AVOID THE "TYRANNY OF TOOLS"

D. T. Suzuki, Buddha of the Infinite Light: The Teachings of Shin Buddhism, The Japanese Way of Wisdom and Compassion, revised with an Introduction by Taitetsu Unno (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 2002) ("Another unique aspect of human beings is this: people by nature manufacture all kinds of tools. Names are also tools. With names we handle objects. But inventing tools may lead to the 'tyranny of tools.' When tools become tyrannical, instead of our making use of them, they rebel against their inventors and take revenge. Then we are made of the tools that we make. This strange process is especially noticeable in modern life. We invent many machines, which in turn control human affairs, our human life. Machines, especially in recent years, have inextricably entered our life. We try to adjust ourselves to the machine, because the machine refuses to obey our will once it's out of our hands." Id. at at 43-44. Think of the computer, the Internet, the smart phone, Facebook, etc., and how so many of us are completely loss if we are even momentarily disconnected from our devices. "In our intellectual processes, ideas can also be despotic, for we cannot always control the concepts we use. We invent or construct many ideas, many concepts. They are very useful to us in dealing with our life, but convenient ideas frequently control their inventors and become despotic. Scholars who invent ideas forget that they formulated them in order to handle realities for a specific purpose. Each science, whether it is called biology or psychology or astronomy, works with its own premises and its own hypotheses. Each science organizes the field it has chosen ... and works with those realities according to the conceptual scheme especially devised to study them for our understanding. In pursuing their theories and using their formulations, scientists sometimes find themselves in situations that cannot be explained by their concepts. Then, instead of dropping those ideas and trying to create new concepts so that the unexpected difficulties can be included and handled, they often stick to the first ideas that they have devised and try to make the new realities obey those ideas. Or they simply exclude anything which cannot be covered by the network of ideas they have created." Id. at 44. "It may sound strange to hear that one can go beyond teleology or live in purposelessness. Everything we do in life has a purpose, but in the religious realm we become conscious of realizing purposelessness, going beyond teleology, meaningless meaning, and meaning itself. This is another mark of faith, stating 'Let thy will be done,' whereby we let go of self-power and let Amida do his work through us an in us. For this reason there is no prayer in the conventional senses in Buddhism. When we pray to acquire something, we will never get it. When we pray for nothing, we gain everything." Id. at 64.).