the one we have with our Master. No activity can have a higher priority than our meditation, which is the time we set aside to be with him. And no promises we make are more binding and more life-giving than the four vows we took when we asked for initiation. We hope that someday we too might be able to say, “My mind is fixed on you, and you alone.”

But a relevant question in today’s world is, “What if our minds are not fixed exclusively on the divine reality within?” For example, suppose far too much of our attention is captured by our smartphones? In a recently published book by the journalist Chris Hayes, The Sirens’ Call, the author lays out in painful detail how dangerous digital screens have become to both our mental health and our spiritual well-being. The subtitle of the book is How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.

In truth, attention has always been our most valuable resource. The 19th-century philosopher William James, writing at about the same time as Soami Ji, defined attention as the “taking possession by the mind … of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” He wrote that the essence of attention is a concentration of consciousness, implying “withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”

This is also a fairly good definition of our meditation practice. We try to focus and concentrate our consciousness (through simran). We try to withdraw from the material world in order to experience something much finer and more wonderful within.

What distracts our attention? So many things. But most recently it could be our cell phones, what the comedian Hasan Minhaj has called “rectangles of sadness.” Why sadness? Because smartphones have been designed to be addictive; to alienate and isolate us, estrange us from substantive and nourishing in-person contact with others, and encourage a restless and racing mind. Hayes tells us that these phones are the equivalent of fast food, providing empty calories but no real nutrition.

Here is how Hayes describes the ongoing development and refinement of our digital devices. “The world’s largest corporations, brightest minds, and most powerful entities expend staggering resources seeking to compel us to look at and listen to what they want us to.”

The author describes smartphones as “little slot machines … in our pockets.” They are available 24 hours a day, offering an infinite scroll of breaking news and entertainment. They put us on high alert and in a state of constant distraction, promising a wide array of diversions. But “the more diversion we have access to, the more diversion we crave,” Hayes writes. Even worse, our phones encourage us to chase stimulation and attention with “likes,” quick replies, and admiration from others. These rectangles of sadness provide nothing but empty calories for the ego.

Hayes concludes his book by asking us to consider what we say we want and value versus how we act. The masters ask us the same question. Is our attention focused inwardly, in simran and meditation, or are we constantly inviting distraction and diversion from the outer material world? Cell phones are just the latest way that the mind seduces us to go in the opposite direction of what is sustaining and eternal.

Later, in the same shabad quoted above, Soami Ji confirms our predicament. It was true when he wrote it in the late 1800s and it is true now.

Everyone is drowning
in the tides of this shoreless ocean of existence,
for they have taken as the truth
what is actually an illusion,
a vast expanse of falsehood.

And then he clearly spells out the solution.

Without a Master this illusion is never dispelled,
without Shabd the soul must continue
its endless rounds in the creation.
That is why I seek refuge in you.

***

To share my heart’s condition with you
is my desire.
To hear back news from my lost heart
is my desire.

Look at my fruitless greed,
for to hide a story
already revealed from my rivals
is my desire!

To have a priceless,
cherished night,
sleeping with you until dawn,
is my desire.

Ah, to pierce
such a fine unique pearl
in the dark of night
is my desire.

O Sabā, breeze of dawn,
help me tonight,
for to blossom at dawn
is my desire….
_{Hafez, Nightingale of Shiraz, Ghazal 42}