The attention revolution

The attention revolution - Unlocking the power of the focused mind.
B. Allan Wallace.

Loving-kindness

• How we fill our days is simply a matter of our priorities.
• Pause for a moment and ask yourself: How much satisfaction has your life brought you thus far?
• Genuine happiness is a symptom of a balanced, healthy mind, just as a sense of physical well-being is a sign of healthy body.
• So if we base our pursuit of happiness on our ability to influence other people and the world at large, we are almost certainly doomed to failure.
• Our first act of freedom should be to choose our priorities wisely.
• To flourish individually, we must consider the well-being of those around us. « One who loves himself will never harm another » « j’ai appris que je suis ici sur terre pour aider les autres. Ce que je n’ai toujours pas compris, c’est pourquoi les autres sont ici » (« 21 leçons pour le 21ème siècle »)
• Misguided desires are called craving, which's here means an attraction for something whose desirable qualities we exaggerate while ignoring any undesirable qualities.
• What would I love to receive from te world in order to have a happy, meaningful, and fulfilling life?
• Intangible such as harmony in your environment.
• What could they provide you that would help you find the happiness you seek?
• What kind of person do I want to become? What personal qualities do I want to possess?
• What would I love to offer to the world, to those around me and the environment at large? What kind of a mark would I love to make on the world?
• « Hedonic treadmill »

Stage 2: Continuous attention

• How long have you struggled to free yourself of anxiety and dissatisfaction? What tendencies of your own mind and behaviour have repeatedly gotten in your way?
• How can we free ourselves of the inner causes of suffering, given that we have so little control over outer circumstances?
• When you can occasionally maintain continuity of awareness of bodily sensations for about a minute, you have reached the second stage.
• « Here is the in-breath...Here is the out-breath.
• Relaxation, stillness and vigilance.
• Meditation is a balancing act between attention and relaxation.
• Individual liberation, or nirvana.
• Anapanasati, which is usually translated as « mindfulness of breathing » as « mindfulness with breathing ».
• Have you ever driven down a highway and let miles slip by without any recollection of where you’ve been or of anything else that was happening in that interval? Or have you ever been in a conversation with someone, only to find that you don’t have a clue about what they have been saying for the last couple of minutes? These are just two common examples that may indicate a cognitive deficit disorder.
• The more we practice mindlessness, the better we get at it- there is no better way to kill time.
• Cognitive hyperactivity disorder.
• Even in the midst of work, we can take off fifteen seconds here and sixty seconds there to balance the attention by quietly focusing on the breath.
• Sanskrit word for meditation is bhavana, which simply means « cultivation ». In fact, we are all cultivating our minds in one way or another all the time, through the way we use our attention.

Stage 3: Resurgent attention

• Value the quality of your meditation over the quantity of time spent.
• The third stage is achieved only when your mind remains focused on the object most of the time in virtually all your sessions.
• The achievement of the stage of resurgent attention requires a greater commitment to practice.
• Relaxation, stillness and vigilance.
• The relationship among these three qualities can be likened to the roots, trunk and foliage of a tree. The roots of the relaxation go deeper, the trunk of the stability gets stronger, and the foliage of vividness reaches higher.
• Quickly note wether excitation or laxity has arisen.
• This approach to healing the mind is similar to healing the physical body.
• If your mind becomes distracted and you get caught up in involuntary thoughts, your breathing will become coarser, resulting in stronger sensations, which are easier to detect. But as your mind calms down again, the breathing and the sensations that go with it become finer, and this one again challenges you to heighten the degree of vividness.
• Always go for quality over quantity.
• To achieve stage three, the dedicated meditator will need to take up this practice as a serious avocation, spending days or weeks in this practice in the midst of a contemplative way of life in a serene, quiet environment.
• But why do people so often find solitude and inactivity distressing? In the absence of distractions, we come face to face with our own minds.
• Preparing for an expedition.
• Supportive environment: it’s important to practice in a safe, quiet, and agréable location, optimally with a few other like-minded people.
• A suitable environment is hard to come by.
• Having few desires and being content: the first of these two prerequisites refers to having few desires for things you don’t have, and the second refers to being content with what you have.
• The story of an elephant that entered a shallow pond to refresh itself on a hot sommer day. Given its great size, the elephant could find a footing in the deep water and enjoy itself. Then come a cat along and, wishing to escape the heat of the day, jumped into the same pond. But unlike the elephant, the cat couldn’t find any footing, so it had only two options: either to sink or float on the top. Similarly, those who have accustomed themselves to having few desires and contentment can find joy in solitude, whereas those who have not found such equilibrium are bound either to sink into laxity and depression or to float up into excitation and restlessness.
• Having few activities.
• Ethical discipline: this includes taking good care of the body, a healthy diet and getting the right amount of physical exercice.
• Reducing disturbing mental states such as hatred, greed, confusion, fear and jealousy.
• Dispensing with compulsive thoughts

Stage 4: Close attention

• The tactile sensations of the breath at the nostrils.
• Each of your sessions now last an hour or longer.
• Vipassana (contemplative insight) tradition of Theravada Buddhism, differs significantly from the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism version. The modern Vipassana approach views mindfulness as non discriminating, moment-to-moment “bare-awareness”; the Indo-Tibetan tradition, however, characterises mindfulness as bearing in mind the object of attention, the state of not forgetting, not being distracted, and not floating.
• “Mindfulness in plain English”, the book, describes mindfulness as non conceptual awareness, or “bare attention”, which does not label or categorises experiences. “Mindfulness” is present-time awareness...it stays forever in the present...If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness.
• In contrast to the Vipassana tradition’s insistence that mindfulness stays forever in the present, the Buddha states that it recollects events that are long past.
• Discerning mindfulness is directed to the body, feelings, mental states and processes, and phenomena at large.
• This constitutes a rigorous contemplative science of the mind and its relation to the body and the environment, so there is much more to this discipline than the bare attention alone.
• Continue focusing your attention on the bare sensations of the breath at the aperture of your nostrils.
• Observe more and more closely until you detect the very subtle sensations of your breath.
• But with the technique of mindfulness of breathing, as your practice deepens, the breath becomes more and more subtle, which challenges you to arouse greater and greater vividness of attention.
• Psychologists have found that the time generally needed to acquire experience in a variety of high-levels skills is five to ten thousand hours of training in a discipline of eight hours each day fro fifty weeks in a year. This is roughly the degree of commitment required to progress along the entire path to the achievement of shamatha.
• Attention is highly selective.
• Hypnagogic state of consciousness: a deep state of relaxation as we fall asleep, with our minds withdrawn from the physical senses.
• The mind is relaxed and is disengaged from the senses.
• If you want to develop exceptional vividness, first develop relaxation, second develop stability, and then finally increase vividness. Underlying all these aspects of attention must be a foundation of equanimity (calme, sang-froid)
• Practice and achievement are one and the same.
• Contemplatives are able to do this because they tap into and sustain an inner source of serenity, a source that soothes the body and mind so that all sense of impatience or expectation evaporates.

Stage 5: tamed attention

• ‘Without distraction and without grasping”
• Be present here and now.
• Challenge at hand: be attentive to everything that comes up in the mind, but don’t grasp onto anything.
• For dedicated, sustained practice there is no substitute for a knowledgeable, experienced teacher.
• In this practice, by leaving your eyes open but directing your attention to the mind.
• While it is crucial to enhance both the stability and vividness of attention, this must not be done at the expense of relaxation.
• Release your hopes and your fears, and simply devote yourself to the practice, moment by moment.
• Tibetans have an old saying: If you fill a gourd with just a little water and shake it, it makes a lot of noise. But if you fill it to the brim and shake it, it makes no sound. Generations of seasoned contemplatives have that making any claims about one’s spiritual achievements - even if they are true - creates obstacles to one’s practice. These are private matters, and if you discuss them with anyone, it should be in private with your own spiritual mentor.
• Being distracted by and grasping onto thoughts is the problem.
• Tonglen: “giving and taking”

Stage 6: pacified attention

• After some thousands of hours of rigorous training.
• The more important is to proceed under the guidance of an experienced, compassionate teacher.
• The term Buddha literally means “one who is awake”.
• In the practice of shamatha, you develop present memory, as in the case of remembering the to focus your attention on your chosen object in the ongoing flow of the present moment.
• Prospectively remembering to conduct state checks throughout the day.
• Conduct a state check.

Stage 7: fully pacified attention

• Enthusiasm: the practice itself now fills you with joy.
• Your meditation sessions may last for at least two hours with only the slightest interruptions by laxity and excitation.
• In ancient times, when Indian mariners sailed far out to sea, they would released a caged raven they had broad onboard and observe its flight. After flying around higher and higher in ever-widening circles, if the raven flew off in one direction, the navigator would know that was the direction of the nearest land. But if there was no land in sight of the raven, as much as it might wish to alight elsewhere, since it could not swim it had no choice but to return to the ship. Likewise, when thoughts arise, let them play out their course, regardless of their nature or duration. In the end, they can only disappear back into the space of awareness from which they initially arose.
• The liberation that results from the unification of shamatha and vipashyana in no way places us outside the reality of change. The Buddha, too, grow old and died. But the freedom gained by the Buddha and all those who have followed his path to liberation to its culmination has irrevocably healed their minds from craving, hostility and delusion and their exultant suffering.
• Develop the stability and vividness of your attention throughout the daytime.
• Dreaming can be viewed as the special case of perception without the constraints of external sensory input.
• You can develop excellent dream recall by paying close attention to your dreams and recording them in a journal.
• The practices of lucid dreaming is waking up as soon as you recognise that you are dreaming.
• So do not move when you first wake up. Redirect your attention to the dream from which you just awoke.

Stage 8: single-pointed attention

• We also regard things, such as wealth, fame, and sensory pleasures, as sources of happiness, whereas in reality they are not.

Stage 9: attentional balance

• The purpose of shamatha meditation is to develop or unveil the stability and vividness of attention.

Stage10: Shamatha

• Vipashyana, or contemplative insight. The practice ouf vipashyana is a kind of “contemplative science”.
• While abiding in shamatha, you may have little or no experience of the passage of time, for the sense that requires memory, which is achieved through conceptualisation, you dwell in in a state of consciousness that feels timeless.
• The “threefold training” of ethical discipline, concentration and wisdom comprises the essential framework of the Buddhist path of liberation. The first training, in ethical discipline, consists of the three factors of right speech, right action, and right livelihood.
• The training in concentration consists of right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
• Exceptional degree of concentration: samadhi.
• The spirit of empiricism and pragmatism that has inspired the Buddhist tradition from its beginning.

Conclusion

• The common symptom of all such mental imbalances is suffering. Just as we feel pain in the body when it is injured or ill, so do we experience mental distress when our minds are afflicted or unbalanced.
• A meaningful life is oriented around the pursuit of genuine happiness that results from balancing the mind. The healthier the mind, the greater the sense of inner well-being. And a key to achieving exceptional states of mental health is the development of focused attention.
• Central is the exploration of our own minds.
• Introspection is what we have to rely on first, foremost and always.
• Focus attention is indispensable.
• For all three elements of a meaningful life- the pursuit of genuine happiness, truth and virtue- mental balance is needed.

Stage 1: Directed attention

• For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
• Clearly, if we were to enhance our faculty of attention, our lives would improve dramatically.
• If we know how to work intelligently with our emotions, we can avoid many obstacles that might otherwise hinder our pursuit of focused attention.
• Make you more resilient in the face of emotional and physical stressors.
• Progress beyond the fourth attentional stage requires a vocational commitment to this training, which may involve full time practice for months or years at a stretch.
• Extraordinary level of enthusiasm and dedication to this training.
• Compare it to the training of Olympic athletes.
• Optimal levels of attentional performance.
• Hyperactivity is characterised by excitation, agitation, and distraction, while an attention deficit is characterised by laxity, dullness and lethargy. 
• Be at ease. Be still. Be vigilant. These three qualities of the body are to be maintained throughout all meditations sessions.
• Twenty four minutes period.
• If involuntary thoughts particularly dominate your behaviour, then focus the mind in mindfulness of the exhalation and inhalation of the breadth.
• Mindfulness of breathing is great for preparing your mind for mental training, but it can also help you fall asleep. If you suffer from insomnia, the above method can help release tension in your body and mind when you go to bed at night. And if you wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time falling back asleep, mindfulness of breathing can help you disengage from the thoughts that flood the mind.
• You will likely find that sustained awareness of the breadth, free of interference from emotional and attentional vacillations, soothes both the body and the mind.
• You simply stop disturbing your respiration with disruptive thoughts and emotions.
• We now have the opportunity to break this habit. We don’t have to wait until we’re asleep before respiration can heal the day’s damage.
• Simply focusing your attention on the sensations of the breadth is directed attention, the first stage of this practice.