Paying Attention
5/6/2024
The way things bubble up and intertwine in consciousness amazes me. It goes on all the time – at the store, working, driving . . . but when we’re sitting in formal practice or doing a quiet retreat activity, it can be easier to see these fast, subtle associations. I’m convinced that I miss almost all of them, so the ones I notice feel all the more brilliant, like spotting a rare bird after only ever hearing its song season after season.
Recently I caught a clearer glimpse of a phrase that’s supposedly been front-and-center for me for many years now: “pay attention.”
I’ve been learning some basic Spanish online, so the verb “pagar,” “to pay,” in English, popped up for me last month when I was at the temple for training. I must have noticed my mind wandering off because I heard my inner voice suddenly say “pay attention.” Then “pay,” “pagar,” and something caught – “oh, but that’s what you do with money” – that is, in English we say “pay” attention as though we’re purchasing something.
Why would we “pay” attention, I wondered, instead of, for example, “do” attention or “make” attention? When I pay for something, I offer something I have, like money, in return for something else – either something already given to me or something I wish to purchase in advance, whether a thing or an experience. I’ve come back to this question of what I’m drawn to purchase with my attention over the last few weeks and found that the closest I can get is: I don’t know.
I’ve had lots of ideas over the past 20 years since I met my first meditation teacher – lots of ideas about what I want, and wanting to find out what I want, and wanting to get what I don’t know I want. You may relate when I say the most consistent finding after all this time is that I’ve been wrong about pretty much everything.
So, I am paying like my life depends on it, always compelled to refine what it means to be attentive, and I’m paying for something without knowing what I’ll get (or what I’ve already received). I’m willing to pay anything. I just found that out a few weeks ago too. Someone asked me, someone with much greater financial resources than I, what’s 500 thousand dollars for liberation? Would I pay? He saw that the number didn’t compute for me, so he said, “Wouldn’t you give Ursula 1,000 dollars?” and without hesitation I said yes, of course, I would give her everything. I caught a whiff in that moment of that perfect lack of concern – the absolute trust that has something to do with absolute freedom.
I may never find that puzzle piece to connect absolute trust and freedom – in fact, I doubt I will – because that tracks with my experience that the path is consistently surprising.
Here’s something, then: there is a quality of the unknown that is the very thing that compels me to continue. It seems that this may be the nature of things without the overlay of rational mind: spontaneous, dynamic, free. As Nisargadatta said, when asked, “Which part of the future is real and which is not?” – “The unexpected and unpredictable is real.”
Consistent meditation will change you – I have no doubt about that – but how it will change you is another question. People tend to want peace or clarity or communion with something greater than themselves, but there are other incredible, unpredictable changes all along the way that you won’t want to miss. I remember the first time on retreat that a simple life decision came to me fully formed and unproblematic. It was remarkable for how it had the flavor of complete satisfaction as though I’d intentionally and perfectly thought through all the pros and cons and had the ideal combination of chess moves through my own future, except I hadn’t been thinking about it at all. Now this kind of knowing arises throughout my days and seems normal, but it is still wonderful when I notice it. It’s not the satisfaction of skillful and complete decisions that are delightful though – the knowing whether to reschedule an appointment or take someone up on a new opportunity I’ve been offered. It’s that underlying uncontainable dynamism itself of which the decisions are just indicators, like a mushroom that pops up from the earth having come from something much greater and unseen and mysterious. The unseen, mysterious and uncontainable dynamism is what I equate with what is classically called True Nature, among many other names.
Knowing our true nature, then, is perhaps what we’re paying for with our attention – offering everything we have one moment at a time for a gift we can’t understand with any tools we are intentionally applying. Yet we’re also able to know in a way what we’re paying for – because it’s already here, and everywhere. I trust – you trust – because we do know. We know in a way that is beyond reason and beyond words. This is why I love music and poetry and zen – because these are the languages of those who long to know their true nature. They point to it with art – the language beyond words, beyond reason.
Thank you for looking into this with me as we continue to pay, and pay, and pay with our attention.
This written reflection is based on a talk I gave last week on April 29, 2024, at the first True Nature retreat held at the CCE. At the end of the talk, I read this poem from the Therigatha, a collection of poems by the first Buddhist women who came to know their own True Nature approximately two thousand years ago.
Uttama – Great Woman
For years I couldn’t sleep.
Most nights I’d throw off the covers
and take long runs through the dark.
Nothing helped.
My sisters, and brothers.
When sleepless nights come
to tear you into little pieces,
rise to meet the day
as a tree rises to meet the axe –
as a scalp bows to meet the blade –
as sparks from a dying fire
reach out to meet the darkness –
as all of our bones
someday fall softly down
to meet earth.
When you stand,
send your roots down between the stones.
When you walk,
walk like a skeleton walking toits grave.
When you lie down,
lie down like a blown-out candle
being put back in a drawer.
When you sit,
sit very
very
still.
My sisters, and brothers, sit like you are dead already.
how could this world possibly
give you what you’re looking for
when it’s so busy
falling apart –
Just
Like
You?
Look closely.
Don’t move until you see it.