Someone who is practicing contemplation should not be held prisoner by a robot voice or a glowing screen, but instead reach an inner presence of God, and His stillness encompassing all that we experience during that sacred time.
It is absolutely necessary to shut out every distraction possible. At the same time, we acknowledge that the practitioner will be distracted in some way, not through his own fault, and we must learn the proper response to fleeting distractions. But to purposely tether yourself to a created, pagan object is to invite failure from the outset.
No it isn't.
> to distract us and hold our attention. Even with a well-behaved app on it, it's still designed and configured to constantly beep and whistle and send notifications, and fly into our hand and compel us to doomscroll something unimportant.
That doesn't match my experience in over the decade of using smartphones.
> Someone who is practicing contemplation should not be held prisoner by a robot voice or a glowing screen
A smartphone is a tool.
> but instead reach an inner presence of God, and His stillness encompassing all that we experience during that sacred time.
Buddhism is non-theistic. There is no God.
> But to purposely tether yourself to a created, pagan object is to invite failure from the outset.
Is this meant as satire? I mean, pagan? Really?
This is a bold and untrue statement. There's every kind of Buddhism possible out there. Pure Land is pretty theistic…
So, where is the problem here? Maybe you are arguing an uninformed strawman.
I could argue the same thing about going to a place of worship. You are surrounded by people (the thing that biologically distracts us the most since we crave social interactions) that make sounds or move about, plus sometimes there is a master guiding people in their practice.
Isn't that the textbook definition of distracting? Why can you magically ignore a whole drove of people around you but somehow a silenced smartphone is just too much to handle? Double standard much.
> instead reach an inner presence of God, and His stillness encompassing all that we experience during that sacred time
>pagan object
this is just baseless cultist talk
The idea of corporate worship is that the assembly is united in their purpose, there is an order observed, and the people develop discipline from this orderly worship. Also, people are not machines and that's disgusting that you draw this analogy.
People may distract, even in that situation. Many have their minds elsewhere, some don't want to be there, someone may even be actively disruptive. But corporate worship is not usually contemplative meditation.
I have been in worship sessions where silence is strictly enforced, and there is no master guiding an order of prayer. This adoration is always in a group setting. Hey, I've even used my device sometimes to look up Bible verses. It's not sterile.
But if someone is sitting at home, alone, the best practice is to shut out unnecessary distractions to the extent that it is possible. And your phone obeys its corporate master. A mobile device is not under the control of the user holding it.
