Buddhism and Attention Take 1
November 20, 2011
While Western psychology has focused on attention since the late 19th century, the Buddhists have been students of attention for the past 2,500 years (B. A Wallace, 1999). Western psychology looked at attention from the behavioral perspective (in the period of 1920-1949), from the information processing perspective (in the period of 1950-1974), from a model perspective (early 1970’s and on), and now from a neuropsychological perspective (Johnson & Proctor, 2004, pp. 4–23). For 2,500 years, Buddhists “have formulated elaborate, sophisticated theories of the origins and nature of consciousness and its active role in nature; but their inquiries never produce anything akin to an empirical study or theory of the brain” (B. A Wallace, 1999, p. 176). However, their major contribution has been
examining and probing the mind first-hand, and the initial problem in this endeavour was to train the attention so that it could be a more reliable, precise instrument of observation….Thus, the first task in the Buddhist investigation of the mind is to so refine the attention and balance the nervous system that the mind is made properly functional, free of the detrimental influences of excitation and laxity. (B. A Wallace, 1999, p. 176)
This type of Buddhist attentional training is called shamatha (also referred to as samatha), which involves various attentional meditation practices. In The Attention Revolution, B. Alan Wallace (2006) further describes “shamatha [as] a path of attentional development that culminates in an attention that can be sustained effortlessly for hours on end” (2006, p. xii).
Stay tune next week for more on shamatha…
Johnson, D. A., & Proctor, D. R. W. (2004). Attention: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Wallace, B. A. (1999). The Buddhist tradition of Samatha: Methods for refining and examining consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 2(3), 175–187.
Wallace, B. Alan. (2006). The attention revolution: Unlocking the power of the focused mind (1st ed.). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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4 Responses to “Buddhism and Attention Take 1”
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Awesome post, where is the rss? I cant find it!
The rss feed is at the upper right of the web page.
Point taken. Thank you!
I hope you keep coming back for more. I’m doing my PhD research on the topic of attention, leadership and sustainable business.