It adds a new dimension to every single preference we have, every single decision we make, and every single interaction we partake in. In fact, I’m convinced that this understanding, once fully embraced, changes the context of all human experience. This can seem like an arbitrary and unimportant distinction at first - I certainly used to think so. You don’t really want the old Indian dude to stop chanting, you want the feeling of restlessness in your chest to go away. You don’t really want the scone, you want the rush you get in your body from smelling, tasting, and ingesting the scone. That is, the scone is actually a psychological stand-in for something more physiological. It is merely a thought - more symbolic than literal. The absence of a scone does not cause suffering. You believe you want a scone, but really you want the sensations that arise from eating the scone. These are still only surface-level truths, so let’s dig deeper. Any aversion towards an old Indian dude singing in Pāli implies a craving for either silence, or a different sound. Every craving for a scone hides an aversion towards not having it. singing in foreign languages.Įvery experience of suffering includes both. Or you want Reality not to include something you believe it already has - i.e. Either you want Reality to include something you believe it lacks - i.e.
And that mismatch creates a desire.ĭesire can be broken into two categories: craving and aversion. In either case, your frustration (suffering) stems from a mismatch between fantasy and Reality. You desperately want this old Indian dude to end his off-pitch, foreign chanting and singing…but you can’t mute the speaker: suffering. And…of course, have fun with it all.Īt bottom, suffering is identification with desire, and is caused by attaching to the idea that Reality should be different from how it actually is.Īn example: you really want to be eating a scone at your favorite coffee shop…but instead you’re in an ill-lit, tiny closet trying to follow the breath: suffering.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can do about all of this, besides ask that you take this content seriously. Until we’re no longer quite sure exactly what we stand for. Worse still, mindlessness - the opposite of attention - exposes our raw emotional state to the world, making us vulnerable to hijack, click-bait media tossing you and me around like rag dolls until we’ve completely lost our originality. Without it, we’re sentenced to repeat our pasts over and over and over again - doomed, really, to live by everyone else’s rules and standards. Half-assed concentration just doesn’t cut it when it comes to something like stress reduction, or self-improvement, or finding meaning in this unfathomably wide Universe, or learning to appreciate what you already have.Įverything important in life requires attention. Selfishly, our culture’s dwindling attention spans concern me, because most of the content I create and share requires serious focus to understand and implement. That is, I’ve been noticing my mind flickering in and out of the present moment like static more often than I’d prefer. Now, I don’t know who “they” are that discovered this, nor am I even sure if “their” 8-second number is scientifically accurate…but I can certainly confirm it anecdotally. They say the modern human’s attention span has been reduced to that of a goldfish: about 8 seconds or less before we get bored and inadvertently turn our focus towards something more immediately gratifying.
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