Tibetan monks give up all attachments, including in their email

"Attachment can lead you to all sorts of trouble, and we buddhists believe that non-attachment alone can lead you to happiness. We have learned to be suspicious of email attachments."

The (almost) timeless and eternal words of a 30-year-old monk in Dharamasala, in a recent interview with the Associated Press. 

Tibetan monks, particularly those in contact with overseas Tibetan-advocacy organizations, have found themselves the victims of a mass hacking campaign, and they are apparently finding new and innovative ways to fit these modern happenings into their age-old traditions.

A recent study that examined ten overseas Tibetan groups found that, in the past four years, they collectively received more than 800 "suspicious" emails, many of which contained virus-laden attachments. This has sparked a fantastic tongue-in-cheek mantra entitled "Detachment from Attachments."

Mixing these two worlds to make an easy point about cyber security is "cheesy, but memorable," according to a Vancouver-based tech analyst who also spoke to AP. We hope they follow the right path and gain awareness of anti-virus software.