#683 Mindful Awareness - So Much More

     What do these words really mean? Obviously not daydreaming while performing activities requiring careful attention.
     But aren't there surprising similarities between the type of attention it takes to rob a bank, perform intricate surgery, watch a fascinating movie, yell at someone in a fit of anger? Could a fairly young person muster this type of attention? How about certain animals? Have you seen how quickly a crow can custom-design a simple tool? So there must be far more to mindfulness than focused attention. 
     Learning to stabilize attention on the flowing, changing content of the present moment is an important, but partial aspect. It helps us to let go of clinging to the past, the future, to stuff that never was & never will be. But replacing all that with clinging to the present doesn't help much! Everything in the present is also temporary, fleeting, can't be held onto, nor identified with - this is simply the way reality is.
     As we abandon our delusions & wishful thinking, our attention shifts from self-obsession to an open-hearted embrace of the big picture - everyone & everything - the flow of present-moment reality. And everything changes, both gradually and all-at-once.

The Biscuit Eater, Mahone Bay, NS

#653 Awareness Leads to Spaciousness & Freedom

     “Change will happen naturally as we open to the truth. The more we bring our attachments into awareness, the freer we become, not because we eliminate the attachments, but because we learn to identify more with awareness than with desire. Using our capacity for consciousness, we can change perspective on ourselves, giving a sense of space where once there was only habit. Discipline means restraining the habitual movement of the mind, so that instead of blind impulse there can be clear comprehension. 
     In our quest to understand where our unsatisfactoriness derives from, we are often inclined to search for causes and people to blame. … the search for causes has to lead eventually back to the individual. Although traumatic and terrible things may have occurred, it is the individual’s mind that perpetuates the suffering, and that can be trained to change. As long as we are struggling against the feeling, hoping to eliminate it by getting high or being cured, we are still attached. We can relieve unsatisfactoriness only by sharpening our focus and changing our perspective.”

        Epstein M. "Going on Being. Buddhism and the way of Change. A Positive Psychology for the West." Broadway Books, NY, 2001. 

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