Relation to oneself· Presencedifficulty
Attention and diversion
Is diverting oneself a flight from what matters, or an art of living?
We spend a growing share of our lives diverting ourselves, and whole industries now compete for every minute of our attention. A flight from what matters, or the art of inhabiting a life no one can spend forever face to face with the essential? To take a position is to say what the hours we give to nothing important are worth.
Recollection
8Diversion is a flight: what matters, our condition, death, what is entrusted to us, asks to be faced, and diversion turns us away from it precisely when it weighs. The response is recollection: to gather one's attention and become present to the essential, however uncomfortable, rather than to numb oneself.
Explore this position →The Buddhaexplicit
(sati, continuous present attention) is one limb of the (the ) and the heart of practice. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta teaches gathering attention upon the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena, against mental scattering. Gautama's teaching is thus a discipline of recollection par excellence.
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 10 (the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness) · Dhammapada, ch. II (Heedfulness)
Buddhismexplicit
If the self is an illusion born of inattention, it is sustained attention that undoes it: (sati, continuous present attention) is no mere relaxation but the instrument of knowledge that makes and directly observable in experience. A limb of the , it is exercised, according to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, upon the body, feelings, mind, and phenomena, against scattering. Recollection is thus not an end in itself but the very means by which liberating understanding takes hold, which makes Buddhism a discipline of recollection par excellence.
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness) · Dhammapada, ch. II (Heedfulness)
Epictetusexplicit
If passion comes from a hasty granted to an , then everything is decided at the moment the impression appears, not afterward. Hence the need for continuous attention to oneself, prosochē: relentlessly questioning each impression, "wait for me a little, let me see who you are", so as never to assent mechanically. This discipline of vigilance, a standing recollection upon the , is what Epictetus puts in place of a morality of rules: not a code to apply but a scrutiny of every second, the opposite of the dispersion in which the soul follows its impressions unfiltered.
Discourses, IV.12 (On attention) · Enchiridion, §4
Marcus Aureliusexplicit
The fundamental exercise is , the vigilant attention turned at every moment on one's judgments and impulses: to watch the as it arises is to recollect oneself upon the rather than be scattered along the stream of impressions.
Meditations, III, 4 · Meditations, IV, 22 · Meditations, VII, 54
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Plotinusinferable
The whole Plotinian discipline is a recollection: one must gather the soul dispersed in the sensible manifold, concentrate it and make it attentive to its inner source so as to rise to contemplation. Union with the requires the silence of the senses and of discursive thought, a total withdrawal within. It is the very opposite of any fruitful dispersion.
Enneads, VI, 9, 7-11 · Enneads, V, 1, 12
Stoicismexplicit
Prosochē, the vigilant attention turned at every moment upon the judgments and impulses of the (the hēgemonikon), is the fundamental attitude of the practicing Stoic. Marcus Aurelius constantly reminds himself to watch over his : the aim is to recollect oneself rather than be scattered.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, III, 4 · Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 12
Nāgārjunainferable
Nāgārjuna inherits the Buddhist discipline of recollection: liberation presupposes a gathered mind, able to sustain the analysis until the conceptual proliferation (prapañca) is stilled. Seeing is not a scattering but a penetrating, continuous attention turned upon the conditioned arising of phenomena, hence a clear leaning toward recollection.
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), XVIII, 5 (the stilling of proliferation)
Schopenhauerinferable
Death is the 'muse of philosophy,' and our condition is understood only by facing it: noisy sociability and worldly bustle are above all the flight of empty minds that cannot bear their own company. Recollection, not diversion, opens onto the essential.
Parerga and Paralipomena, 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life'
Diversion embraced
0To divert oneself is not to betray one's life but to make it livable: no one can stare forever at death or misfortune, and diversion relieves, sometimes heals, sets us moving again. Knowing how to be distracted, to change objects, to play, to converse, is an art of living and a wisdom, not a weakness to blush at.
Explore this position →No figure stands here, in this slice.
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Sub-problems to deepen this axis's discussion
- DescriptiveWhy can we not bear rest?
"All of humanity's unhappiness comes from one thing, not knowing how to stay quietly in a room": if we flee calm, is it the misery of our condition surfacing the moment the noise stops, as Pascal diagnoses, or is the mind simply made for movement rather than for facing itself?
the person at rest - PrescriptiveExistentialCaptured attention
When entire devices are designed to capture every available minute, is diverting oneself still a choice one owns, or must attention be defended as a scarce good, diversion ceasing to be an art the moment it is administered?
attention-capturing devices - PracticalExistentialReclaiming attention
Faced with devices designed to capture it, can we really reclaim our attention by working at it, withdrawing, fasting from the feed, returning to the present, or do such techniques only paper over a trouble far larger than us?
the exercise of attention
Related problems to broaden toward other axes
- DescriptiveHalf angel, half beast
Is the human a divided being, capable at once of the highest and the lowest, great through the very thing that makes it wretched, or is this dramatic image merely a way of ennobling a mere animal by calling it fallen?
the divided human beingVision of humanity - PrescriptiveExistentialWhat to do with one's attention?
Examining one's life, like acting, demands a resource everything competes for: attention. What we look at, and what we turn from, already shapes an existence; the question is what share may go to diversion.
one's attentionInteriority - Descriptive QuestionIs the tool neutral?
A tool, we are told, is neither good nor bad in itself, everything depending on its use; but does a weapon, or a news feed engineered to capture the eye, really carry no slope of its own?
the toolRelation to technology - PrescriptiveExistentialLiving, or preparing to live
We keep deferring living to a future that, often, never comes: life flows away while we prepare it. Yet if we project nothing, if we give up every goal, do we not lose what gives existence a direction and an impetus?
the time of a lifeTemporal orientation - PrescriptiveVitalLooking away
To stop dwelling on a truth that gives no purchase is not to deny it; but where does the line run between this wisdom of attention and denial, if discomfort gets to decide what we look at?
a truth already knownThe value of truth