Attention Means Attention

Simple Attention

The secret of beginning a life of deep awareness and sensitivity lies in our willingness to pay attention. Our growth as conscious, awake human beings is marked not so much by grand gestures and visible renunciations as by extending loving attention to the minutest particulars of our lives. Every relationship, every thought, every gesture is blessed with meaning through the wholehearted attention we bring to it.

In the complexities of our minds and lives we easily forget the power of attention, yet without attention we live only on the surface of existence. It is just simple attention that allows us truly to listen to the song of a bird, to see deeply the glory of an autumn leaf, to touch the heart of another and be touched. We need to be fully present in order to love a single thing wholeheartedly. We need to be fully awake in this moment if we are to receive and respond to the learning inherent in it.

–Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

When I read this I thought that Christina and Jack must have never worked in a deli, fast food joint, or any fast paced, pressurized, environment with customers waiting to get pissed off if their sammich isn’t ready in 3 and a half minutes.

Where have I been?

I’ve been lost in thought
Working things out
Making big plans
Considering my future
Weighing my choices
Using my head
Trying my best to solve my problems with my mind
When my mind itself is the problem.

vine teacher

The mandevilla vine that is growing for me is about 10 or 11 feet long now, I’ve been watcing it for almost 2 years now. I forgive it being pink flowered because it makes so many of them and it grows as fast as grass.

As I add supports for it I watch what the long searching tendrils do in reaction. They seem suspicious of new things, as if they wonder if they will hold them safely or provide a tall enough height for them. They will touch the support, whatever it is and then will shrink back as if to consider if it’s a good place to start wrapping around. Often it rejects the branch or pole unless it has absolutely no other choice.

A month ago or so, it reached the top of the first pole but kept on growing. It did the smartest thing then. There were 5 or 6 tendrils and the wrapped and spiraled up forming a rope so they could grow straight up almost like a new tree. I thought they might be searching for a new branch or rail or whatever. Eventually it became so heavy it slowly curved down and did another smart thing. It un-twined itself and the different delicate vines spread out in all directions looking for something else to hook onto.

I have tried to train it just a little, really I just want to show it that I’ve put new suports up for it. I will hook the vine around the new stick or pole and wrap it gently. It stays there for a while and then rejects it and goes looking for its own place. Most of the time it comes back and acts as if it has found the new place all on its own, just like a cat.

Of coursre all of this is my imagination about how the vine behaves. How could I know. I don’t like to tink in terms of evolution or instinct, though I am not rejecting them at all. It is just that I can not get the teaching thinking that way.

The teaching is this. The vine thrives and grows all on its own. It doesn’t think “hmmm, maybe if I go left today I’ll find a new branch to grow on”. I don’t think it is even considered a sentient being in Buddhist terms. It is BIG MIND in action. “Spring comes and the grass grows all by itself”. You don’t have to push or pull it. It knows just what to do without thinking and so do I.

Dreamed about you last night

I dreamed about you last night.We’d found an apartment in the city with a nice view of the other buildings blocked only by the dentist’s office out the window. Everyone came over to see us love each other.They were a pain in the ass but we needed an audience. For the first time I cried after waking up from a dream. I’m still crying and my chest hurts thinking about how much I miss you. I can tell myself it’s only my ego but that doesn’t bring you here for me to smell. I can tell myself that no matter where you are, you are right here.Because that’s what zen says and I had that experience. But I don’t see you and I can’t touch you. It’s a damned good illusion making me cry.

So Zen has to include this too. The pain of memory. When I cried, I was nowhere else but here. For whatever reason that made me cry. Even if the memory made me cry, I was having the memory right now and I wasn’t even awake to get lost in my thoughts. Dreams don’t count in Zen I have read. It’s all a dream supposedly. But it’s all real too. It has to be both at once.

I’m grateful for the chance to love you. I hope that I can feel that love for all beings everywhere. That quality of untainted , pure love that I am not afraid for anyone to see.

at this moment

I have been posting various excerpts, vids, and stuff found elsewhere that strikes something in me instead of sharing anything of myself. There’s several reasons for this.

The obvious difficulty in making posts in this blog is trying to think of words that point to an experience that is beyond words. I have read admonitions in many books about getting stuck “eating the menu” or, in other words, to attempt to find satisfaction in thinking or talking about a practice that, by definition is not based in words or letters. But then there HAVE been MANY books, as I said. So, talking about the unspeakable is certainly popular. Human nature I guess.