Relation to oneself· Presence
Recollection
Axis: Attention and diversion — Is diverting oneself a flight from what matters, or an art of living?
Diversion 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.
Movements 2
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)
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
Philosophers 6
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)
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
Show inferred positions (3)
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
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'
Staying quietly in a roomExerciseProposed · Meditation, after Pascal's analysis of divertissement
described, without blaming us for it, what throws us into : we do not know how to stay quietly in a room, because rest leaves us facing our own condition, and the endless feed is the perfected form of that flight. This exercise does not claim to be a remedy Pascal prescribed: it is a simple meditation, offered to you to feel what he saw, and then to relearn the attention the feed scatters. Its aim is to hold a quarter-hour with nothing, to watch the urge to flee and let it pass; its effect, over time, is to recover a presence to oneself that no longer depends on a screen.
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The fasting of the heart-mind (xinzhai)ExerciseAttested · Zhuangzi
Drawn from the Zhuangzi, the is not abstaining from food but lightening the inner self: loosening the grip of fixed judgments, preferences and calculations until you become as available as a mirror. Far from blanking the mind by force, the point is to stop filtering everything in advance so as to respond more aptly to what comes. Today this exercise helps you meet a situation, a person, or a decision without bending it straightaway to what you expected.
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The inward turnExerciseAttested · Plotinus
For , the soul is normally scattered outward across a thousand objects; to recover what is most real, it must turn back and rise through its own thought toward the silent source from which it comes. This exercise is a brief recollection toward the inward: you draw attention back from its outward dispersion, pass through your own thinking, and rest a moment at the still ground that underlies it. Today, amid constant solicitation, it offers a short way of returning to a center that the feed and the to-do list keep dispersing.
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The present taskStanceAttested · Marcus Aurelius
Perform each act of life as if it were the last.
set himself to perform each act with all the seriousness and he could muster, freed from yesterday's memory and tomorrow's worry. To hold this stance is to bring the mind back to the present task alone: neither scatter nor haste, but one thing at a time, done fully. You stop carrying at once all that was and all that will be, and the act gains in rightness what attention gives it.
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- 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 - 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