The Attention Revolution

unsullied by the obscurations of

mental turmoil is astonishing. Contemplatives are able to do this because they tap into and sustain an inner source of serenity,

Psychologists have found that the time generally needed to acquire expertise in a variety of high-level skills is five to ten thousand hours of training in a discipline of eight hours each day for fifty weeks in the year. This is roughly the degree of commitment required to progress along the entire path to the achievement of shamatha. Between formal meditation sessions,

The term nonobjectification in this passage refers to no longer clinging to outer objects and events as the true sources of our joys and sorrows.

This constitutes a rigorous contemplative science of the mind and its relation to the body and the environment,

mindfulness is “a kind of nonelaborative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.”3

You are now free of coarse excitation. It’s as if the attention has acquired a kind of gravity such that it can’t be easily buffeted by gusts of involuntary thoughts and sensory distractions.

to alleviate the symptoms of a dysfunctional life,

Dispensing with Compulsive Thoughts

these circumstances can give you is a temporary spurt of pleasure that tapers off as soon as the pleasurable stimulus stops.