Undivided Attention
Many years ago I was invited to attend a conference on inner science at which His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke. I listened to him elucidating Buddhist dialectics for three days and was for the most part unable to understand the content or direction of his argument. However, I soon became aware that his actual teaching—at least for me—was going on at another level. I noticed that whatever he did or said, he did with his whole being—whether it was laughing, talking, or just resting. Part of him was not doing something else. He was completely concentrated in the moment and the power of his unsplintered attention was electrifying. Not only was all his attention given to whatever he chose, but mine was also. Since he was not distracted, neither was I. I left the conference in some amazement, never before (or since) having met anyone who appeared able to focus in this way. This teaching was a tremendous gift.
The other day I heard from an old colleague musing in a wistful tone about when he could retire from his job and just do one thing at a time. He felt completely overwhelmed and torn apart by the multitude of tasks in front of him. The truth is you don’t have to wait for retirement to do only one thing at a time. There really isn’t any other way to do things. People who believe that they can do more than one thing at a time are just fooling themselves. If you split your attention between, say, three tasks, all you are doing is giving your attention to one of them, then leaving that one for a minute and moving to the next, and so on. I know it looks and feels as though you are doing everything at the same time, but look again.
Most of us are brought up to believe that it is advantageous to do as many things as possible at the same time. However, if we observe carefully we will discover that this is not only undesirable, but counterproductive. Unfortunately, we not only believe that doing more than one thing at a time is good, we have drawn a veil over our activities so that for the most part we are oblivious to what is actually happening.
Take ironing, for example. We may remain aware of what we are doing while we are laying the garment on the ironing board, but as soon as our hand begins to steer the iron over the garment, our thoughts are off and away. Ironing is one of the dreamiest activities. It is a useful exercise to give full attention to the ironing and see if we can spot the mind’s tendency to wander off. Each time it does, gently bring it back to the task in hand. The ironing will be accomplished better and in less time if it is done without the mind doing something else. In addition, we will discover that ironing—or anything else, for that matter—is not a boring activity. Usually, what makes something appear boring is that we are not giving it any attention. When we give it our undivided attention, many details become clear—things that we would ordinarily miss—and the result may be intriguing.
Obviously, we can walk along the street and look into store windows as we pass them. However, we can give our attention to only one of these activities. If the walking is going along fine by itself, it is easy to look in a window. Yet, if we stumble, knock into someone, or hear a screech of brakes, our attention immediately leaves the store window and is drawn to whatever requires it. It goes there instantly and the window is forgotten. Most of us walk down the street with our attention neither on the activity of walking, nor on the windows of the stores we are passing; not on the architecture of the buildings, nor on the behavior of the drivers a few feet from us; not on the clouds or planes in the sky, and probably not often on the people walking alongside us or approaching us. We are simply lost in thought, rehearsing something which happened and we wish it hadn’t, or something that we would like to happen, going through a mental checklist of things that need doing or people we hope to see. Anything but giving attention to where we are and what is taking place. These mental conversations that we have with ourselves are generally not very fruitful since we cannot rewrite history and, if we are scripting a future conversation, the chances are that other people will not be aware of their cues when the time comes. And while this energy-consuming activity is taking place in our heads, the world is turning and we are missing so much that is taking place. It seems sad not to embrace the fullness of the moment in which anything may be revealed.
