Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Bernat Font’s Substack publication, Berni’s dharma, and is reposted here with Bernat’s permission.

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I’m generally allergic to dharma event titles that include phrases like “in uncertain times”, as if ours were a privileged bad era. During covid, I made the point in my Spanish blog that the world was no more unpredictable and uncertain then than at any other given time, because those terms are not about whether a tragedy is happening right now, but about how it always can happen. It’s an ever-present potential. The only “uncertain times” there exist are what’s called “life”. It may feel stable at times, but the next slap in the face is waiting behind any bend in the road. This is the point of the teachings on impermanence.

A pandemic isn’t nothing, but many generations have seen wars, epidemics, famine… While boomers in most of the Western world may have experienced an unusually quiet period, not only is that the exception to the rule—as well as a sign of progress, which is a good thing—but it also bears mentioning that the quietude wasn’t global.

But I might be changing my mind in some respects. Today’s world is substantially different from the one in which I grew up, just a few decades ago. Modern conveniences, particularly the most recent, have facilitated access to desired things to an unprecedented degree. A big chunk of ‘progress’ is the victory of reactivity, such as greed. Greed (lobha) can be defined as taking pleasure in unbeneficial things, or wanting more of what feels good with no regard for whether it’s beneficial or harmful. Modern conveniences maximize such disregard.¹

You can buy online with one click—no second thoughts, no palpable exchange of money. Bingeing is baked into internet content—autoplay next, scroll, videos on loop… Fashion and useless beauty knick-knacks are ridiculously cheap. Fast food targeting your limbic brain is everywhere. If you feel down, you can order it to your door using that object we once used for calling people, you don’t even need to leave the house. Bored or in need of emotional regulation? Just hook up with whoever’s nearby on your “dating” app. Or check current affairs to see whom you could get enraged at.

In earlier times, some of those things weren’t available, either very often or at all, or they took more time and effort, which could act as natural stoppers. “I feel sad and unmotivated, so I crave a Big Mac; but do I want to walk 20 minutes or hop on a bus for one?” Now not even heavy rain can stop you, let the rider get wet! Previous generations weren’t any less reactive by nature than we are. Simply, technology has now beefed up those patterns.

None of these are brilliant observations, but the summary hit me the other day: if reactivity has it easier, dharma practice is harder. This is made worse by our modern insistence not just on practicing in our daily lives while leaving them basically unchanged, but by our belief that trying to modify the circumstances is weak or avoidant. Designing a more conducive environment, moving away from big cities and similar strategies, are seen by some as “basic” from a spiritual standpoint. “The real practitioner walks down Temptation Street, remaining unmoved.” We approach too many difficulties as purely mental or internal. And who benefits from this way of thinking? Those who make the most money off this progress of reactivity, and the structure of the progress itself.

In Buddhist texts and traditions, the early stages of the path concern your surroundings, the people you frequent, basic ethical conduct. In its ideal, you remove yourself from the bustling town and go to a monastery. You do not begin by walking down Temptation Street trying to have different feelings and impulses. Clearly Buddhism has always taken into account our environments. How could it not, when it emphasizes our dependence and conditionality?

More is being asked of us dharma practitioners today, given the current environments designed to abuse our reactive tendencies, and at the same time the practice is even more crucial. Even if we aspire to a mind strong enough to remain mindful and discerning at all times, no matter the circumstances, we must start where we are now, and train the mind gradually, taking care of it. We must not leave it all to an “enduring” strategy. We must not forget practical, external steps like deleting apps or blocking them, switching to a dumb phone, limiting exposure to news, or frequenting places that foster calm, healthy joy, meaning and connection rather than perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction and chasing.

There isn’t much more of a point to this post than to share the acknowledgement that we have it hard, and dwell in that recognition—perhaps with sadness, with compassion, but not victimhood or hopelessness. In early Buddhist discourses, seeing dukkha can kindle saṃvega and pariyesanā. The second term means “quest”, and the first is normally translated as a sense of “urgency”, but also “trembling” or “distress”.

Saṃvega is an emotionally charged term. It refers to being stirred by “aesthetically unpleasing existential truths”,² stirred in a way that cannot easily be ignored and that motivates action. It’s a beneficial disquiet, and to me, the beginning of taking responsibility.

It’s only when I truly see how, for example, something as mundane as food delivery apps is messing with my mind that I can take steps to address it and bring my dharma path to it. Whether that results in me deleting the app or something else comes later. But whatever steps I take rely, first of all, on sitting for a bit with the recognition “this affects me”, “I am vulnerable to this”, “there is pain in here”—as if sitting on the car keys and not removing them immediately, instead feeling the discomfort in your buttocks.

My dear friends, we don’t have it easy. We must mourn this reality. Not to reinforce a self-pitying discourse or think ourselves special—all generations have had their challenges—but to be able to act from clarity. And we must see our practice as mundane, as being about apps and grocery stores as much as the Great Matter of Birth and Death.

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¹ Some of these modern conveniences also have positive effects, such as allowing people with reduced mobility, a sickness or a type of disability to get things delivered to their homes.

² Liang, Lisa, and Brianna K. Morseth, ‘Aesthetic Emotions: The Existential and Soteriological Value of Saṃvega/Pasāda in Early Buddhism’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 28 (2021), pp. 205–39.