Zen and the Art of the Tweet

by Phil Baumann on November 6, 2009

in twitter

twitter-zendeskI’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of our collective mindfulness lately. Every month, millions of more people are increasing their connectivity to the Web. Facebook’s gravity keeps swelling. Twitter continues to flap upwards in users. Mobile devices and operating systems continue to evolve and proliferate. It seems every week a new feature or service or gadget makes a debut.

The Web is not only expanding like a universe but it’s also infiltrating every nook of our daily lives. And it’s expanding and infiltrating at an accelerating pace. What effect is all this happening on our capacity to attentively engage with life? What disciplines and skills and understanding do we need to acquire as the Web continues its unstoppable inflation?

PRESENT MOMENT, WONDERFUL MOMENT

Thousands of years ago certain cultures around the world discovered and cultivated the art of breathing mindfully. In some cases, entire religious traditions grew out of these practices.

Our brains and sense-organs are powerful attention-devices. Our minds are always teaming with thoughts, feelings, hunches and visions. Even asleep, our brains actively stream profuse experiences like dreams. It’s how we survive.

But our very powers of attention and awareness and cognition can distract us from the present-moment happenings of our lives. We’re always breathing, but rarely notice unless we pay attention. And this presents us with a fundamental observation about life: if we’re constantly processing the relentless influx of internal and external sensory data but never focusing our full attention on what happens, how alive are we? For to have a meaningful life, we must feel alive – otherwise we’re just automatons obligated to the patterns made by others and the larger external world.

Being aware of the present moment is the easiest and hardest thing to do. Try it: sit for 5 minutes and pay attention to nothing but your breath. How many times did your mind wander from that simplest of tasks? If you can’t pay attention to your life right now, when do you expect to do it? After you die? In some other world?

TWITTER MIND, MONKEY MIND

Some Buddhists have a phrase for how our minds endlessly flit from one thought to the next: Monkey Mind. One aim of meditation is to “tame” the Monkey Mind. Not so much to control it, as to pay attention to it – and, in the process of paying attention to a fast-moving mind, paradoxically slow it down to a point where the present moment reveals itself most fully.

Of all social networking sites, perhaps Twitter best exemplifies the electronic version of Monkey Mind. The tiny bursts and pulses of text and hyperlinks stream through the world like flashes of thought across a busy mind. Twitter’s a powerful way to connect with others and receive news and important or trivial nuggets of information. And yet, if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to get sucked into Twitter Mind – an energetic state of dopamine excitation, where the sense of time is lost.

As more of us use these tools, how do we maintain our sense of mindfulness? How do we tame Twitter Mind? Few of us practice any sort of traditional meditation to discipline our Monkey Mind. Now we have social media. The Social Web is like an extension of the neocortex. It may sound crazy to think that our brains have a new layer, but it’s not a bad way to think about the kind of world the Web is making.

We will need to understand more about the effects of the Web on our brains, on our attention and our ability to feel fully alive between the sliver of light between birth and death that was entrusted to us.

THE NEVER-ENDING STREAM

When was the last time you felt the beating of your heart? The breath in and out of your chest? The sound of rain falling on leaf-mush?

Do you know why you’re on Twitter? How long you’re on Twitter?

The Art of the Tweet – if there is one – is this: using the medium to learn something about our world and sharing your unique view of it with us mindfully. Life without mindfulness is a life lost. Twitter may increase your awareness of the world around you but only your mind supplies your life with meaning. How are you  maintaining your mind?

Tweets are like raindrops falling into a stream. So are the moments of your life. Are you paying attention, or something more expensive?

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  • jeetchatterjee
    what do you propose we listen to/pay attention to? more thoughts? that is merely being subjective and creating a hierarchy within the paradigm of thoughts. why do you want to be mindfull? It is a desire, as much as wanting a prostitute on the side of the street, merely with a rightheous halo.
    You want to be aware of the present moment- but to attempt to be aware of this thought of a 'present moment', you are still working in the duality of a past self that is not aware of the present moment and a future self that hopefully will be aware of a present moment. What will arise, will only arise in non-volition.
    You distinguish between the Twitter Mind and some 'mind' which provides meaning- where are these minds coming from? The 'mind' you propose is the Pseudo-Spiritual mind, which is, in the end, still within the realm of thoughts in your brain. No different- only perceived as different. In awakening, there is nothing to do, nothing to be changed or transformed because there is only the present self.
    Moments in your life are like waves in the ocean- when does the wave start and the ocean end? Our mere sense of presence, the 'I am' has defined the boundaries, in both spatial and temporal dimensions. It is the manifestation of what could be, if something could be and thus, manifestation is merely manifestation, thought is merely thought and Twitter is merely Twitter. It is the wave which believes it is the wave- not realizing that at no point is it distinct from the entiriety of consciousness. And thus the question of why I should do this or that becomes irrelevant because there never was anyone asking it.
  • Well said - but you still have Monkey Mind. Keep practicing. :)
  • jeetchatterjee
    :-) as long as you believe there is something to be practised or something to be changed or transformed, you will simply go around and around the mulberry bush, in search of a 'better self'. And by all means, enjoy 'mindfullness'- it is as 'important' and as illusory as anything i could ever say or 'convey' to you
  • I guess you don't believe we really exist either? :)

    Look, you can take philosophy to any extreme you'd like. But the fact of the
    matter is that our attention is going to become increasingly frayed as
    technologies proliferate.

    By your logic, we should believe in anything.
  • jeetchatterjee
    If you can, try and remember what is it that joins the dots of each moment in your life, each day, each year, each event? Past all thoughts is a simple sense of presence, of the fact that I am here. From there, we proceed into the different thoughts which you so elaborately displayed.
    I do not doubt the logic of your article- my point is that attempting to stop this process of flitting from thought to thought is also flitting to another thought- which has arisen, post the uncondition acceptance of your presence. At this moment, it does not even matter if you exist or not, what matters is that you have unconditionally accepted that you do and thus, have become the medium for thought. As a medium, trying to change or tranform yourself into someone you are not is as much just a thought in your brain as your 'Monkey Mind'. Desire for spiritual growth is in no way 'better' than desire to have sex with a prostitute, it merely has a righteous halo. Who has divided reality into the yesterday you, the today you and the tomorrow you? It is you. You have superimposed these dimensions on chaotic thoughts in your brain.
    To sum up in an analogy, a sage, coming across a scantily dressed prositute, took her in his arms and helped her crossed the raging river. Many miles and days later, the disciple could take it no more and so he burst out and questioned the sage on holding a symbol of materialism etc. etc. The sage smiled. "Are you still holding her?"
    Acceptance of the world’s manifestation and rejection of the world’s manifestation- how are they different?
  • But I"m not trying to stop the process.

    Enjoying this conversation.
  • jeetchatterjee
    even attempts at brevity continue the whirl around the mulberry tree :-)

    stilling the mind is not a trying- it also not a not trying- as i mentioned in the first post, what will arise, will arise in non-volition. abandon causality and what will happen, will happen.
  • here here!
  • DrV
    I can think of no greater monkey mind authority than Phil
  • :)
  • I was working on a post (in my mind) about this very thing..how incessant use of social media engages the monkey mind. Your post is the one I was going to write but have no need now as I've tweeted yours. Well done and on right on. Cheers!
  • Glad this helped! :)

    As much as it's laughable to think that these media can be a time-sink, it's
    going to be important that people know how they affect their productivity.
  • Wow, GREAT article! Thanx Phil!
  • DrV
    If I hear you correctly: Time is the true currency ... and Twitter is chump change. I'm concerned that this is a prelude to your announcement that you're jumping off the treadmill and moving to Tibet. Don't do it.
  • lol - I think Tibet's a wee bit too cold for me, so I'll be around for while.
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