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To do just about anything well, you need to focus your awareness. The most
creative and productive people in every profession �?for example, great athletes,
performers, businessmen, scientists, artists, and writers �?have the
ability to block out distractions and completely immerse themselves in their
work. If you’ve ever watched Tiger Woods hit a drive or Nicole Kidman transform
herself into the character she’s portraying, you’ve witnessed the fruits
of total concentration. |
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Some people have an innate ability to concentrate, but most of us need to
practice to develop it. Buddhists like to compare the mind to a monkey �?BR>constantly chattering and hopping about from branch to branch, topic to
topic. Did you ever notice that most of the time, you have scant control over
the whims and vacillations of your monkey mind, which may space out one
moment and obsess the next? When you meditate, you calm your monkey
mind by making it one-pointed rather than scattered and distracted.
Many spiritual traditions teach their students concentration as the primary
meditation practice. Just keep focusing your mind on the mantra or the
symbol or the visualization, they advise, and eventually you will attain what
is called absorption, or samadhi. |
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In absorption, the sense of being a separate “me�?disappears, and only the
object of your attention remains. Followed to its natural conclusion, the practice
of concentration can lead to an experience of union with the object of
your meditation. If you’re a sports enthusiast, this object could be your
tennis racket or your golf club; if you’re an aspiring mystic, the object could
be God or being or the absolute. (For more on the spiritual benefits of concentration,
see Chapter 14. And if you want to use meditation to improve
your performance, |
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Even though you may not yet know how to meditate, you’ve no doubt had
moments of total absorption, when the sense of separation disappears:
gazing at a sunset, listening to music, creating a work of art, looking into the
eyes of your beloved. When you’re so completely involved in an activity,
whether work or play, that time stops and self-consciousness drops away,
you enter into what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. In fact,
Csikszentmihalyi claims that activities that promote flow epitomize what
most of us mean by enjoyment. Flow can be extraordinarily refreshing,
enlivening, and even deeply meaningful �?and it is the inevitable result of
unbroken concentration. |
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