Multi-One-Pointed Concentration

Gurus, sages and seers of the ages talk about one-pointed concentration as a fundamental skill on the road to enlightenment. Construed as a must for meditators, the ability to focus also applies to the requisite brain power needed to learn secret practices such as flying, dematerializing, drying wet sheets with body heat as they are wrapped around emaciated yogis' bodies in the Himalayan winter, shapeshifting, walking on water, or simply turning into a rainbow when the breath says its final goodbyes to its used up shell. With the cost of funerals these days, achieving rainbow body might be a practical alternative to the lay-away plan or dumping god awful expenses on next of kin.

It seems wasteful to make coffins that look like the latest model Cadillac, with polished mirror-like mahogany encasements, brass trimmings and padded white satin interiors that look like Eva Gabor's bedroom set. Of course funeral homes and coffin makers need to make a living, but think about the environment and all those trees that had to die for our sins, only to be reincarnated as holding tanks for worm food.

Given my recent brush with death, I am prone to contemplating these details, although truth be told we all destined for the dust bin one way or another at an undisclosed time...undisclosed, that is, until it isn't. Just wrap me in one of my 100% Egyptian cotton 1600 thread count sheets and stick me in a blazing over-sized oven, but make sure I am really dead. Not that I am paranoid; my genetic memory still zings in harmony with the crematoriums-in-action that dotted the European landscape during the last century.

Additionally, my Tibetan Buddhist teacher tells me that while I might appear dead, my consciousness could be lingering for as long as three days after breathing stops. And who wants to watch themselves being roasted like an large mammal being readied for a barbeque?

The above perspective might be offensive to some and since it is even making me slightly nauseous, let's rejoin the topic at hand: one-pointed concentration. In this new age, it has taken an interesting twist. If one has ever watched a table full of twenty-somethings at a restaurant with their iPhones in one hand and margueritas in the other, it is evident that they have developed the marvelous oxymoronic feat of multi-one-pointed concentration. They can text significant others while simultaneously including their 500 Facebook friends and Tweeters too, as well as communicating with their six best friends at the table as they imbibe the elixar of the nervous.

Once only the capability of an alien in a science fiction flick who could watch 100 television sets and take in all the information at one glance, this generation of 21st century dwellers has redefined the word concentration. The jury is out on whether the new technologies decrease social interaction because of their dearth of physicality and the concommitant loss of communication hardware built into the human being, such as body language and facial expression...or whether it more resembles the neuronal pathways of our brain in which the more pathways are used, the bigger the brain becomes and thus the more intelligent. Perhaps sign makers can starting mass producing a new one to add to the old standards such as STOP, DANGER, or NO SMOKING, and it would say, CAUTION NEUROPLASTICITY IN PROGRESS.

So maybe physical death isn't the only thing that awaits us. Perhaps our genes will mutate into new bodies that follow the consequence of 21st century dwellers and their multi-one-pointed concentration. The future human may have a huge frontal lobe like a dolphin and a tiny body that procreates in a flash of fiber-optic glow.

In the meantime, weeds are growing in my garden and this dinosaur must use the time-honored practice of one-pointed concentration to scout their location and uproot them from their natural environment, thus proving the point that humans are forever sacrificing natural laws to suit the designs of their own creation.