Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Gaming is my meditation

Pardon the simplification, but it occurs to me that meditation is the process of calming your mind so that the neural pathways which normally demand all of your attention can rest and recover.  Some use a small metal gong and years of focusing on internal states to do so.  Some use pre-scripted movement patterns to achieve that intense focus.

I play games.  These games make the player focus on a particular aspect of what they're doing, and calm the voices that are shouting about the laundry and the bills and that little light on the dashboard of your car.  Games help achieve a zen-like transcendence into themselves.  A meditative journey into a world that exists only in the mind of the players.  They're like little worlds, but more importantly they're like little gongs quieting and focusing your energy.  

Games like Go have been played for years for their meditative qualities.  Video games, while they've shed the pretense of upper-class enlightenment, nonetheless serve as a wonderfully meditative outlet for a weary mind.

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