VOICE-TO-TEXT TRANSLATION. PLEASE EXCUSE ERRORS.

To see our own mind clearly without being caught up in its movement to watch thought, without trying to do anything with or about it, simply seeing it and letting it go. This is the way to freedom

Welcome to the imperfect Buddhist, where we discussed. Present moment awareness. Applying Zen principles to modern life. My name is Matthew Hawk Mahoney and today's episode is titled Buddhism and screen addiction.

Everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. And if they don't, we wonder what's wrong with them.

The price of big. Screen TVs. They get bigger and bigger. Every year are getting cheaper and cheaper.

New iPhones come out every year with better cameras.

They make special blue blocking glasses now to help protect people's eyes from all the screen.

Increasingly, I see more and more kids at restaurants with little portable TVs that their parents bring along to help keep them distracted.

Five year olds are starting YouTube channels

and eight year olds are starting TikTok.

I'm starting to develop a hump on my neck. Bending over to look at screens too much. I used to make fun of my mom when I was 14 years old for the same thing, rubbing her neck saying, mom, how'd you get this thing?

Teenagers also have these humps on the back of their necks.

A new name is sprouted up for this condition. It's called tech.

I have been working from home for a little over a year. This means I'm on the computer for work 40 plus hours a week. I've really found it challenging to maintain a level of mindfulness

when I'm looking at the computer.

I've really found it challenging , to maintain a level of mindful awareness. I have three monitors. I the laptop screen. On the left side, a computer monitor and on the right side, a computer monitor.

wake up in the mornings and sit at 8:00 AM for about 20 minutes every morning. I try to bring that mindful presence into my Workday. But I notice after looking at the screen for even

10 or 15 minutes, this haze kind of comes over my present moment awareness and I'm sucked into. What's going on on the screens. Maybe this is its own form of flow, but I don't really feel aware of what's going on around me as a more spacious awareness. It's a very pointed area of focus, almost like daydream.

I'll tell myself, I'll say, okay, Matt, like, there's not a lot. You can do about the screen time for work right now. But when you get off work, you can not use your phone. You could not play video games or watch TV with your wife. You have a choice there sometimes I'm successful. But a lot of the times I find myself getting off work or taking a moment away.

The computer work screens to look at my phone, I'll walk away and sit on the couch for a minute and look at my phone. I noticed this dizzy

Sick feeling, but I still continue to scroll through images on Instagram or look at my friends posts.

I'll get a day off on a Saturday, beautiful sunny day. And I'm like, oh man, I have, I don't have to do, I don't have to be on the computer. I don't have to do any of that. What do I wanna do? Oh, I'll play Pokemon. Go for the day and look at my, my phone screen for six hours today while I catch digital Pokemon.

It's kind of an addiction at this point.

I've been having some success lately with present moment awareness and catching myself. Before I get pulled back into the phone or the computer or the TV. I've had moments where I'll deny. Myself that and leave it off and just sit there and listen to the birds outside and the wind running through the autumn leaves or the dog barking down the street.

And I've found moments of peace through this,

but this is still a struggle for me. I'm still finding that. At the end of my 40 hour work week on the computer, I still get on the TV and play a video game, or unfortunately, work on music on my computer. I use software called Ableton to record my music. If I wanna do music, that's gonna be done on the computer as well.

It's a bit of a challenge for me right now.

I brought this up to Cocomo during one of our Sans ends, which is a private meeting with Buddhist teacher. He mentioned to me, he says, if you can catch it before. You pick up the phone turn on the TV or open up the laptop, if you can be with whatever precedes that, like what's the feeling or what's the urge.

Can you be with what you're running away from? So what am I running away from when I open up the phone or, , turn on the TV and what I've found lately? Sometimes it's boredom. There's this level of, I want to be distracted from, whatever's not going on in my environment, working from home, it's somewhat sedentary.

I wouldn't say I get lonely. I can be pretty lone Wolf and be okay in my own space, in my own head, but I do require a level of stimulation and I think. Working from home. I don't get stimulated. Like I would, if I was working in a more in person environment. And so there's that level of wanting to stimulate my brain and have conversations with different pieces of information out there.

Back to the Cocku suggestion, , he said, what are you. Running from, or what's the feeling inside? Are you avoiding a feeling by picking up the technology?  Where is it coming from? I've found multiple things through that practice. I've seen that there's a habitual pattern it's almost built in to grab the phone and look at it, an automatic process.

But there are times where I'll actually see this conscious effort I'm making. Avoid something that's going on inside of me or something that I don't wanna think about that I'm avoiding with the.

So I am gaining some traction with the technology abuse.

Sitting for longer periods in the morning for 20 minutes has helped to kickstart my present moment awareness in the day during work hours, when I'm on the computer, I notice I need to break it up into sessions of. Focused face into the computer screen work and stepping away and taking a breath, looking out the window at the trees or playing with my cat.

I've been using a a tomato timer that counts 25 minutes. That 25 minutes is dedicated to focused work. And then five minutes of rest of you can do whatever you want. You could look at your phone, but. As I mentioned, I'm trying to use that five minutes away to just rest my mind.

Rest my eyes, look outside, reconnect with the present moment. After that five minutes, the bell rings and I go back to work for another 25 minutes. You do five cycles of that, and then you take a longer rest period. I tend to just go on lunch at that time. And then I come back.

If I'm not catching myself before I get sucked into the phone or the TV, I am becoming aware as I'm sucked into it. Maybe not even like, stopping what I'm doing, but just feeling what's happening in my body. Like how my eyes are tight and sore. Maybe I have like a headache and I'm witnessing my thumb, pushing up and up and up on Instagram.

seeing that has kind of disgusted me a little bit and turned me off from doing it. In a way that present moment awareness of watching myself do this, it's , oh, wow.

So as you can tell, I'm not an expert on screen addiction. I haven't mastered it yet, but I want to go over a couple of the things that have helped me that may be helpful to.

Sitting in the mornings before you've had a chance to get pulled into the dailies of life like children or your phone or work email. If you can set aside a time in the mornings to be present and come back to the present moment and cultivate that sense of awareness, that's the biggest help I've.

For new habits, you want to attach them to current habits. You have. If you wanna start running for instance, the best way to get this and attach it to your life is to attach it like a Cabo on a train to another habit. So if you want to start running.

You decide, okay, I'm gonna run after I brush my teeth every morning. Cuz brushing your teeth is already an established habit in your life. I hope . So you wake. Maybe you brush your teeth first thing in the morning. So you brush your teeth and you say, okay, now it's time to run and you put your shoes on and you go right out the door and you do that enough times.

You start to attach that habit to the current habit that you have. It doesn't have to be brushing your teeth. It could be any habit that you have. So for me, I attached my meditation to the end of taking a shower in the morning. I wake up, you know, do my three SS. And I dry off and I, put some clothes on and then I sit down and I meditate and I've been sitting for 20 minutes in the mornings.

Some people see really good results with 10 to 12 minutes in the mornings to start.

So one of your best friends will be having a consistent time, hopefully in the mornings that you can come sit down and become present. And use the practices that are available, maybe breath, awareness. It could be mindful awareness of your body, the sensations in your body, the environment around you, you could do a mantra practice, which works for a lot of people.

Having that time in the morning can be really beneficial. Setting aside a space in your home before that practice is also very helpful. That's a place that you return to. That's quiet that you could maybe make beautiful. You could put up pieces of art or flowers or plants. Or pictures of loved ones, and this can be a place that you can come back to every morning and cultivate awareness and cultivating your sense of aliveness.

This present moment , is life. And so you're actually coming back every morning and connecting with life, connecting with the source. When you start that way,

It starts you off in a very positive step forward for the rest of your day. I'll meditate for 20 minutes, eat my breakfast and start work. And then I start to get pulled into the screens of the computer and the phone That meditation time in the morning actually helps me to see , oh, okay. I was feeling pretty.

Okay. Pretty peaceful. All right. With this moment what's going on inside of me. And now I notice there's this tension, there is a dissolving of presence. I start to notice that

Sitting in the mornings and starting off your day with present moment awareness can really help get you on the right track. Now, once you're in your day, taking moments to pause. using that tomato timer where I. I'm just in my work for 25 minutes and then I take five minutes and that's a good time to breathe.

Take my eyes off the screens.

Be with the animals in my life, or be with the people in my life. Look around, look at actual real colors outside the orange leaves and the blue sky.

Hear environmental sounds that aren't produced by a computer speaker or TV. And see if I can come back to that present feeling that I cultivated in the morning

The last suggestion. Which I'm sure you've heard of, but it works for some, and it's worked for me in the past is completely cutting the cord on technology for a set amount of time. That might be all right. Tonight. I am taking the batteries out of my remote controller for my TV, and I have a little box that I've designated as the phone box.

And once I put it in there, I don't touch it for this amount of. You just designate little, no technology time zones, it's an experiment and it can be a challenge it may make you wonder what the heck am I gonna do with my time? Cuz I feel that way. I do sometimes my wife and I will play in these little, no technology evenings.

And I do feel a loss sometimes. I'm like, well, what am I gonna do? And I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, looking out the window and then I'm like, This is actually kind of nice. And then I lay down and I take a little nap it's actually not so bad. It's not so bad to not have my mind going all the time.

And my fingers moving and my eyes staring at a screen.

So if screen addiction is something that you are experiencing, you're not alone. I can say that for sure, because I definitely have screen addiction right now.

You're not alone, but it's not normal. We did not evolve with these screens that present us with ever more pointed ads and pictures and YouTube videos and content. The content is ever being developed to be more interesting and to pull in our attention more and more.

Places like Facebook and YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, they all collect data on what is interesting to us or what pulls our attention for better or for worse.

So you're not really being helped by the technology companies. If you feel like you have a screen addiction, they're built that way. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube TikTok. They are quote unquote free. We don't have to pay with money, but we're paying with our life. We're paying with our attention. Our attention is their commodity.

So being aware of that, we're like, oh, our attention is pretty damn valuable to them cuz they. Doing pretty good in the world economy. They're making pretty good money. They have a lot of investors . They make their money from our attention and that's fine.

It can be very entertaining.

So that's something to be aware of when we are being pulled into technology is not only are we driven to it because we wanna avoid something in our life. Something how we feel, we wanna avoid boredom. We want to be stimulated, whatever it is. We also have that technology ever evolving to pull us in more.

We do have a challenge in front of us. This is gonna feel a little bit awkward during our podcast, but I want wherever you are, if you're working, if you're working in a customer service job of some sort or working from home or listening to this in your car, I want us for the next three minutes to. Be present and let's see if we cannot look at our phones or any type of technology.

So if you're at a computer at work or you're on your phone, flipping through it, while you're listening to this, I would like you to set your phone down or put it in your pocket. I'd like you to step away from the computer and maybe just look out the window. And let's bring our attention back to this moment.

I want you to notice, I just want you to notice  whatever jumps out as needing attention in this moment. I want you to see it and witness it. I don't want you to get lost in your head with thinking, but see if you can just bring your attention to this moment. Maybe it's. The way the light breathes moves the green leaves outside of your work window or the way the light shines off your cat.

As she naps in the window, the way her body moves when she breathes, or maybe it's the sound of birds playing outside, or maybe it's the sound of a loud truck outside, or some construction going on down the. So let's do this. This is the imperfect Buddhist challenge, So let's start the timer now for three minutes.

Ready? Let's be present.

So I hope you got something out of.

Maybe that's a point. You don't really get anything out of it, but you come into contact with what you already.

Which reminds me of a analogy that Eckert toll shared in his book. The power of. Says a baker had been sitting by the side of a road for 30 years. One day a stranger walked by spare some change, mumbled the bagger , mechanically holding out his baseball cap.

I have nothing to give. You said the stranger then he asked what's that you're sitting on nothing. Replied the be. Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember ever looked inside, asked the stranger. No said the baker. What's the point. There's nothing in there. Have a look inside.

Insisted the stranger, the baker managed to pry open the lid with astonishment, disbelief, and elation. He saw that the box was filled with gold.

I hope you have a wonderful week and gain a little bit of awareness. With your phone and your laptop and your TV? I sure hope I can gain some traction this week too. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Bye bye.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-imperfect-buddhist/donations