Concept
Attention
What you point your mind at, how little of that is deliberate, and what changes when it is.
17 passages · 8 traditions
Buddhist
ScriptureRead as scripture by its tradition
Aṅguttara Nikāya 3.65, “With the Kālāmas”"There are, sir, some ascetics and brahmins who come to Kesamutta. They explain and promote only their own doctrine, while they attack, badmouth, disparage, and smear the doctrines of others…ScriptureRead as scripture by its tradition
Majjhima Nikāya 118, “Mindfulness of Breathing”It's when a mendicant—gone to a wilderness, or to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut—sits down cross-legged, sets their body straight, and brings mindfulness to the present. Just mindful…ScriptureRead as scripture by its tradition
Saṁyutta Nikāya 36.6, “An Arrow”"Mendicants, an unlearned ordinary person feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. A learned noble disciple also feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. What, then, is the diffe…
Christian
Hindu
ScriptureRead as scripture by its tradition
Katha Upanishad, Part Second, verses I–IIYama said: The good is one thing and the pleasant another. These two, having different ends, bind a man. It is well with him who chooses the good. He who chooses the pleasant misses the true…ScriptureRead as scripture by its tradition
Katha Upanishad, Part Sixth, verses X–XIWhen the five organs of perception become still, together with the mind, and the intellect ceases to be active: that is called the highest state. This firm holding back of the senses is what…
New Thought
Research
ResearchA finding from published research
On reappraisal and suppressionThere are two obvious things to do with a feeling you do not want. You can hold your face still and carry on — suppression. Or you can go back to what you made of the situation and see wheth…ResearchA finding from published research
On practice changing the brainLondon taxi drivers spend three or four years learning the city's layout well enough to pass an examination called the Knowledge. When researchers scanned them, the rear part of the hippocam…
Secular reflection
ReflectionWritten for this collection
Reflection: rehearsing the futureWorry feels like preparation. That is the trick of it. Running the bad outcome again tonight will not make you readier for it than running it once did, and you have already run it once. The…ReflectionWritten for this collection
Reflection: The day starts the night beforeThe day starts when you lay your head down. Whatever you hand to the dark is what will be waiting in the morning, already dressed and standing by the bed. Most people spend the last hour of…ReflectionWritten for this collection
Reflection: The weight you are carryingTiredness lies about its own cause. It presents as a failure of character — you are lazy, you are behind, you should be managing this — when the actual reading is much duller. You have been…ReflectionWritten for this collection
Reflection: what the pain is askingPain arrives with instructions attached, and most of them are wrong. It says: fix this now. It says: this will not end. It says: you should have seen it coming, and someone is to blame, and…
Stoic
PracticeAn instruction for practice
Enchiridion IVWhen you set about any action, remind yourself of what nature the action is. If you are going to bathe, represent to yourself the incidents usual in the bath—some persons pouring out, others…PhilosophyA philosophical argument
Meditations IV.3This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a…PhilosophyA philosophical argument
On the Shortness of Life, 1–2The greater part of mankind, my Paulinus, complains of the unkindness of Nature, because we are born only for a short space of time, and that this allotted period of life runs away so swiftl…