Berry's entirely unironic manual reflects a view of poetry, or to be precise the making of poetry, as a kind of meditation, consisting of preparation followed by waiting; of listening to the silence until the poem emerges in the attentive mind.
But Malebranche thinks this doctrine has an air of mystery to it, and fails to capture the magnitude and character of our dependence: 'that general and confused term concourse, by means of which we would explain creatures' dependence on God, rouses not a single distinct idea in an attentive mind' (OC 1 440, LO 231).
A single thing, such as vision, cannot be the effect of many conditions, such as the eye, visible color, an attentive mind and so forth, he says, because the effect has the feature of being one, while the causes are many, but there is nothing to account for what causes the reduction of many things to one.
Nevertheless, let us remember a very important aspect about a moment of silence: Silence is golden, as they say, and it's not about being quiet per se, but rather about soothing our attentive mind and relaxing our inner soul, at least for one precious minute during the workday.
It has been suggested that training that produces a relaxed and attentive mind will enhance the performance of individuals 52 because it enables them to be less easily distracted, remain focused on task, and cope with stressful work demands in a relaxed and flexible manner.
By doing this regularly, practitioners say, you begin to cultivate an attentive, nonjudgmental mind-set — mindfulness — that can be applied to activities beyond meditation; hence the proliferation of the word in everything from parenting groups to Weight Watchers meetings.
I glanced at my own perhaps more often than the film-makers would have anticipated; it's amazing how the more rumbustious are the action set-pieces, the less attentive the mind becomes.
According to Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness meditation addresses this state of mind by cultivating a state of mind that is "on purpose" and "attentive" to reduce "mind wandering" (see [ 19] for the negative effects of mind wandering).
This will help keep your mind attentive and help reinforce your mindfulness to the moment.
The personable manager, 24-year-old Ulises Santiago, just days away from completing his year of involuntary tourism service, was attentive, though his mind wandered to other things; in a week, he'd be leaving the cloud forest and moving to California, with dreams of making money.
Still, there is no question that he is a man who listens, who is attentive, and whose mind does not come with a rigid, pre-determined agenda.
