3.4. Generating Interest
Why do you follow random thought stories rather than awareness of the sense fields?
The answer is simple: mental stories are more interesting than what you are seeing, hearing or feeling right now.
So here is an import clue how to maintain awareness of anything for long periods of time, not just minutes and hours, but days, weeks, months, years and decades. You need to be interested in what you are doing.
When the mind is interested in something, naturally that comes to the foreground, and whatever else is happening moves into the background. The mind is very good at prioritizing experience, based on your habitual likes and dislikes.
So if interest is the key to paying attention continuously, then we must learn how to generate interest in our theme of meditation.
Meditation on Generating Interest
Transcript
This is an open awareness exercise and can be done in any posture.
Whatever is happening right now, within any of the six sense fields, take an active interest in that experience.
What you're experiencing might be the most mundane thing in the whole world, the sight of a wall, the sound of birds, the smell of an old carpet, a numb sensation in the legs, that doesn't matter. Pay attention to it as if it was the most interesting thing in the whole world.
Notice every minute detail of the experience, every nuance, every minute change and alteration. Be extremely interested in what is happening.
Take an active interest in whatever is happening right now.
Even if it's a completely normal experience, nothing unusual, generate the interest to know it in more detail.
When the mind is interested in something, it will give full attention to that.
Develop a strong interest in this experience.
Set how much detail you can notice, how many small particulars you can find in the experience.
Taking interesting allows you to see more nuance in every experience.
Whatever is happening right now, it doesn't matter how normal and boring it is, generate a strong interest to learn everything about it.
Notice the small details about the experience, things that you have never seen before.
Generating interest is a powerful tool to get the maximum amount of information from every experience.
It requires very little energy to generate interest, but the rewards of a small amount of interest are enormous.
Interest, fascination, wanting to know more.
This is an excellent attitude to have towards your meditation.
You'll get the maximum benefit for a small investment of interest.
Be interested in what's happening.
Be aware of all the subtle details.
Dive deeper into the experience to know everything about it.
Interest and attention work hand in hand to reveal every small detail about an experience.
Generate interest in what's happening right now.
Whatever you're interested in will become clear in the mind.
Notice how generating interest really improves the quality of your attention to what is happening.
Keep being interested in these small mundane experiences.
Interest is the fuel for attention, so keep generating interest if you want to sustain attention for longer and longer periods of time.
Keep generating interest in these seemingly mundane experiences.
Interest is rocket fuel for meditation
Q&A
Q: Do you have any questions or doubts at this point?