By Ven. Chönyi Taylor

There was a time when I nearly killed myself, but for the attentiveness of the driver of the car coming towards me. I was so absorbed in a problem I was trying to solve that I was totally unaware of where I was, that is, that I was crossing the road. This was well before the days of mobile phones. Now the ubiquitous phones appear to be responsible for many more people putting themselves in danger through the same lack of awareness of surroundings. They, like me, are being intensely mindful. But, something is not quite right. It must be the technology.

New technology tends to have a bad press. Once we were warned against the act of writing, the new technology of the early Greeks. Socrates thought that writing would create forgetfulness because people would not use their memories. I doubt whether this is the earliest example of “inattention blindness,” also known as “lack of mindfulness.” How often did our Stone Age ancestors lose their prey through inattentiveness? Certainly we know that hunters need to be both patient and alert at the same time. Writing is, and was, nothing more than a different form of attentiveness. It may or may not assist our memory skills, but the world has not fallen apart because we can write.

Then we were warned about reading books. This was not a big problem before the breakthrough technology of the printing press. Now anyone could read so long as they had been taught the alphabet and phonetics. It is the cornerstone of primary education.

There is the wonderful story of the 15th-century Luddite, abbot Johannes Trithemius, who was no fan of the printing press, because he thought that the printing press would make monks lazy.¹ Copying meant that you worked hard, which was better for the soul than just reading. He also thought that this newfangled printed book was not as nice as the old copied book. That reminds me of the arguments against ebooks: they just are not as nice as the old paper books and they do not smell the same.

Now it is the rise of the internet and the mobile phone which is going to make a mess of our brains, according to Nick Carr in the Wall Street Journal. The problem is division of attention, which becomes locked into our brains.²

Inattention. Also known as “lack of mindfulness.” Mindfulness, being good, implies that its opposite, inattention, is bad.

Take mobile phones, for example. They are also blamed for “inattention blindness.” People walk into cars, fall into ponds, and even kill others by texting while they are driving. We are warned about the ability of our phones to give us an illusion of connectedness while actually creating the opposite. This becomes locked into our brains.

What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion.³

In other words, modern technology gives us new ways to be distracted.

Is this so?

Mindfulness necessarily creates inattention to whatever we are not being mindful of.   

Inattention can also be called: concentration, distraction, inattentiveness, preoccupation, absent-mindedness, daydreaming, dreaminess, reverie, wool-gathering, abstraction, staring into space, obliviousness. Some of these synonyms are good and some are not. Where would we be without daydreaming, reverie, staring into space, brainstorming? These are also opposite to mindfulness. Studies of the creative process show that both daydreaming and attentiveness are required in the process of creation, but at different times. J. P. Guilford, the great psychologist, coined the terms “divergent thinking” and “convergent thinking.”⁴ We need both.

So, mindfulness which is being directed towards the phone screen is not being directed elsewhere. That does not mean we are incapable of being mindful, it only means that we have chosen to be mindful of one thing without thinking about the consequences. And having something “locked into our brains” is just current jargon for “learning.” Rather than being alarmed by these brain changes, it would be better to recognize that the neuro-circuits can also be unchanged. In other words, we create habits and we break them.

This is true, too, of our Buddhist practices. We can develop mindfulness as an aspect of meditation and as we do that we are inattentive to any problems happening around us. Meditation, wisely, can be single-pointed concentration (convergent thinking) or analytical meditation (divergent thinking). Post meditation is the time for creating merit that is to generate deeper and wiser states of mind, of wisdom and of compassion. Creating merit also requires both convergent and divergent thinking. How can I benefit this sentient being, the mouse and its decidedly unhealthy droppings? Divergent thinking. I want to do this without killing the mouse. How can I trap it without killing it? Ah, here is an idea that might work. Let me put it into practice. Convergent thinking. Both these states are necessary if the meditation or the creation of merit is to be successful.

What really matters is not attentiveness, or even short burst thinking, but the wisdom which realizes we are not paying attention to what really matters at any one time.

Then, of course, there is our motivation that turns everyday activity into Dharma practice. But that is another topic.

Ven. Chönyi Taylor is a registered Foundational Buddhism FPMT teacher and an elder for the Discovering Buddhism at Home Course. She is the author of Enough! A Buddhist Approach to Working with Addictive Patterns (Snow Lion, 2010) and has been published in Mandala, Buddhadharma, Dharma Vision and Sangha Magazine. She is a founding member and member of the training committee of the Australian Association of Buddhist Counsellors and Psychotherapists and an Honorary Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychiatry at Sydney University.

1. Mike Masnick, “A Fifteenth Century Technopanic About The Horrors Of The Printing Press,” Techdirt.com, February 25, 2011 <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110119/05022912725/fifteenth-century-technopanic-about-horrors-printing-press.shtml>

2. Nick Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, W.W. Norton & Co., 2011

3. Nick Carr, “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2010 <http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704025304575284981644790098>

4. J. P. Guilford, The Nature of Human Intelligence, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967