But that isn’t going to stop either of us, because this is what we do online: a compulsive snippety-awareness, attention unfolding only so far as the next link or click. Another tab opened, another Google search, the mind enchanted at finding an environment that so beautifully mirrors its papañca-nature, but also somewhat aghast at being allowed to aimlessly get-away-with-it once again.
Stating this concern in the brave new world of Wisdom 2.0 and the Buddhasphere feels a bit passé. Did not Joan Halifax (The Only Roshi On The Panel) recently declare at the annual hoedown of technology and meditation that “buddhism is the essence of social networking” – an unofficial blessing if there ever was one for Facebook, Twitter, and all the proliferation of thoughts, half-thoughts, and demi-thoughts that these media so skilfully convey? Do we not have various articles from the twitterati offering us mindful ways to indulge in our daily papañca-fix? Is the brain itself not wired up like the Internet: a vastly interconnected network of feedback loops, swooshing information around like currents rather than fish?
And yet, perhaps because I have only recently entered the social media stream in terms of helping establish London Insight’s new Facebook and Twitter page, I still end up asking myself the somewhat un-hip question: “Is not all of this activity fundamentally incompatible with the intention to cultivate a more settled, peaceful, non-proliferating mind?”
David Loy, in an essay entitled "Consciousness Commodified" points out three ways in which our precious attention is being squeezed in a manner that wasn’t a problem for previous Buddhist cultures and practitioners: 1) The fragmentation of attention: “unremitting connectivity” pulling attention in various directions at once, 2) The commodification of attention: i.e. advertising, and 3) The control of attention: “weapons of mass distraction” like TV, video games and the Internet.
I’m interested in exploring the middle ground between switching off, and staying (scatteredly) on. Care to offer some tips?
