Attention and Effort
When a meditator has a number of years under their belt they find that there are particular insights that work together to bring the meditator to the equipoise they have now. These insights involve the proper use of the attention span. Looking at a Daniel Kahneman’s Attention and Effort and a few key guided meditations, this is a compilation of what I found helpful.
“Is the part of the mind that wants peace, peaceful?”
One of the first obstacles to meditators in the beginning is pushing too hard and measuring themselves with their meditation. At the beginning, it is not seen what the mind is doing all the time, but as Wayne Dyer quoted of Nisargadatta, “is the part of the mind that wants peace, peaceful?” Learning to relax those thoughts and to continue relaxing instead of tightening up again helps to let go of that loop of endless tightening. Tightening in order to meditate, creates the sense of a meditator that is conceited in its belief it can control.
Instead of trying to control everything, you keep relaxing that control when it is futile, and allow control when it is practical. The ego may fight back because it feels that being passive is too weak for the dangerous world, and it is correct. Doing this when you’re in a boxing match is not going to help you, but at the same time, you are not in a boxing match at every moment of the day. Keep relaxing it when it’s appropriate and fit it in with your daily life where possible. If you need to tighten up and fight you’ll know when you need to.
When the mind is relaxed enough what is seen are mental stirrings, which are those early thoughts that happen before they become full blown motivations and actions. The cause and effect of these thoughts and impulses pushing in repetitive and predictable ways. When you relax unskillful impulses you will find it easier to follow impulses you actually want. Through repetition you can start gardening your mind.
Autonomy or fate?
This leads to another insight which is our limited autonomy to make choices. We always have some autonomy, but when you realise how strong the habits are and how you need to relax those urges, or even sometimes forcefully push against them, you see that autonomy is not complete. We need to put in some effort to control the attention span before we can make a more conscious choice. People who are good with imagery can often take their scattered brain and keep a strong image in their minds of what they are supposed to do and the benefits. They can hold that image until they act on it. See: New Year’s Day Guided Meditation: https://rumble.com/v1gvmab-new-years-day-guided-meditation.html
What we put our attention on grows, because of our natural clinging to outcomes. Nirvana is an unconscious state with no clinging, therefore it means that while we are awake we can use the clinging to direct it in better ways. On top of looking at the benefits of an action, we can also bring imagery of the dangers of an action and keep it there until the mind is turned off, when turning off desire is appropriate. This way we can increase our autonomy and make choices more confidently.
Of course there is no complete autonomy precisely because we all imitated our parents, our culture, and we don’t have the knowledge and technology that our descendants will have. Perfect autonomy is impossible. The best way to look it is that we have Synchronicity in that we can take unexpected events and make meaning out of them to make better decisions in the present. We can also build knowledge from experience and education to have increasing autonomy.
The Attention Span
As we backup closer to our attention span we can see that it moves like a spotlight to find concerns everywhere, pulling closer, and pushing away likes and dislikes. [See: Follow the pain meditation: https://rumble.com/v1goucj-meditation-and-chronic-pain-various-authors.html] Like in the video on Dependent Co-Arising, [See: Dependent Co-arising: https://rumble.com/v1goxkv-dependent-co-arising-various-authors.html] we always have a thought of the self trying to savour something, which simultaneously arises with the feeling of concern about losing that savouring situation to loss, theft, or competition. This is called Becoming. We always chase objects with a sense of becoming a person who gets their needs met, connected with a stressful concern over the possibility of missing out. It can create a lot of pain and it feels compulsory, but when we learn to see the becoming-fantasy as it arises, and relax these mental movements we can use the concerned part of our mind when it’s appropriate and relax it when it’s inappropriate. This way we can save energy for when we need it for difficult problem solving.
As much as all meditators want to eliminate suffering, the closest thing is to let go of a worldly life and cloister oneself in perpetual meditation and stay away from conflict, and difficult problem solving. For some people this is exactly what they want to do, but for others they are okay with the imperfections of a lay life and the stresses that may be impossible to avoid. If everyone became a monk that would be the end of the human race. The few people who specialize in these practices have to rely on a military to protect them and live off of donated food and property to be an example for others. These examples are valuable, but they can also be imitated by lay people in a way that is more balanced with the reality of existence and the craving for sex and resources that allows the raising of new generations.
Effort
So what is this stress that we can’t avoid? As Daniel Kahneman describes in his book Attention and Effort, controlling the attention span requires effort, working on new skills and computations requires effort, and using the attention span in a way that is spread thin, like doing simultaneous tasks under time pressure is the most effortful. Many activities of our life require these demands and can be measured. In his works, Daniel finds that a drain of the energy budget can be assessed with dilated pupils. To me it can be concluded that a difficult math problem will still drain energy no matter how advanced you are on a meditative path. Practicing skills with breaks in between, until the skill is automatic, is the only way to reduce the mental drain. Doing one task at a time, really well, and moving onto the next improves learning and when the mind has learned enough, it becomes less effortful now that the skill is a new habit. This matches Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, where increasing skills makes challenges enjoyable. See: How to gain Flow in 7 steps: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html
Realistic happiness
This is a form of happiness where a meditator becomes pragmatic. You have to learn skills with practice like everyone else, but unlike everyone else, you can also use meditation to see what is unnecessarily painful in your karmic thoughts and relax them, and then control and direct your attention span to appropriate challenges to your skill level. There will be periods when you are closer to burnout and this requires the development of skills to reduce the pressure of difficult tasks.
The humbling side of this is that one must surrender, or allow the letting go of difficult tasks that are too much for your brain, and accept that skills have to be learned before another attempt is made. This keeps the spiritual practice grounded and realistic.
Attention and Effort – Daniel Kahneman: Hardcover: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780130505187/
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781429969352/
Freedom through higher awareness – Wayne Dyer: Audiobook: https://amzn.to/3oipyrV
Mental Stirrings – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2004/040227%20Mental%20Stirrings.mp3
A Relaxed Focus – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/shorttalks/y2018/180228(short)_A_Relaxed_Focus.mp3
Non-Duality and the Fading of Perception – Rob Burbea: http://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/210/9548.html
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/