427. Liberating Attention

To live with joy, a person’s attention needs to be open and free. When it is open and free, it becomes possible to see need and how it must be addressed, and it is by meeting need that joy is created. Conversely, attachment to particular intentions limits the range of attention, causing need to be ignored, which then produces suffering.

The experience of suffering is an indicator that attachment is present, and liberation from suffering is possible only by releasing attachment. Attachment is released through the awareness developed from open and free attention to experience, but it is attachment itself that causes attention to become limited and narrow.

The only feasible solution to this problem is to make a conscious effort to loosen attention until the awareness is developed to keep it loose. But loosening attention from the objects of attachment first requires the ability to loosen it in general. It is necessary to develop the skill of letting go of the many thoughts, feelings, memories, ideas, and so on that arise throughout ordinary life.

Practicing looseness is the function of meditation, where attention is released from thoughts and feelings that arise and allowed to return to emptiness again and again. Importantly, meditation is not a tool for developing control over mental processes, but one for opening and freeing attention. Through regular practice, the skill of liberating attention can be learned and employed throughout life.

With the ability for emptiness to be attainable in every moment of life, it becomes possible to see how attachments narrow and limit attention in a way that guarantees suffering. From this new awareness, the capacity forms to notice intuitively when attention has become stuck and to set it free again. And when attention is open and free, need will be both seen and met, which is exactly what is necessary to create joy.