126. The Importance Of Attention

We discover at an early age that it’s important to pay attention. By paying attention, we figure out how things work, and when we understand how things work it’s easier to get what we need. We gain not only knowledge but also stronger intuitions about life.

Awareness is our intuitive understanding of experience. It expands through attention to the experiences we have. By paying attention to the objects, events, and people we discover in the world, to the thoughts, feelings, memories, and imaginings that arise in the self, and to the relationships between all of these various things, our awareness continuously expands.

Eventually we also start to pay attention to the quality of our experience itself. Why is that we sometimes suffer and sometimes feel joy? We often don’t go very far with this question. We decide that suffering is something we’re stuck with and that joy will always be rare. We settle for the practical knowledge and basic intuitions we’ve gained, which are more than enough to meet our material needs. Our attention then tends to become limited to just these practical and material concerns.

But if our questions about suffering refuse to go away, we start to look around for answers. We continue to pay attention to everything that happens in and around us. By doing so, our awareness broadens further. We begin to see the origins of suffering, and how it arises from our attachment to intentions (our desires, aversions, and beliefs). We begin to see how our suffering is the very same suffering that others experience.

In seeing these things, we also begin to take action. We begin to modify our relationship with our intentions from one of attachment to one of careful distance. We discover that when we have space from our intentions we suffer less and we feel more joy. We also try to share this new understanding with others, helping them to become more aware and more free from suffering.

But none of this happens if we stop paying attention. We must see as broadly as we possibly can and that means our attention must remain open and free to explore both self and world. It is by leaning into our original insight that attention is important that we gradually develop our awareness of how suffering can be brought to an end.