Five Ways Microsoft Word Teaches Buddhist Principles and Practice

Start by opening.

Sit with the possibilities of the blank page. This meditation will help you attain Samadhi, or the mental discipline required to achieve mastery over one’s mind.

All is impermanence. Things change. You have to accept and move on.

When you change words in something with a hanging indent, bullets or other formatting, it looks wrong until you accept that change. Then it falls into line.

You have made a change and the effects will be felt but this does not show immediately.

Let go of attachment(s).

The Buddha taught us that attachment causes suffering. This is certainly true at work, where an email with an attachment almost always brings more work (i.e. suffering) than one without attachment.

Let go of the need to control outcomes. Suffering ends when craving ends.

You can delude yourself into thinking that you have control and drive yourself into negative feelings of anger, even rage. Or you can accept that sometimes things just don’t work the way you expect them to, let go of your attachment (perhaps delete it), and free your mind.

Thus will you attain nirvana and enlightenment.