Attention

Attention is the mind's ability to selectively engage with a single fabrication while setting others aside. In the Buddha’s teachings, this is often referred to as manasikara, or the act of bringing to mind. It is the gatekeeper of your experience. Wherever your attention goes, the energy of the heart follows, and a world begins to form around that point of focus. Most people have a fragmented attention that flits from one sensation to another like a fly, never landing long enough to see the true nature of what it touches. To overcome suffering, you must take this raw capacity and train it into a steady, piercing beam of light.

In meditation, you use attention to establish a foundation on the breath. This is not a passive watching; it is an active, persistent directed thought. You choose a spot—the tip of the nose or the movement of the abdomen—and you commit to staying there. When the mind wanders, you use your attention to bring it back, again and again. This is the development of concentration, or samadhi. Without the ability to hold your attention on a single object, the mind remains a victim of every passing flash of intent. You are trying to create a state where the attention is so gathered and still that it becomes a source of internal nourishment.

Attention relates to mindfulness, or sati, as the muscle relates to the memory. Mindfulness is the ability to keep something in mind—to remember to stay with the breath and to remember the instructions you have been given. Attention is the actual act of looking at the breath in the present moment. They work together: mindfulness keeps the goal in view, while attention performs the work of looking. When these two are strong, they give rise to alertness, which is the ability to see exactly what is happening as it happens. You are mindful to stay with the breath, your attention is fixed on the breath, and your alertness notices the moment a distraction tries to pull you away.

As these skills mature, they lead to discernment. Discernment is the ability to evaluate the quality of your attention. You begin to see that not all attention is equal. There is inappropriate attention, which focuses on the details that provoke greed or aversion, and there is appropriate attention, which focuses on the stress you are causing yourself and how to stop it. You use your attention to scan the body, releasing tension in the jaw or the cheeks, and you use it to investigate the thoughts that flash into the mind. You see them as temporary fabrications and you choose not to attend to them.

Ultimately, the goal is to use your attention to see through the process of fabrication itself. You focus your attention so precisely that you see the gaps between the frames of your mental movies. You see the movement of intention before it becomes a world. By staying centered in this high level of alertness, you eventually reach a point where the mind can let go of even the breath. You find a dimension where the light of attention is no longer needed because you have reached the unfabricated. You have used the focus of the heart to find the peace that never moves.

💥 Thanissaro Bhikkhu evening audio dhamma talks \\\ Attention.