Two Monks in the Mountains: What a Forgotten Meeting Teaches Us About the Attention Economy

Using, the See-Judge-Act method, what questions come to mind as you read this for your discernment process?

In November 1968, a Trappist monk from Kentucky climbed into the foothills of the Himalayas to meet a 33-year-old refugee. Thomas Merton — the most famous Catholic writer of his generation — had come to Dharamsala, India, to sit with the young Dalai Lama, then living in exile and largely unknown to the West.

They met three times over five days. No cameras, no press, no audience. Merton wrote in his journal that he felt he was speaking with “a very solid, energetic, generous, and warm person.” The Dalai Lama would later say that it was Merton who first showed him what the word “Christian” really meant. Two contemplatives, from traditions separated by continents and centuries, discovered they were guarding the same fire: the conviction that the human interior life is sacred, and that it can be lost.

Five weeks later, Merton was dead — accidentally electrocuted in Bangkok hours after giving a talk on monasticism. The conversation was cut short. But their exchange points to a larger thesis: what happens to the human soul when its attention becomes someone else’s product?

That question sits at the heart of who you and I are today: Buddhist wisdom and Catholic social teaching help us judge the AI attention economy by asking what it does to human attention, dignity, and community.

Emptiness and the self we’re sold

In Mahayana Buddhist thought, emptiness (śūnyatā) is not nothingness. It is the insight that persons and things have no isolated, fixed, independent existence — everything arises dependently and cannot be grasped as a permanent possession or identity. That insight sharpens the central critique of an economy that profits by telling us we are what we click, consume, and display. Catholic teaching arrives at a parallel conviction from a different starting point: the human person cannot be reduced to function, data, or output. The Vatican’s 2025 document Antiqua et Nova makes this explicit — our worth rests on being created in the image of God, not on what we produce.

Presence as resistance

Buddhist presence means being awake to reality as it is, without being dragged around by craving or distraction. In an AI-saturated world, that becomes a counter-practice against systems built to capture attention. Catholic social teaching adds a sharper edge: sustained attention is not merely a wellness goal but a moral and social good, because our capacity for truth, freedom, and relationship depends on it. When apps monetize attention, they shape our habits before reflection has a chance to act. Antiqua et Nova insists AI must remain a tool — never a substitute for the human mind.

Compassion, community, and the common good

Buddhist compassion and Catholic solidarity meet at a shared conviction: the well-being of one is bound up with the well-being of all. This raises real questions about the tools we use. A mindfulness app that promises to reduce suffering while harvesting user data presents a genuine tension worth weighing — not an automatic verdict, but not an innocent transaction either.

Sangha — in its broad, contemporary sense, a community of shared practice — reminds us that awakening is nurtured socially, not as a private self-help project. It maps closely onto the Catholic idea of the common good: the social conditions that allow people to flourish together. Seen together, a digital tool that isolates users while extracting value from their loneliness runs counter to both. One that builds genuine community can serve both.

The poor and the power to opt out

Catholic social teaching is clearest when the issue is power. Technologies are not neutral if they widen inequality, manipulate consciences, or deepen the digital divide. The poor are often least able to opt out of surveillance, compulsive design, and “free” services that monetize their attention — and the environmental costs of AI infrastructure fall disproportionately on poorer regions. This is why, Antiqua et Nova argues, any evaluation of AI must begin with human dignity and the common good.

A synthesis worth practicing

Here is the constructive proposal: emptiness teaches non-clinging, compassion directs that freedom toward others, and sangha shows that liberation is communal. Catholic social teaching adds that communal flourishing must be ordered to the dignity of every person — especially the vulnerable. Together, they offer a clear test for technology: use it with more sobriety, favor tools that protect attention rather than monetize it, and build communities where contemplation, service, and justice reinforce one another.

Merton and the Dalai Lama had no smartphones to argue about. But they understood that contemplation is not an escape from the world — it is how we return to it free enough to love it. So the attention economy is bidding on precisely that freedom.