kindly and curiously examine how even this discomfort feels? Ah, discomfort feels like this;
pleasant sensations feel like that.
Now gently return to this text as your object of attention.
Possible Insights into What You Just Experienced
The purpose of this experiment was that you might be able to make very brief acquaintance with a
particular way of experiencing the present moment – in this case paying attention to your
breathing. Perhaps it may also illustrate that the act of paying attention in this special manner is
neither simple nor just a matter of concentrating one’s focus upon a particular object or
phenomenon. To really pay attention means to settle ourselves in a calm environment in which we
are not constantly distracted by thoughts, images, memories or emotions that pull us away from
where we intend to look (see also
. The development of this process requires exercising
not only our powers of attention, but also our powers of openness and acceptance of what, at the
moment, has, in fact, already occurred, and therefore we are unable to change. This process
necessitates repeatedly returning to the object of attention when we realize we have strayed, which
means – given the eternally wandering mind you may have just discovered – that we learn
patience in the process.
This pertains not only to awareness of the breath. The breath, as the object of attention, is just a
somewhat simplified microcosm of all aspects of perceptible experience
The wavering and
flightiness of our attention is rampant and applies not only to attending to our breath but to
awareness of all aspects of our lives. In fact, if we have difficulty in being fully aware of a simple
process like breathing, we might reflect upon what that suggests about our ability to be fully aware
of more complex experience like attention to our work, our relationships, our environment.
Towards an Embodied Ethics of Attention, Experience and Understanding
The process, or practice, I have just described derives from a view of existence and a kind of
psychology that is really quite different from the way we usually see things in the West, where
cognitive processes of attention, orienting and awareness traditionally have rarely been connected
to socioemotional qualities like kindness, generosity, compassion, courage or patience (see also
). In fact, these latter behavioral tendencies or qualities have only infrequently been
seriously discussed or investigated in Western psychology (having, long ago, been relegated to
religion or, perhaps worse, to sentimentality)! We are good at criticizing, and analyzing fame and
blame, baser emotions like fear, angst and depression (see also
), but consideration of
kindness and compassion as legitimate topics typically has often seemed just too softheaded (one
might ask why?).
When oriented towards a general worldview, qualities such as kindness, tolerance and
compassion, can actually be viewed as fundaments of an ethical system that counters more
popular and prevailing systems of moral values (e.g., moral values based upon religious
imperatives, or societally rooted ideas like utilitarianism [conduct aimed at promoting greatest
benefit for the greatest number of people], or the ethical egoism of Ayn Rand [which proposes
individuals should maximize their own self-interest]). It is a system that may also be characterized
as more grounded in immediate action and consequences, rather than the elaborated grand goals
of other ethical orientations. Thus, kindness, compassion and generosity as ethical principles of
behavior are supposed to supplant baser emotions that can develop in systems that embrace
dichotomies of values, such as success vs. failure, praise vs. blame, fame vs. disrepute, and
pleasure vs. pain.
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