Attention, Focus... and Distraction

A NYT blogger HERE discovers lessons regarding mental attention and focus via Maggie Jackson's new book "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age” (Prometheus).

Interesting essay, and book, but it's nothing Buddhist adherents haven't understood for more than two thousand years.

Those interested might consult Sakyong Mipham's short, simple instructions, "How to Meditate," HERE. About a thousand words and all you need to know to train your mind to focus... to pay attention.

Three Mini-Mediations

Kay Goldstein outlines three mini-meditations, and does a fine job of boiling down "mindfulness" meditation for beginners, which after all we all are.

1) Putting yourself "On Pause"
2) Visualization
3) Shifting into Neutral

Read the whole thing here.

One mind examining itself

Neurologist Jill Bolte Taylor's video presentation "My Stroke of Insight," seen HERE, offers an account of one mind examining itself, in this instance in midst of a left-hemisphere stroke. Provocative on questions of left-brain / right-brain functions, the conception of the individual self, the psychological and physiological background in Buddhist meditation practices... and the prospect for achieving world peace. All in eighteen minutes. I recommend.

Relying on the Dream World

Self-deception seems always to depend upon the dream world, because you would like to see what you have not yet seen rather than what you are now seeing. You will not accept that whatever is here now IS what is, nor are you willing to go with the situation as it is. Thus, self-deception always manifests itself in terms of trying to create or recreate a dream world, the nostalgia of the dream experience.

--Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche