Building Bridges – Daniel Simpson

Uh, well, at least in my head.

Um, I, uh, would have liked to record this there, but, uh, I didn't have a moment to myself, to be honest.

Um, it was, uh, a very busy few days at the Yoga Darshana Yoga Sadhana event.

Um, that's the title of this gathering.

It's been running for 10 years now.

The first one was in Kraków in Poland in 2016.

Um, and then, uh, after a pandemic interlude, um, they have resumed, uh, every two years in person with occasional forays online.

And, uh, this was the fourth of the, uh, the main events, um, and I'd never been.

So I was curious, and, uh, I have to be honest, I found it rather overwhelming.

[chuckles] There was so much going on, and, uh, I didn't know really where to focus.

Um, it was hard to see probably more than 30% of it, and, uh, I did do something in every single time slot.

Um, but, uh, there were multiple panels running concurrently, so even if one did that, uh, there was still a lot that got missed.

Um, now, part of the problem, I suppose, um, but, uh, also part of the, uh, the joy of it, um, is that none of that was recorded, [chuckles] so you couldn't catch up later, um, which meant you had to pay attention and be there.

Um, there were, however, a few of the talks recorded, um, some of which I alluded to, um, in the introduction, uh, particularly, uh, the first night's keynote, uh, presentation from Mark Singleton, uh, launching his new book.

Um, well, launching is how it was billed, but, uh, the reality is, um, writing always takes longer than one imagines.

Um, so he was presenting an overview of what, uh, will be in the book when it is time to launch.

Um, but it's getting close, and, uh, that's a fascinating topic to listen to.

Um, uh, I could not begin to do it justice in a summary, [chuckles] um, only to say that, uh, yeah, the basic juxtaposition of yoga with technology, which is the focus of, uh, his research, um, is something that one would intuitively think of as a clash of worldviews.

Um, the yogic perspective being perhaps to turn inwards and away from machinery, [chuckles] um, and, uh, you know, the distracting influence of modern technology getting in the way of all things yogic, one might imagine.

However, Mark complicates all of this in multiple ways, not least, [chuckles] um, the fact that, you know, the whole of ancient Indian philosophy, um, you know, the Sankhya system on which some of the, uh, oldest yoga texts are based, thinks about the mind and the body as machinery that, uh, needs to be switched off in order to reveal the inner light of awareness.

Um, one could also think of the word yoga in relation to practice as a tool, um, therefore an item of technology, a machine to an end, um, so to speak, uh, something that can be operationalized, uh, for yogic objectives.

Um, so he gets into all of that, looks at the, uh, weird and wonderful world of Silicon Valley transhumanism and, uh, the attempts to escape the inconveniences of being a carbon-based life form, and, uh, questions how yoga intersects with all of that, complicates it all, um, with, uh, the onset of, uh, AI-fueled everything, um, including all manner of wearable, ingestible, implantable technologies.

We might get, uh, led astray, [chuckles] um, or potentially brought to instant enlightenment.

This is also an option on the agenda.

Um, so, um, enough of all that.