Knowing as 'Attending to': The Body and its Immaterial Other in Three Philosophical Manuals

This paper explores the epistemology of contemplative practice through three texts representative of distinct contemplative traditions: the Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta, Sāṃkhyakārikā of Īśvarakṛṣṇa and Pañcīkaraṇa (Śaṃkara Bhagavatpāda attr.). It approaches them to discern an underlying methodological framework of the managing or governance of attention (avadhāna) as a primary mode of textual reflection and philosophical hermeneutics. Engaging new materialist scholarship and attention studies, it explores the tight mutual relationship obtaining between the material body and its immaterial other, articulated differently in each text but resting on a parallel phenomenological structure and movement from the corporeal to the incorporeal.