About Attention.

[Gem]

General discussion about attention in meditation and in everyday life.

It's interesting that you bring this up, because I consider attention to be the greatest Mystery of my path, probably because you cannot learn other Mysteries without doing so! By Mystery, I mean a truth that can only be understood through personal experience or personal contemplation; the sorts of "ah ha!" moments you get when suddenly a truth about the world crystalizes and makes itself understood to you. A lot of them are hiding in plain sight. To learn them, you need only to pay attention; observe the world around you. A meditation or trance-like state can definitely help, but I haven't found it absolutely required.

Zen Stories on Attention

A distraught man approached the Zen master.

"Please, Master, I feel lost, desperate. I don't know who I am.
Please, show me my Self.”

But the teacher just looked away without responding. The man began to plead and beg, but still the master gave no reply.

Finally giving up in frustration, the man turned to leave.

At that moment the master called out to him by name.

"Yes!" the man said as he spun back around with full attention.

"There it is!" exclaimed the master.



Mountain stream

A master and his student walked into the mountains. The master stopped and said,
“Can you hear the stream?” The student became very alert, aware, no thought, his whole attention was on listening for the sound.

After a short time the student said, “Yes! I hear the stream.”

The student then asked the master, “What if I didn’t hear the stream?” The master said “take it from there”.

It isn’t hearing the stream. It is the full attention of listening for it.

Attention is the key to transformation.

[Xan]

Attention is a function of consciousness... which is our universal essence of being.

As I see it attention is our only real power.

Whatever we give our attention to becomes our reality of the moment.

By learning to choose how we direct our attention we become free from the reactivity of our conditioning.

By choosing to pay attention in our breathing
and the silent open space within and all around us
we come to know and live from who we really are.


Xan

[jorddy]

Originally Posted by Xan

Attention is a function of consciousness... which is our universal essence of being.

As I see it attention is our only real power.

Whatever we give our attention to becomes our reality of the moment.

By learning to choose how we direct our attention we become free from the reactivity of our conditioning.

By choosing to pay attention in our breathing
and the silent open space within and all around us
we come to know and live from who we really are.


Xan

Agreed!

Our attention is the sun, it radiates on everything it sees.

When I have meditated I focused on absolutely nothing, no thoughts, no emotion, not my body, not my surroundings, just plain old nothing. This is when I have found clarity of myself and the world around me, I become receptive via my intuition. And then in choice I can be giving in kind thought and emotion or other kinds of thoughts and emotions. I should do this more everyday.

Lisa, what lovely stories!
Xan -- I agree that attention is a very useful power. However, I disagree that it is the only power we have. What about things like love?
Gracey, I agree that that is immensely helpful. But isn't focusing on nothing a form of attention in and of itself? Literally, paying attention to nothing?

I've personally found that attention, and observance are helpful in both meditation and general life.

[Xan]

Originally Posted by feralfae

Xan -- I agree that attention is a very useful power. However, I disagree that it is the only power we have. What about things like love?

Yes... love is the source and essence of everything.

But it's only when we are Aware in love that it has power in our lives... when we give our attention to it.


Xan

True. So love being the essence is paying attention to love being the essence, which is the equivalent of focusing on nothing being paying attention to nothing. That makes sense. :-)

[Xan]

Yes... paying attention to no thing, but to love itself.


Xan