Ogyen Trinley Dorje--the only senior Buddhist leader recognized by China, Tibet, and India--was recently interviewed during a visit to Delhi, India, where he gave his views on politics, hip-hop, and video games.
While certainly not your average 24-year-old, he's clearly in touch with how video games can make us all feel better. He's also apparently a Mac fan.
Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we're Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.
So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I'm having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.
The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that's very skilful because when I do that I don't have to go and hit anyone over the head.
I wonder what games he plays? Maybe I should friend him on Facebook and setup a challenge?