Opening a Contemplative Commons

During the Great Transition:

Reorienting the MBIs
Vincenzo Giorgino
State University of Torino, Italy

Donald McCown
West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Center for Contemplative Studies, USA
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as
in my presence only, but now much more in my absence,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Philippians, 2:12
 Background
 We come honestly to the individualist and
reductionist stances that we assume in the MBIs, and
that require the reorientation in our title
 The history of European and North American
engagement with Asian contemplative traditions
tracks neatly with the social and cultural forces
acting across the modern period that have led us into
 the imminent frame (Taylor)
 warring categories of science and religion (Harrison)
 valuing universalized knowledge over situated ways
of understanding the world (Foley)
 Background
 Today, work in the contemplative dimension is narrowed by our
epistemological and therapeutic orientations—reductionist and
individualist
 Overwhelmingly, that’s how we justify ourselves, and there’s no
argument that it works inside the immanent frame

 Yet, there are worries and critiques from engaged Buddhists and
others, who fear commodification, co-optation, and misuse
 Zizek, from a psychoanalytic/Marxist perspective (a counter-context)
provides perhaps a proof text: “…although ‘Western Buddhism’
presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist
dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and
Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideological supplement.”

 So, we “look inside” and change ourselves when we all may be

better served by looking outward at the predations of the system
 Context
Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of
one accord, of one mind….
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence
only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling.
Philippians, 2:2/12
 A Metaphor for Us
“From my cabin where I write…I see eagles… But I also see the ubiquitous
poplars quaking high up in the wind. The tree book tells me their Latin
name: Populus tremuloides, which I loosely translate as the community of
trembling people. A move from the fear and trembling of a paternal
Abraham or a solitary Nietzschean subject to that of a trembling people, a
trembling community, would perhaps be a way of reading the world.”
…Verena Andermatt Conley, “Communal Crisis”
 More Background
• The commodification of mindfulness
• Four in 10 adults in the US meditate at least weekly
• $ 1,2B revenue in 2017 (US ony)
• An estimated 2,200 mindfulness teachers have been
trained (2005-2015) to minimum standards in the UK
• Some 1300 mindfulness apps are available
• In 2016 the whole wellness industry valued $3,72tn

 Ron Purser and David Loy 2013 “Beyond McMindfulness,” The Blog, August 31, 2013

 Mindful Nation 2015, UK Report

 The Global Wellness Institute, cited in H. Garlick, “The Madness of Mindfulness,”

 Buddhists, Markets, and Money

• Centrality of the practice of dana and

the Inexhaustible Treasury (V-X cent.
a.d. in China)

• The fundamental contribution to the

birth of capitalism in Japan by
Problematic Centrality of Craving

In the beginning, there is no craving.

 Pressures of Our Social
 The Anthropocene: Context
• Humans dominate nature and change it

• Politics of life itself (Rose), or Bioeconomy, means that we can manipulate

and expand life, and even create it

• AI and digital innovation in general make the picture more complex and
intriguing

• Homo Deus, as an Israeli historian called the human condition of our times

 The Great Transition:

• Shifted from from its use in the environmentalist culture
to a broader meaning
 The Network Society

Social

Mainframe PC Internet networks “Blockchain”
and Smart
      phones  

70s 80s 90s 2000s 10s

 
 The Network Society

 Digital networking expands individual and collective wealth

 M. Castells Network society 1996 The Information Age: Economy, Society

and Culture Vol.1.
 In 2006, the jurist Yochai Benkler devoted a special study to the expansion of
non-market and non-proprietary social production—the real innovative
trend of our times
 It consists of two processes in place for at least a century:
 the development of an economy centered on information and cultural production
 the development of a communication environment built on cheap processors
with high calculation capacity, interconnected in a pervasive network (the
Internet)

Technological disruption:
mainframes→pcs→ the internet→ social networks
 From Emancipatory Politics
to Life Politics
• The former corresponds to the first modernity, from the
industrial revolution to the 1980s, and are characterized by
the defense of class interests; in other words for all those
elements that respond to collective inequalities and define
the same individuals
• The latter is related to the most complex, modern phase of
modernity, where the nexus individual-roles, individuals-
institutions are lost. The individual comes into play as such,
as a living human being
• It is related to questions about the very meaning of human
existence, shifted from the private sphere to the public
arena, with a new strategic political value
The Web of Our Interactions
The magic of the GAFA world is you,

but you don’t know it…

 The GAFA world is made by applications to Internet
protocols.
 If you follow the money you will find millions or a couple
of
 billions in case of FB customers entwined/hooked up as
mussels to its wires because the human need of interaction

calls for satisfaction. And it happens and it is for free like a

free beer, not free speech. You do not pay in cash, but the
more
precious gifts you keep on giving are your digital
identities—,
 A Disruptive Innovation

 Distributed ledger technology (or bitcoin blockchain)

has the potential to transform society
 The bitcoin blockchain is a distributed ledger that
allows transactions between peers without any
central control (be it a bank, the state, etc)
 This means that there is no central server and the
validation of transactions is provided by voluntary
contributions from peers who receive in-kind
compensation—a certain amount of bitcoins
 The Enactive Approach
in Community Mindfulness

 “The bodily life regulation is crucial for cognition…

 The social sensorimotor interaction can be a constitutive part of

social cognition“
(cited in Di Paolo and Thompson 2014)

Enactive
Embodied
Embedded
 Contemplative Commons *

What if we see the group practice of mindfulness as a commons?*

*Thanks to Zack Walsh for the term.

 Characteristics

 A commons may arise whenever a community

decides it wishes to manage a resource in a
collective manner, with a special regard for
equitable access, use, and sustainability.
 We tend to think of natural and physical resources,
because of our embedded economic views, but a
commons is more accurately defined as
1. a specific community
2. that manages a particular resource
3. through a set of self-generated social protocols
Starting from an MBI Group
• Specific community: These people, in this space,
gathered for this purpose
• Particular resource: The properties co-created within
that space and time through mindfulness practice; not a
possession or outcome of any one person—rather there
is an atmosphere
• All reside in it, though not all contribute in the same way
at the same level each time
• We will investigate a sketch of “ethical space” next

• Social protocols: Co-creation of mindfulness unique to

the group; each group is different each time they meet
as they define the common resource for themselves
Starting from an MBI Group
 Moving to a Commons
(MBI teachers, you know it’s a commons; you share in the space that is
created—a resource that can co-regulate you; it’s key to your resilience)
Unique adaptations of the qualities of the doing, non-doing, and
friendship dimensions ensure that each particular group can learn to
work with difference and dissent—a strong community is dangerous
If we can agree that friendship is a virtue, a good, we can note that the
good aligns with creativity, with the new moment , and gives rise to a
“weak community” (Caputo) that recognizes both obligation and
dissent
Within such a commons, perhaps one can hear Augustine’s short
command: “Love, and do what you will.”
Here, perhaps is the way to bring together contemplative practice and
the potential of the digital economy—to bring designers into the
contemplative commons, to create systems with friendship at the base
 Moving Away

 The subversion and destruction of the commons is aptly

termed “enclosure”
 Picture common grazing land fenced in, off, out

 Example: patientslikeme.com
 Enclosed by big pharma funding!
 No longer peer-to-peer, but corporate structure, moderated with
commercial intention

 What does enclosure of the contemplative commons look like?

 Manualization?
 Promotion of expertise?
 Denominational boundaries?
 Back to the Metaphor

 The leaves of Populus tremuloides trembling together in community—

working towards that like-mindedness that for Paul, as for Aristotle,
in fact, defines an ethical community
 Ponder the microclimate generated within a growing forest
 (Here’s a little story from Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees)

 As Batchelor suggests: “According to Buddhist orthodoxy, following

the eightfold path leads to the complete end of suffering by bringing
the cycle of death and rebirth to an end.”  In contrast, in the
discourse The City, “following the eightfold path leads to the
emergence of a city: a collaborative city life in this world” (Batchelor
2015: 89)
 The digital economy offers instruments to promote and sustain such a
vision
 Further Reading
 Vincenzo M. B. Giorgino & Zack Walsh (eds.) (2018). Co-Designing Economies in Transition
Radical Approaches in Dialogue with Contemplative Social Sciences, Palgrave McMillan.

 Valerie Malhotra-Benz & Vincenzo M.B. Giorgino (eds.) (2016). Contemplative Social Research:
Caring for Self, Being, and Lifeworld, Fielding University Press.

 Giorgino V.M.B. and D. McCown, (2018). “Life Skills for Peer Production: Walking Together
through a Space of ‘Not-Knowing’” Journal of Peer Production, Issue City
http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-11-city/experimental-format/life-skills-for-peer-production-
walking-together-through-a-space-of-not-knowing/

 McCown, D. (2013). The ethical space of mindfulness in clinical practice. London: Jessica Kingsley.

 McCown, D. (2018). Co-creating the ethical space of mindfulness-based interventions. In R. Purser, S.

Stanley, & N.N. Singh (eds.), Handbook of ethical foundations of mindfulness. New York: Springer.

 McCown, D. (2017). Introduction: A new hope. In L. Monteiro, J. Compson, & F. Musten (eds.),
Practitioner’s Guide to Ethics and Mindfulness-Based Interventions. New York: Springer.

 McCown, D. (2016). Inside-Out: The Mindfulness-Based Interventions as a model for community

building. In V. Bentz, & V. Giorgino (eds.). Contemplative social research: Caring for self, being, and
lifeworld. Santa Barbara, CA: Fielding University Press.
Questions?