Buddhism and Bitcoin, the Monk and the Node
“Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, not finding
although seeking the builder of this house;
and again and again I faced the suffering of new birth.
Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.You shall not build a house again for me.
All your beams are broken,
the ridgepole is shattered.
The mind has become freed from conditioning:
the end of craving has been reached.” — Siddhārtha Gautama
“Breaking the cycle” or “stopping the wheel” is a common goal striven for by Buddhists across millennia and all over the world. It often refers to escaping the endless cycle of death and rebirth but can also be viewed through the lens of rigorous meditation. For example, one of the sought after states in deep vipassana meditation comes after the “bliss” state. In this trance, or lack thereof all trances, one can slip the confounds of space and time.
For the sake of society, time is usually perceived as linear horizontally (this happened then that happen) but in this instance becomes linear vertically, aligned with the straight posture and spine of the meditator. Instead of experiencing one thing then another, all or nothing is experienced at once. A state of absoluteness or emptiness. During this stage, a temporal relief from time, space and self occurs, along with all the woes and benefits that come with them. A peek at Nirvana out of a small window in the colossal, moving structure that is the cycle of spirit and the rotation of reality.
Akin to the planes of escape afforded to meditators, another such realm exists today, in the digital age. The framework for this realm, however, isn’t held in place by, nor visited by practitioners of Buddhism (unless they are running nodes). And the cycle that participants in the network are attempting to flee isn’t of death and rebirth. Death, more so, sure. Rebirth, not so much.
The cycle of debt, short and long, and the cycle of economic boom and boon.
The cycle which, unlike any other natural cycle, accumulates nutrients and wealth to the top.
This is the repetition in which those with half of a functional brain conclude they must escape.
If one meditates to escape the suffering of space, time and self, then how does one escape the suffering of monetary enslavement?
Well, they run Bitcoin. They accumulate BTC. They engage in the network (realm) that is separate and uncorrelated from the Plane of Suffering. Little by little, they exit the system. Sat by sat. Block by block. Just as a meditator practices peering into a spaceless space void of a central time, — a Bitcoiner peers into a spaceless space void of a central time outside of its own!
Running a node is meditating.
