3.5. Paying Attention to Attention
One of the most subtle and profound ways to develop incredible accuracy and meticulous awareness of what is happening is to pay attention to attention itself.
Attention itself is hard to see, but that subtle movement, the shift in attention can be observed in the mind. Every single time a new experience occurs, the mind moves from one object to another, from one sense field to another. This movement can be known.
As far as themes of meditation go, this can be considered a difficult one for beginners, not because it is complex or complicated, but because it can be quite subtle.
The Buddha made a particularly profound statement about attention in the Aṅguttara Nikāya about the nature of all experiential phenomena.
chandamūlakā, āvuso, sabbe dhammā, manasikārasambhavā sabbe dhammā, phassasamudayā sabbe dhammā, vedanāsamosaraṇā sabbe dhammā …
AN8.83 mūlakasutta
All phenomena are rooted in interest, originate from attention, arise with experience, converge upon vedanā…
This can be seen with a very practical demonstration: Right now pay attention to your face, all the physical sensations occurring around the forehead, eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, mouth, and chin.
Now pay attention to your feet.
Notice that while your were feeling your face, there was no experience of feet. The moment that your actively turned your attention to the feet, they appeared within experience.
This is what the Buddha meant when he said all phenomena originate with attention.
Directed and undirected attention
We all have some degree of control of where to place our attention. Just now you directed attention to your face, then to your feet. Clearly you have the ability to move your attention around at will.
But when we are not actively directing attention, it naturally moves by itself from experience to experience, from sense field to sense field, without any force or control or manipulation, as if on auto-pilot. We have been practising this with open awareness, allowing attention to naturally move around wherever it chooses. It will normally pick the "loudest" new experience, an experience with the most prominent features and vedanā, or the one we are most habitually interested in.
Attention moves
So for this meditation exercise we are going to continue with open awareness, letting attention move wherever it chooses. But we are going to examine the mind really closely to notice this movement of attention.
Every time attention shifts, a new experience arises.
It's difficult to see attention itself, but this subtle movement of attention can be seen and known.
Meditation on Paying Attention to Attention
Let's develop the skill of paying attention to the movement of attention in a practical way, through introspection.
Transcript
This meditation can be done in any posture, although it might be helpful to sit still at first.
It is a very delicate operation, so keep your wits about you.
Normally, we are very focused on the objects of experience, or, for the last few days, the fields of experience. Now, we're going to shift our focus to attention itself.
Right now, the six senses fields are all available to experience. But the one thing we are actively experiencing right now is whatever our attention is on.
You can think of attention like a spotlight which shines on different objects within the six sense fields. All of those objects are already present, but attention brings one of them to light in the mind.
Every time we have a new experience—seeing something, hearing something, feeling a physical sensation, thinking a thought—attention is shifting from the eye, to the ear, to the body, to the mind. Attention itself is difficult to recognize, but the movement of attention, the shift that happens in the mind, can be seen and known.
See if you can notice that every time the object of awareness changes, attention is shifting.
To do this, you really have to look very carefully at your mind.
Every single time you have a new experience, attention shifts to bring that experience into focus. Watch that shift. Watch that movement of attention. It's very subtle. But it is continuous. It's always happening, moment, after moment, after moment, after moment.
Every time attention shifts, a new experience arises.
Attention is very fast. It can move between multiple objects, in multiple sense fields in a fraction of a second.
Pay attention to this movement of attention.
The Buddha said, all things are originate from attention.
That means without paying attention to something, it would not manifest in the mind. This movement of attention, putting a spotlight on something, brings it into existence.
We always think of things as having an independent existence, but without attention, they would never come to mind. There would be no mental mental experience of them.
Keep coming back to watching attention shift, from object to object, from sense to sense.
Each time attention shifts, a new experience arises. Pay attention to this subtle movement in the mind, of attention moving from one thing to the next.
It moves fast, try and keep up.
Attention is hard to see by itself, but this movement in the mind can be known.
This is what we're paying attention to, the movement, a subtle mental movement.
Every time attention moves, a new experience appears in the mind.
Keep coming back to this subtle movement in the mind, the movement of attention from object to object, from sense to sense.
Even though it moves quickly, you don't need to run around after it, it happens right here in the mind, as close as can be.
Every time there's a new experience, there's a shift in attention. Every time there's a shift in attention, there's a new experience. The two go hand in hand.
We've spent our whole lives looking at the objects of attention. Now, look at the movement of attention, the movement in the mind, which is actually responsible for creating those objects of experience.
Keep following this subtle shift of attention.
Being able to do this meditation, paying attention to attention, will really give you a microscope to see the most subtle phenomena in the mind.
This is one way to train the mind to see ever more minute phenomena.
Keep paying attention to the movement of attention.
Keep seeing every more subtle experiences within your own mind.
These small shifts in attention within the mind can happen incredibly fast.
But at the same time there's no need to go anywhere to see them, almost zero effort is required.
As a result this meditation can be extremely relaxing, and mentally energizing.
Keep paying attention to every shift in attention.
All the meditation exercises we have been doing up until now are variations of the same anupassanā practice, tuning into the six fields of experience and following them closely.
From the next section onwards, all the meditations are weighted towards vipassanā, geared towards cultivating insight into the dependent nature of reality. But know that these two qualities, calm and insight, are developing together in tandem.
Q&A
Q: Do you have any questions or doubts at this point?