
VIRUS-TIME
IT’S ONLY A FEW DAYS into lockdown when a friend invites you to join a Buddhist “retreat” on Zoom. Not only is this your first experience with group meditation but it’s your first time on the Zoom platform, where so much of our social life will be conjured away in the weeks to come. It’s an eye-opener: You see 179 other participants, each sitting in their own personal quarantine, organized like Hollywood Squares contestants within the grid of the interface, a digitally constructed hive of many solitudes streaming together in real time. You don’t even bother to meditate; you’re too mesmerized by