David Loy

We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.

We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.

The Tao Tê Ching is probably the world's second most translated and annotated book , yet it remains among the most enigmatic. Of its eighty-one chapters, no one denies that the most important is the first, and many scholars go further to claim that it is the key to the whole work: if it is understood fully, all the rest may be seen to be implied. Unfortunately, the first chapter also happens to be the most ambiguous. But even so, after so much attention can there be anything left to say? It seems to me that an important point has been missed or at least obscured, and that the popularity of certain translations has made this obscuration more prevalent recently. To correct this, I shall offer below a line-by-line explication of this crucial passage. The following interpretation first demonstrates the parallel structure of the first eight lines as signifying two different ways of experiencing: lines one, three, five and seven refer to the experience of Tao, and lines two, four, six and eight to our more usual way of experiencing the world. I shall suggest that the difference between these ways is the difference between our familiar dualistic experience and a much less common nondualistic way of experiencing in which there is no bifurcation between subject and object. Second, we shall see that the parallel structure unfolds dialectically: each succeeding pair of lines elaborates upon the issues that naturally arise in response to the preceding pair. In the process of showing this, I shall take sides on the two main controversies over this chapter: first, whether it should be interpreted cosmologically or ontologically/epistemologically , and second, whether lines, five and six should be punctuated to translate yü as ‘desire/intention’. My main thesis is that the traditional understanding of yü as ‘desire’ or ‘intention’ is an essential part of the meaning of the chapter. This is by no means an original claim, but why it is so important does not seem to have been noticed before and provides the reason for this paper. Wing-tsit Chan's criticism of such translations, that ‘intention interrupts the thought of the chapter’, 1 is thus a serious misreading of the text

Nāgārjuna and Dōgen point to many of the same Buddhist insights because they deconstruct the same type of dualities, mostly versions of our commonsense but delusive distinction between substance and attribute, subject and predicate. This is demonstrated by examining chapter 2 of the "Mūlamadhyamakakārikā" and Dōgen's transgression of traditional Buddhist teachings in his "Shōbōgenzō." Nonetheless, they reach quite different conclusions about the possibility of language expressing a "true" understanding of the world.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding DialogueDavid R. LoyPsychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003, Pp. xvii + 443.In the burgeoning literature on Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue stands out. True to its subtitle, the format is designed to encourage genuine dialogue. Following an excellent introduction by the editor, Jeremy D. Safran, all of its nine chapters are by experienced therapists who are also committed to Buddhist practice; several of them are teachers within their respective traditions. Each chapter is followed by the commentary of an established psychoanalyst (many of them associated with the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues), and after that there is a reply by the original chapter author. The conversations are given plenty of space to develop; several chapters are over fifty pages long. In most cases the commentators rise to the occasion, with sympathetic but trenchant interrogations. The result is a fascinating discussion that raises the interaction between Buddhism and psychology to a higher level of intensity and insight.Safran's introduction looks at the different cultural contexts of psychoanalysis and Buddhism. He focuses on their own internal tensions, especially a shared one between agnosticism and faith. Recent psychoanalysis has shifted from a rationalistic, ego-oriented approach toward a relational and constructivist understanding of [End Page 363] the multiple self, a perspective more open to various narratives. "It has become clear that psychoanalysis is not a science in the same sense that physics or chemistry are, but rather a secular form of spirituality. In some ways it functions to fill the void once filled by religion" (p. 2). This shift to a therapy of faith and commitment highlights a similar tension within Buddhism, for example between the rationalist approach of Nāgārjuna's Karikas and the devotionalism of Pure Land Buddhism. In contrast to the classical Freudian emphasis on the reality principle controlling the pleasure principle and the Mādhyamikas' radical deconstruction of all narratives, letting go of the need to understand and control can lead to awe and reverence in the face of life's mystery. The advantage of a comparison between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is that each can help the other avoid crystallizing into an orthodoxy that tends to lose its liberative power.Several of the contributors refer to Freud's recommendation that the analyst keep an "evenly-suspended attention," and they emphasize how their Buddhist practice helps them to do this. In chapter 4, "An Analyst's Surrender," Sara Weber describes a difficult case study that began to flourish when there was "a shift in the nature of holding." Instead of trying to "fix" the patient, she surrendered herself to deeper, lesser-known areas of her patient's being and her own. She refers to Lacan: although we need others as mirrors, there is always an element of illusion in any organized meaning we frame for ourselves. The solution is to employ models loosely, allowing one's therapeutic techniques as well as one's clients to be in flux. She concludes by emphasizing that the analyst's role as "holder" of the patient "is insufficient unless we see it as a special case of that more profound faith in being that is temporarily embodied in ourselves" (p. 189). In chapter 3, "The Dissolving of Dissolving Itself," Robert Langan offers a personal and phenomenological meditation that plays with multiple perspectives as a way to reflect on the "in-between," the openness that both Buddhism and psychoanalysis at their best encourage: keeping room in the analytic process for paradox and contradiction, for gaps and emptiness.In chapter 6, Barry Magrid eloquently defends the need for analytic work as well as Buddhist practice. "Too often, it seems that both students and teachers have mastered their pain but succumbed to their impulses, experienced a oneness with all beings but remained in conflict with their families, discovered the emptiness of the self but continued to abuse their authority, found peace on their cushions but not in their lives" (p. 257). Yet we should not conclude that Buddhism and analysis are concerned with different aspects of our lives. "Like psychoanalysis, Zen practice is a...

Buddhism, By denying the subject, And advaita, By denying the object, Both resolve the problematic subject-Object relationship. That they are mirror-Images suggests that "nirvana" and "moksha" might amount to the same thing-Nonduality. "there is no self" equals "everything is the self." buddhism emphasizes "sunyata" because it is a phenomenological description of enlightenment. Advaita speaks of monistic "brahman" because it is a philosophical attempt to describe reality from the fictional "outside."