The enigmatic nature of avatars

The enigmatic nature of avatars

On of the nicest remarks made to me about my Lingo Sorcery book was:

"Object oriented programming seems so wonderfully simple and obvious after you have explained it and it makes me wonder why I didn't think about it in this way by myself".

The concept of avatars is somewhat similar to the concept of object oriented programming in that once the concept clicks it seems so obvious that you wonder why it was ever necessary to have to have it explained...

...excepting of course that it is very difficult to explain.

Typical, of a Zen approach to teaching Zen concepts, is the story of the Zen master who asks his pupils:

"Tell me, what is the quickest means by which you can reach enlightenment?"

All the pupils remain silent, not knowing what to answer.

After several minutes of silence the Zen master exclaims, "Excellent! Excellent! You have answered well".

Of course, the pupils are completely bemused by this - until they realize that the Zen master is telling them that enlightenment cannot be reached through words. "Zen", we are told, "Is outside of the concepts of language" (which can be totally confusing, especially if you have read this in a book which you have just bought in order to try to understand Zen).

I could never understand this paradox myself until I came to write "Lingo Sorcery" where I had the task of explaining the concept of object oriented programming using Lingo - the programming language used in Macromedia's multimedia authoring package: Director.

This appeared to be fairly easy as it involved only four special words: "new", "me", "ancestor" and "property". Within a page or so, I could easily show how to create a fully functioning Lingo object.

Unfortunately, just knowing how to create an object is quite useless in itself because, to use the object, it has to be seen within an abstract conceptual framework. This concept is extremely difficult to explain - it took another two hundred pages to get it across and even then I couldn't be certain that all the readers understood what it was all about.

In "Lingo Sorcery", I likened the experience of learning about objects to that of learning how to ride a bicycle. Object oriented programming cannot be taught as a series of logical steps - it has to be learned as an acquired experience. Even then, when the knowledge comes, it doesn't come gradually: it arrives suddenly, as a kind of explosive enlightenment.

It is this difference, between learned instruction and conceptual break-through, which lies at the heart of differences between Eastern and Western religions and philosophies.

In the Western world, the concept of "God" is the embodiment of a book of rules or laws - the Word is the Lord and the Lord is the Word. "The Word" and "The Lord" are synonymous in most Western religions. The rules come in the form of a bible; tenets of a religion; commandments; a sacred book; a set of ancient scrolls; etc. In effect, the "God" of any Western religion is the provider of a verbal heuristic strategy: a set of algorithmic rules of behavior for leading an optimally efficient life in terms of survival and reproduction.

In contrast, the Eastern "God" does not represent any particular algorithmic set of rules; the Eastern "God" represents a conceptual framework, which cannot readily be explained in terms of words and logic.

To the Western mind, the idea of worshiping an idol in the form of a physically sculptured Buddha figure is ludicrous until it is realized that this "God" is not supposed to represent any human figure at all: it is representative of a non explainable conceptual framework (Buddha is a Sanskrit word meaning "Awakened One").

In reading the draft manuscript of the introduction to this book, several people objected to the use of Eastern mysticism in a book which they felt ought to be about computer programming. "Forget all this Zen nonsense", they said, "Let's get into the code". But, isn't this just the Western mind set: looking for the algorithm, the set of rules, the instructions?

In this book, we are going to use the Eastern mind set, which doesn't look for rules but for enlightenment. In taking this approach, we will not be attaching much importance to the exact syntax of computer code or even to the type of multimedia authoring package used. We will be looking to trigger an enlightenment to an abstract conceptual framework. We shall be looking for that same kind of "something" which allows people to put models into the empty cells of spreadsheets.

In this way, we can consider the techniques and methods used in this book to be as the Buddha described his teachings "Like a raft: useful while crossing the water but to be left behind afterwards".

In Zen philosophy such practical teaching (Dhama) is referred to as:

"A finger pointing at the moon".

Details of book, CD-ROM and online continuation - peter@genps.demon.co.uk