Beginning with Attention

While the material evidence in support of a theory of evolution may be overwhelmingly convincing, the theory itself points to a mindless and wasteful exercise of life’s creative impulse. The excessive scope of human intelligence, for instance, far exceeds that needed to solve the most elementary problems of material survival and mundane life choices. The fact that people can entertain questions about the possibility of a Reality at the heart of existence, as opposed to solely wondering about where the next meal is going to come from, indicates that the evolutionary process, as defined by evolutionary biologists, has far over shot it’s mark. No wonder this view of evolution has been called mindless. 

But if evolution is seen as a vehicle for the development of consciousness, which reaches its apex in the human person, then the process of evolution is far from mindless. Indeed, the vast scope of human consciousness can be seen as the crowning achievement of evolution. While it is evident that the evolutionary impulse at the level of biological development has terminated in the creation of homo sapiens, the initial creative impulse continues in the questions of wonder that arise naturally and endlessly in human consciousness. For humans what is at stake now is not survival of the fittest but how we can best fit ourselves to live life at its best.

Consciousness endows us with awareness. Without awareness we cannot think the thoughts we think or feel the feelings we feel. In short, we would not experience being alive as we know it. It is the light in a darkened room that allows us to see what is in the room, or using another metaphor, it acts like a projector allowing images to be flashed upon the screen of our minds. But then there comes a point of self-reflection when we become aware of this process. And we feel the need to take a step back, so to speak, to penetrate “beyond” the everyday, automatic workings of our mind. 

This is the point of “turning,” of metanoia (of “changing one’s mind”) and it represents a critical point in our development. What is born at this point is a sharpening of the focus of our awareness or the gift of increased attention. I use the word “gift” intentionally for it is the free unfoldment of a potential already latent within consciousness that is triggered into existence when the moment is right. Our responsibility is to use this gift skilfully.

But what is attention? The seventeenth century French philosopher, Nicholas Malebranche, called it “the natural prayer of the soul”. Simone Weil called it “the rarest and purest form of generosity” and went on to say that the single most important quality to gain from education is a deepening in one’s powers of attention. While love in the heart engenders depth of feelings for others, it could be said that love in the mind releases a new power of attention. Love implies attention: attention to other than one’s ego-self. 

Within the Zen Buddhist tradition, great emphasis is placed on attention or what is called mindfulness. It is recorded that Buddha told the following parable to highlight its meaning: once a man was running through a forest chased by a tiger and while fleeing he fell into a tiger pit that already contained an angry tiger. Luckily the man did not fall to the bottom of the pit but instead grabbed hold of a vine and was dangling half way down.

Soon the chasing tiger arrived on the scene and started reaching down with its paw to lift the man out while the tiger in the pit was jumping up trying to drag him down. From the corner of his eye the man noticed that the vine had bunches of his favourite berries hanging from it, fully ripe and ready to be eaten. He reached across and plucked some and put them in his mouth – “how delicious!” he exclaimed.

One way to interpret this teaching parable is to see the running man as us, the tiger chasing behind as our past regrets, and the tiger in the pit as our anxieties about the future. Yet the man in the parable shows by his savouring of the berries that the only place to really live is in the present. In other words, life is only experienced in the present (this is literally true but due to the habit of worrying about everything we tend to forget this fact) and so this is where our attention should be fully focussed no matter how horrendous our past may seem or how daunting our future may look. 

Attention allows us to exercise real freedom in our lives. For instance, I can choose to read these words I am writing at only sixty percent of my potential attention, it is my decision. I could then use twenty percent listening to background music and the other twenty percent thinking about someone I recently met. Is this a bad thing? No it’s not a bad thing. But it fragments our attention and in a sense keeps us mentally scattered. Once a student asked a wise Zen abbot what meditative practice he used to keep in harmony with the great underlying forces of the cosmos. The student was startled when the abbot replied “eat when hungry, sleep when tired.” That is, do the most simple, natural human acts with full attention: when hungry give your attention fully to the act of eating, when tired fully to sleep. 

This sounds easy but in practice it is found to be extremely difficult for we are constantly perturbed by the flittering nature of our minds which seem to be addicted to distraction. Most often we don’t simply eat when hungry or sleep when tired, we have a thousand other things distracting us. This is especially the case when living in our present society where changing images and artificial sounds are constantly bombarding us wherever we go. 

More importantly, fragmentation of our attention keeps our lives on the surface of life experience, living what could be called cosmetic lives. Neuroscientists are warning that with the increased use of electronic technology starting at an ever earlier age the neurons in the brains of developing children do not even have the opportunity to form mental pathways of any depth with the consequence that their future lives may well become more and more shallow. 

In short, there is no other way forward, if we wish to realise our full potential in life, than to do whatever we do with full and sustained attention. The old saying “put your whole body, mind and heart into what you do” holds true if we wish to live fulfilled lives. For if truth is going to speak to us it will be in the present moment and we have to be fully attentive to that moment if we are going to hear it. In the words of Meher Baba (given in 1960) we need to: “Live more and more in the Present, which is ever beautiful and stretches away beyond the limits of the past and the future.” 

© Ross Keating