Hi Xabier, I agree with you about the infinite varieties of human experiences of the practice, due to what we have already lived before, a lived experience that forged us as we are, with our prevalent patterns of reaction to life events etc.. Our practice is an individual one, but this does not mean "individualistic".
If we can call it a stock, it's of a very weird kind. I see it as a generative process, continuously evolving and moving... I wonder if it is measurable... In a digitalized economy, where attention is a highly valued resource, I wonder if we can introduce some wise criteria of measuring and share or exchange our awareness along the rules we have built. The tokenization of the economy can lead there..
But contemplative commons is also intended as a way in which we involve ourselves as commoners to open the walled gardens of the traditions of wisdom. It means a great relational work with these traditions, mainly based on male hierarchies that interpret the sacred texts through a monopolistic attitude. Does it matter to change this or not?
Thnak you for your reflections,
enzo

Hi there Enzo after reading your response to Xabier - I returned to this definition of the commons from the P2P wiki: "At the P2P Foundation, we settle around the following definition.

A commons is 1) shared resources (i.e. there is something objective about it) 2) maintained or co-produced by a community or group of stakeholders (hence: a subjective activity and choice, 'there is no commons without commoning') and 3) it is managed according to the rules and values of that community ('autonormativity'), which makes it also an alternative governance and property regime." https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Commons If I am reading what you have both said here correctly and forgive me if I haven't - where you speak of "practices", "common goods", "a stock", "Wisdom Traditions", "digitalized economy" etc., it appears to me that you may both be working with the first part of the definition - the "objective"? While I think the second part of the definition (again bearing in mind this is all just a way of "wording" something in this case the "commons") - about the "subjective" - "commoning", is where my interest in the contemplative commons lies, so what is the subjective aspect of the commons? For me that is contemplative experience/consciousness and where this kind of experience leads us, again for me and through my research this has led me to experiences of an interweaving, field-like "ground", where participants described feeling themselves interconnected with others and something "bigger than themselves", or they felt themselves in their "center" a space/place both in and outside of themselves and so forth. One of the issues regarding awareness of both first- and second-person experience is its proposed ineffability and therefore marganlization in the academe and possibly elsewhere. Though for an interesting neuroscientific take on pre-conceptual, anoetic or first-person experience you may like to read: "The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory" by Vandekerchkhove and her colleagues or any of the work by the philosopher De Quincy on Intersubjective/second person experience. There are many more scholars working with both first- and second- person experience, some with contemplative first- and second person experience, if this happens to be an area you are interested in exploring further. All the best, Patricia

How contemplatiive commons can be of help to deal with the current situation?

Dear All,

just a suggestion from Europe to all Europeans interested to find commons-based strategy for the post lockdown step:

https://euvsvirus.org/

Registration is still open! As WiseLifeLab we are present in the Digital Finance area.

See you there!

Best,

Vincenzo Giorgino

Hi Vincenzo

Thanks for the email.

My own focus on the ‘contemplative’ or ‘mindful’ commons is based on the view that historic processes of economy-driven ‘enclosure’ have now begun to capture attention. This is largely due to the underlying govern-mentality of neoliberalism, hyper-consumerism
and surveillance capitalism.

Historically, enclosure drew forests, lands, and bodies into the market economy. Today subtle forms of enclosure now capture and monetise attention, with far reaching implications for our ‘freedom’, ‘wellbeing’ and our increasingly mediated responsibility
for care of the self.

In these times that have resulted in the foregrounding of the ‘attention economy’ as a highly contested arena for corporate and political competition for our attention, there is a new individual and social dimension to the quality of the attention
we bring to our own body/mind and wellbeing. The contemplative commons denotes the social and political realm of freedom where the quality of our attention can be cultivated, drawing on forms of askesis. The commons dimension denotes the demand that we approach
this work of care for self and other in the context of a critical and insightful understanding of the overarching nature of the societal and economic impacts on our attention; so that we do not yield to the illusion that isolated or individual practices are
sufficient.

The contemplative commons summons up an ethical demand that we attend to the work of care for self, other and the earth as a work of freedom, to be pursued individually and collectively, combining processes of concientization (Paolo Freire) and
meditative/yoga practices of care for mind and body.

Peter Doran