From SGI USA, I'm Cassidy Bradford and this is Budability.

The weekly series where I talk with Buddhists from all walks of life about the power we

each have to change our lives and the world around us.

Sometimes it's just all too much. You've got 20 unread texts and an overflowing inbox.

You need to talk your friend through a dating dilemma and let's not even get started on your big presentation due this week.

That's not even considering the daunting world problems we're

seeing on the news daily. More and more people feel pushed to their limits and pulled in too many

directions. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing one of those plate balancing acts, but I have more plates

than I do limbs to balance them on.

I recently read a short article from a philosophy professor.

In it, she says that rapidly changing technology has made it harder to be fully present.

Prior to our ability to just connect over the internet at any moment, for example,

we were most often expected to be present in whatever physical space we're in. She went on to say, being present to ourselves when we occupy so many places at once is challenging.

Our bodies have transformed into something much larger and more difficult to define.

From my body, I can do multiple things

worldwide at once. Check emails, be in a meeting, take care of my child, and prepare dinner.

As I read about that sort of fragmentation, I thought back to my conversation with Paige Asala

about what it feels like to chant Namil Hōden

Ge Kiao. I told her how I can often be so in my head that I forget about my body or my heart.

She said that chanting helped her bring all parts of herself together.

When I first start in the morning, I'm like, you know, it's kind of getting the engine going, you know.

But then it's such a physical experience of like the rhythm of chanting.

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