The Power of Attention

The question often comes up as to how the Buddha’s teachings on dependent co-arising have anything to do with what we’re doing as we meditate. Of course, they have everything to do. It’s just that we need to get an overall sense of what the main message of dependent co-arising is.

Some people see it as saying basically that there are causes and conditions. Then they interpret it further, saying that, because there are causes and conditions coming in from the past, you don’t have much choice in the present moment. So any attempt to direct things, to make things different from what they are, would just be bucking causes and conditions. It’d be futile.

But when the Buddha described causality and conditionality, he said something very different. There are two kinds of causes. There are the causes that have an impact right away. In other words, when A arises, B will arise, and when A goes away, B goes away. That’s immediate. Then there are the causes that have an impact over time. A arises and, someplace down the line, B will arise. But because A falls away, sometime in the future B will fall away as well.

If we just had that second kind of causality, we would have no choice. Causes and conditions from the past would determine the present… But the first kind of causality opens the possibility that you can change your mind now, and it’ll have an impact now. That’s what we’re focusing on as we meditate.

Of course, we’re dealing with this body, we’re dealing with this mind, and there are things in the body and mind that are coming in from the past. But there are many things coming in from the past. Sometimes we think that, with kamma, what you see at any moment in time is the running balance in that person’s kamma account.

But the Buddha never said that we have one kamma account. His image is of seeds in a field. With every action, you plant a seed, so you have lots of seeds. Some of them are ready to sprout; some of them are not.

As to whether those that are ready to sprout will sprout or not right now, that depends on your attention: what you focus your attention on and how you focus your attention. You can see a good kamma seed, but if you focus on it in the wrong way, you can suffer from it.

Or vice versa. There may be a bad kamma seed, but if you focus on it in the right way, you don’t have to suffer. It’s because of that possibility that we practice meditation. We’re learning how to focus our attention in the right way.

This corresponds to two different factors in dependent co-arising that come prior to sensory contact. One of them is fabrication. In fabrication, there’s the directed thought—the act of choosing something to focus your thoughts on, which counts as part of verbal fabrication. In name and form, there’s attention, how you pay attention to things, the questions you ask. These two go together.

As you’re focusing on the breath, that’s the first choice you’ve made. You’re going to choose the breath as your topic. You can choose other meditation topics as well.

If you find that it’s best to start out with something else to get the mind to settle down, that’s perfectly fine. You can focus on goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, and develop these attitudes in an all-around way. You can focus on analyzing the body into its parts.

Your choice is going to depend on what you’re bringing into the meditation at the moment and what you see the mind’s problem is. But the breath is a good topic to have as your home base in any event, because other topics do have their drawbacks.

The breath is the safest. It’s also the one where the Buddha says you see the processes of fabrication most clearly. He talks about bodily fabrication, which is the breath itself, and mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. This is where you apply the questions of appropriate attention.

For instance, how does the breath feel right now? Could you breathe in a way that makes you feel better? What is your perception of breath?

We talk of breath as the energy flow in the body. Where does that energy-flow begin as you start to breathe in? Does it begin in one spot? Does it begin outside of the body, coming in? Does it begin inside the body, radiating through the body? Does it begin in several spots? Or does it begin with every cell?

Try different perceptions and see what works best right now. Pay attention to the fact that you’re already fabricating things in the present moment. The question is how to do it well.

When the Buddha discusses appropriate attention and inappropriate attention, inappropriate attention has to do with paying attention to questions that are fairly abstract, like, “Do I exist? Do I not exist? What was I in the past? What will I be in the future?” Those questions, he says, get you entangled in a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views.

In other words, a place you don’t want to go. Questions he has you pay attention to are, “Where is the suffering? What causes the suffering? Can it be brought to an end, and if so, how is it done?” These questions can lead to the first stage of awakening.

So right now, as you question yourself about the breath, how can the breath be made to be more comfortable? That’s one way of focusing on your potentials in the present moment—paying attention to the different potentials and deciding which one to pay attention to.

After all, we are dealing with potentials. We’re not dealing with finished facts. So we have that choice. This is why attention makes a difference in choosing where we direct our thoughts.

There are potentials for pain here in the body. You could be focusing on those. There are potentials for pleasure in the body. Let’s focus on those instead—because you need allies.

You’re going to be dealing with lots of defilements that come up in the course of the meditation, and seizing the breath is one of their tricks: seizing the energy in your body, squeezing it in their direction. So you want to be prepared ahead of time.

This is why we make the breath as comfortable as possible, so that when something comes up, you’re not immediately drawn to it. You’ve got something really good here. Stay here with this. Cultivate this potential. See how far you can go with it.

We’re sometimes told that suffering is caused by wanting things to be different from what they are. Well, things are always becoming different. They start out as potentials.

Remember, we’ve got that field of kammic seeds. Some of the things you did in the past would potentially lead to pain right now. Some of the things you did in the past would potentially lead to pleasure. Some things would have the potential to get you tied up in old issues. But some of the things you’ve learned about right view, right mindfulness, right effort, give you the tools not to get entangled in those things.

So which potentials are you going to develop? Your kammic field is a field of potentials, a garden of potentials. So which potentials are you going to water? Which potentials are you going to encourage? Which ones are you going to not encourage?

You have these choices. Learn the power of attention. Cultivate that power. It’s not simply the act of looking at something continually. Remember, it also involves the questions you ask. “Which in the noble truths is this? What can be done with it?” A thought comes up in meditation that says, “I’d like to have more comfort.” Is that a cause of suffering, or is it part of the path?

It doesn’t have to be a cause of suffering. It can be part of the path. You’d like to have more focus. You’d like to have a greater sense of well-being. That desire can be made part of the path. It’s a potential you can develop in the right direction.

Remember, appropriate attention means asking these questions related to the four noble truths. Inappropriate attention means you’re asking other questions. Then, when your attention is inappropriate, you start making inappropriate effort—and all the potentials for having the right factors of the path turn wrong.

So instruct your act of attention, how you pay attention to things. Realize that you do have the choice to water different potentials. There are potential causes that you don’t want to develop, there are potential causes that you do want to develop, and you do have that choice.

You don’t want to be simply on the receiving end of past kamma and past causes and conditions. The act of attention, the act of directed thought, how you choose your topic, how you think about it: These are among the ways you can exercise your freedom right now—your freedom to turn what could have been a potential cause of suffering into part of the path.

It’s because we have these choices that the Buddha was able to teach, and it was worthwhile for him to teach. As he said, if we couldn’t develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones, there’d be no point in his teaching.

But we can—and if we didn’t benefit from developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones, he wouldn’t have taught that, either. But we can. So think of your meditation as training in exercising your freedom in the most beneficial way.