Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Absolute unmixed attention is prayer.
– Simone Weil
In his book of essays, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World Barry Lopez writes:
To be patient, to pay attention to the world that is not yourself, is the first step in the neophyte’s discovery of the larger world outside the self, the landscape in which wisdom itself abides.
When an observer doesn’t immediately turn what his senses convey to him into language, into the vocabulary and syntactical framework we all employ when trying to define our experiences, there’s a much greater opportunity for minor details, which might at first seem unimportant, to remain alive in the foreground of an impression, where, later, they might deepen the meaning of experience.
Over the years travelling cross-country with Indigenous people I absorbed two lessons about how to be more fully present in an encounter with a wild animal. First, I needed to understand that I was entering the event as it was unfolding. It started before I arrived and would continue unfolding after I departed. Second, the event itself—let’s say we didn’t disturb the grizzly bear as he or she fed but only took in what the bear was doing and then slipped away— could not be completely defined by referring solely to the physical geography around us in those moments.
The event I was cataloguing in my mind as “encounter with a tundra grizzly” they were experiencing as a sudden immersion in the current of a river. They were swimming in it, feeling its pull, noting the temperature of the water, the back eddies, and where the side streams entered. My approach, in contrast, was mostly to take note of objects in the scene— the bear, the caribou, the tundra vegetation. A series of dots, which I would try to make sense of by connecting them all with a single line. My friends had situated themselves within a dynamic event. Also, unlike me, they felt no immediate need to resolve it into meaning. Their approach was to let it continue to unfold. To notice everything and to let whatever significance was there emerge in its own time.
The lesson to be learned here was not just for me to pay closer attention to what was going on around me, if I hoped to have a deeper understanding of the event, but to remain in a state of suspended mental analysis while observing all that was happening— resisting the urge to define or summarize. Further, I had to incorporate a quintessential characteristic of the way Indigenous people observe: They pay more attention to patterns in what they encounter than to isolated objects. When they saw the bear, they right away began searching for a pattern that was resolving itself before them as “a bear feeding on a carcass.”
They began gathering various pieces together that might later self-assemble into an event larger than “a bear feeding.”These unintegrated pieces they took in as we traveled— the nature of the sonic landscape that permeated this particular physical landscape; the presence or absence of wind, and the direction from which it was coming or had shifted; a piece of speckled eggshell under a tree; leaves missing from the stems of a species of brush; a hole freshly dug in the ground—might individually convey very little. Allowed to slowly resolve into a pattern, however, they might become revelatory.
The event I was cataloguing in my mind as “encounter with a tundra grizzly” they were experiencing as a sudden immersion in the current of a river.
There are two meanings of the word “attention” arising in this story. There is the kind of attention which works like a camera, taking a snapshot of the thing, stopping the bird in mid-flight to categorize it. Too often, when modern people practice “paying attention” or “concentration”, they adopt this kind of aggression. For them “attention” means something like “holding onto something really tight.” We have this term “optimal grip” --- which reflects this.
Alternately, Lopez talks about “being attentive” as “immersion in the current of a river.” This I believe captures the meaning of “particular beings” in Lyric culture. A particular being is a passing, like the current of a river. It is to attend to this particular quality of the passing, which is not something that is fleeting so we must be quick to capture it, but something that is likewise, attending with us, a mutual enrapturing.
Attending to in this way requires us to connect with, or resonate with the particular rhythm(s) of the particular being(s). Not to stand in the way of the river, but to be held in its sway. It means to be receptively attending to what is-as-passing-by, in a way that this particular being, is experienced as *what-is-passing-through-me-without-”me”.” *It means that “I” become what-is-passing-as-is-passing. This is what it means to attend to the breath in a way to become receptively absorbed by the passing of the winds, until I become the breath and the breath becomes me.
Finally, attending in this manner, renders the world as fully animated, as fully alive.
What is the goal of lyric approach to life?
To become, in body, mind, and community ….
… soft, open, able, responsive, trusting, alive, exuberant, fluid, flexible, caring, nurturing, connected, with wisdom, joy and hope.
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