Introduction

Attention, turning the mind, or an aspect of it, towards something is in great

demand in modern life. Yet most find attention, in the form of one-pointed
concentration, difficult to attain. This is largely due to the manifold
distractions of and decisions necessitated by our democratic, consumer-oriented
society. As Thoreau pointed out in Walden, “Our life is frittered away in detail’ –
a point he attempted to prove by rebelliously existing for a few summers with the
bare necessities, including morning readings of the Bhagavad Gita, by a Concord
pond. Yet, as I will attempt to show in this paper, there are many different
aspects to attention and many different ways to train its effectiveness. In
particular, it may no longer be valid, in an educational or meditative setting, to
equate effective attention with one-pointed concentration.