Attention

Attention is ordinarily the direction of the mind toward something. The contemplative traditions describe a deeper attention: undivided, receptive and without grasping, in which the one who attends is quieted and what is attended to can appear as it is. Simone Weil called attention, taken to its highest degree, the same thing as prayer, and saw in the patient attention of a schoolchild to a geometry problem a preparation for the love of God.

The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of nēpsis, watchfulness, the guarding of the heart against distracting thoughts, which the Philokalia makes the foundation of the Jesus Prayer. Buddhism teaches sati, mindfulness, the clear awareness of body, feeling, mind and phenomena. In the twentieth century J. Krishnamurti taught a choiceless awareness, attention without an observer who judges or chooses, in which the conflict between the thinker and the thought ends.

The traditions differ on what attention reaches: God, the true nature of things, or simply what is. They agree that it is not mere concentration, which excludes, but an openness in which the self’s demands fall silent.