Bare Attention and Its Uses

Answer 12/23/12 10:15 AM Ian And: P R E F A C E

Several years ago I posted the following in another forum both to inspire and to help other practitioners to begin understanding the original teachings as they were first taught as I had come to understand them from my own study and practice. The practice of paying "bare attention" to phenomena in the manner herein prescribed in relation to the practice of satipatthana was a practice that I personally found to be of great benefit. I wondered at the time why it wasn't more often taught. You be the judge. Several years ago I posted the following in another forum both to inspire and to help other practitioners to begin understanding the original teachings as they were first taught as I had come to understand them from my own study and practice. The practice of paying "bare attention" to phenomena in the manner herein prescribed in relation to the practice of satipatthana was a practice that I personally found to be of great benefit. I wondered at the time why it wasn't more often taught. You be the judge.



This extract should provide a better idea of the comprehensiveness and thoroughness with which the method of satipatthana practice attempts to engage the diligent practitioner. Though its practice is far reaching and may seem at first glance to be a vastly more complicated practice as its main highlights here seem to indicate, if broken down into the practice and the attainment of the abilities to be able to practice it properly, once one obtains those abilities its practice will be considerably easier.



One of those abilities is the ability to observe phenomena with what is known as "bare attention." I first came upon this concept and term in a book by Nyanaponika Thera,



Ian And: The following excerpts are taken from Nyanaponika Thera's book The Heart of Buddhist Meditation , first published in the late 1950s. These cover his ideas on "bare attention" and its general application in practice. The present post covers the first half of these excerpts. A succeeding post will cover the second half of the excerpts. I have lighly edited these extracts for better transition between paragraphs at natural breaking points in the text in order to gather them together into one piece. For the most part, these are Nyanaponika's own words and ideas.



Bare Attention



Between the two factors of Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension, it is Mindfulness, in its specific aspect of Bare Attention, that provides the key to the distinctive method of Satipatthana, and accompanies the systematic practice of it, from the very beginning to the achievement of its highest goal. So, just what is Bare Attention and how does it work in conjunction with this method of Satipatthana?



Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called "bare" because it attends to just the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind which, in Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that sixfold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech, or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc.), judgement or reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to the practice of Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one's mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them.



Every effort of worth requires thoroughness if it is to achieve its purpose. This is particularly so if the work is as lofty and arduous as that mapped out by the Buddha in the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the extinction of suffering. Among the eight factors of that Path, it is Right Mindfulness that represents the indispensable element of thoroughness. It is obvious that the practice of Right Mindfulness itself will have to employ thoroughness of procedure to the highest extent. The absence or neglect of it would be just the opposite of a quality deserving the name of Mindfulness, and would deprive the method of its chances for success. Just as detrimental consequences must result from an unstable and carelessly laid foundation, so the blessings of a solid and reliable one will extend far into the future.



Therefore, Right Mindfulness starts at the beginning. In employing the method of Bare Attention, it goes back to the seed state of things. Applied to the activity of mind this means observation reverts to the very first phase of the process of perception when mind is in a purely receptive state, and when attention is restricted to a bare noticing of the object. That phase is of very short and hardly perceptible duration, and it furnishes a superficial, incomplete, and often faulty picture of the object. It is the task of the next perceptual phase to correct and to supplement that first impression, but this is not always done. Often the first impression is taken for granted, and even new distortions, characteristic of the more complex mental functions of the second state, are added.



Here starts the work of Bare Attention, being a deliberate cultivation and strengthening of that first receptive state of mind, giving it a longer chance to fulfill its important task in the process of cognition. Bare Attention proves the thoroughness of its procedure by cleansing and preparing the ground carefully for all subsequent mental processes. By that cleansing function, it serves the high purpose of the entire method set forth in the Discourse: "for the purification of beings. . .", which in the Commentary is explained as the purification, or cleansing, of mind.



Obtaining the Bare Object



Bare attention consists in a bare and exact registering of the object. This is not as easy a task as it may appear, since it is not what we normally do, except when engaged in disinterested investigation. Normally we are not concerned with a disinterested knowledge of "things as they truly are", but with handling and judging them from the viewpoint of our self-interest, which may be wide or narrow, noble or low. We tack labels to the things which form our physical and mental universe, and these labels mostly show clearly the impress of our self-interest and our limited vision. It is such an assemblage of labels in which we generally live and which determines our actions and reactions.



Hence the attitude of Bare Attention — bare of labels — will open us to a new world. We will learn that whereas we first believed ourselves to be dealing with a single object presented by a single act of perception, there is in fact a whole series of different physical and mental processes presented by corresponding acts of perception following each other in quick succession. We will also notice how rarely we are aware of a bare or pure object without the addition of subjective judgements, which spoil the pureness of the object. We may see something as beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, useful, useless, or harmful. If it concerns a living being, there will also enter into it the preconceived notion that: "This is a personality, an ego, just like myself," which connotes substance and hence individuality to the person. We won't see them as a consciousness living inside a body like we are, but rather as a substantial being set before our path which we must somehow deal with.



In that condition of mind (i.e. closely intertwined with subjective additions) the perception will sink into the store house of memory. When recalled, by associative thinking, memory will exert its distorting influence on not only present perceptions but also those which occur in regard to similar objects in the future, as well as on the judgements, decisions, moods, etc., connected with them. The task of Bare Attention then becomes to eliminate all those additions from the object proper which is in the field of perception. These additions may be considered later singly if wanted, but the initial object of perception has to be kept free from them. This will demand persistent practice during which the attention, gradually growing in its keenness, will filter out first the grosser and then the ever subtler admixtures until only the bare object remains. In the beginning this process may take an act of will in order to break our mental habits of making choices. But as we become more adept, having trained ourself to mentally slow down and stop ourself from making snap judgements etc., our mental habit changes to one of Bare Attention from one of instant reaction, and the effort involved on our part will become less and less as this new habit is reinforced through our subsequent behavior.



The Threefold Value of Bare Attention



Bare Attention has the same threefold value as attributed earlier to Right Mindfulness, that is, it will prove a great and efficient helper in knowing, shaping and liberating the mind.



The Value of Bare Attention for Knowing the Mind.



Mind is the very element in and through which we live, yet it is what is most elusive and mysterious. Bare Attention, by first attending to the basic facts of the mental processes, is capable of shedding light on mind's mysterious darkness, and of obtaining a firm hold on its elusive flow. The systematic practice of Mindfulness, starting with Bare Attention, will furnish all that knowledge about the mind which is essential for practical purposes, i.e. for the mastery, the development, and the final liberation of mind. But even beyond this, when once clear awareness and comprehension have been firmly established in a limited but vital sector of the mind's expanse, the light will gradually and naturally spread, and will reach even distant and obscure corners of the mind's realm which hitherto had been inaccessible. This will be due mainly to the fact that the instrument of that search for knowledge will have undergone a radical change: the searching mind itself will have gained in lucidity and penetrative strength.



"Only things well examined by Mindfulness can be understood by Wisdom, but not confused ones," said one commentator to the Sutras. A specimen of research that is to be examined with the help of a microscope has first to be carefully prepared, cleaned, freed from extraneous matter, and firmly kept under the lens. In a similar way, the "bare object" to be examined by wisdom is prepared by Bare Attention. It cleans the object of investigation from the impurities of prejudice and passion; it frees it from alien admixtures and from points of view not pertaining to it; it holds it firmly before the eye of Wisdom by slowing down the transition from the receptive to the active phase of the perceptual or cognitive process, thus giving a vastly improved chance for close and dispassionate investigation.



This preliminary work of Bare Attention is of importance not only for the analytical aspect, i.e. the dissecting and discriminating function of mind by which the elements of the object's make-up are revealed. It is also of great assistance to the equally important synthesis aspect — for finding out the object's connections with and relations to other things, its interaction with them, its conditioned and conditioning nature. Many of these will escape notice if there is not a sufficiently long period of Bare Attention. As a maxim of great importance and of varied application, also to practical matters, it should be kept in mind that the relations between things can be reliably ascertained only if first the single members of that relationship have been carefully examined in their various aspects which are pointers to diverse connections. Insufficient analytic preparation is a frequent source of error in the synthetic part of philosophical systems and scientific theories. It is just this preparation that is carefully attended to and remedied by the method of Bare Attention.



Bare Attention first allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drown in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives. Because Bare Attention sees things without the narrowing and leveling effect of habitual judgements, it sees them ever anew, as if for the first time; therefore it will happen with progressive frequency that things will have something new and worth while to reveal. Patient pausing in such an attitude of Bare Attention will open wide horizons to one's understanding obtaining, in a seemingly effortless way, results which were denied to the strained efforts of an impatient intellect. Owing to a rash or habitual limiting, labeling, misjudging, and mishandling of things, important sources of knowledge often remain closed. This attitude of Bare Attention will, by persistent practice, prove to be a rich source of knowledge and inspiration.



When practicing Bare Attention, the first powerful impact on the observer's mind will probably be the direct confrontation with the ever-present fact of Change. In terms of the Dharma, it is the first of the three Characteristics of Existence: Impermanence (anicca). The incessant sequence of individual births and deaths of the events observed by Bare Attention will become an experience of growing force and will have decisive consequences on the meditative progress. From that same experience of momentary change, the direct awareness of the other two Characteristics of Life will emerge in due course, i.e. of suffering (dissatisfaction; dukkha) and Impersonality (Not-Self; anatta).



Though the fact of Change is commonly admitted, at least to a certain extent, people in ordinary life will generally become conscious of it only when it challenges them fairly vehemently, in either a pleasant or, mostly, unpleasant way. The practice of Bare Attention, however, will bring it forcibly home that Change is always with us; that even in a minute fraction of time the frequency of occurring changes is beyond our ability to fully comprehend it. Probably for the first time it will strike us — not only intellectually but touching our whole being — in what kind of world we are actually living. Coming face to face with Change, as experienced in our own body and mind, we have now started "to see things as they really are." And this refers particularly to the "things of the mind." Mind cannot be understood without knowing it as a flux and remaining aware of that fact in all investigations devoted to the knowledge of mind. To show the fact as well as the nature of Change in mental processes is a fundamental contribution of the practice of Bare Attention to mind-knowledge. The fact of Change will contribute to it in a negative way, by excluding any static view of the mind, assuming permanent entities, fixed qualities, etc. The insight into the nature of Change will be a contribution in a positive way, by supplying a wealth of detailed information on the dynamic nature of the mental processes.



In the light of Bare Attention focused on sense perception, the distinctive character of material and mental processes, their inter-relation and alternating occurrence as well as the basic objectifying function of mind will gain in clarity.



After the practice of Bare Attention has resulted in a certain width and depth of experience in its dealings with mental events, it will become an immediate certainty to the meditator that "mind is nothing beyond its cognizing function." Nowhere, behind or within that function, can any individual agent or abiding entity be detected. By way of one's own direct experience, one will thus have arrived at the great truth of No-Soul or Impersonality (anatta), showing that all existence is void of an abiding personality (self, soul, or over-self) or any abiding substance of any description. Bare Attention will, in addition, supply surprising as well as helpful information about the workings of one's own mind: the mechanism of one's emotions and passions, the reliability of one's reasoning power, one's true and pretended motives, and many other aspects of mental life. Clear light will fall on one's weak and strong points as well, and of some of them one will become aware for the first time.



Thus, this method of Bare Attention, so helpful to mind-knowledge and, through it, to world-knowledge, is analogous with the procedure and attitude of the true scientist and scholar: clear definition of subject-matter and terms; unprejudiced receptivity for the instruction that comes out of the things themselves; exclusion, or at least reduction, of the subjective factor in judgement; deferring of judgement until a careful examination of facts has been made. Thus the Buddha has in some quarters been favorably compared with a super-scientist or spiritual super-scientist, and we begin, at least in a small way, to understand the immense complexity of his vast intellect and why he is so revered by those who have come to know and understand his Dharma. This extract should provide a better idea of the comprehensiveness and thoroughness with which the method of satipatthana practice attempts to engage the diligent practitioner. Though its practice is far reaching and may seem at first glance to be a vastly more complicated practice as its main highlights here seem to indicate, if broken down into the practice and the attainment of the abilities to be able to practice it properly, once one obtains those abilities its practice will be considerably easier.One of those abilities is the ability to observe phenomena with what is known as "bare attention." I first came upon this concept and term in a book by Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation . In this book, Nyanaponika breaks down the method he was taught by Mahasi Sayadaw in the mid-1950s after attending the Sixth Buddhist Council held back then. The present extract ends with a mention of "bare attention," and I intend to follow-up this post with another taking a more in-depth look at bare attention. The purpose of bare attention is to assist the mind in ending mental proliferation and fabrication and thus to allow the practitioner to remain undistracted and unperturbed on the object of observation without extraneous data interfering in the process of recognizing "things as they are". Developing this ability is crucial to being able to use the instruction in satipatthana (and parenthetically sampajanna or comprehensive recognition) to its fullest extent in order to apply the "direct path to realization" in one's practice.Between the two factors of Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension, it is Mindfulness, in its specific aspect of Bare Attention, that provides the key to the distinctive method of Satipatthana, and accompanies the systematic practice of it, from the very beginning to the achievement of its highest goal. So, just what is Bare Attention and how does it work in conjunction with this method of Satipatthana?Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called "bare" because it attends to just the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind which, in Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that sixfold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech, or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc.), judgement or reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to the practice of Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one's mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them.Every effort of worth requires thoroughness if it is to achieve its purpose. This is particularly so if the work is as lofty and arduous as that mapped out by the Buddha in the Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to the extinction of suffering. Among the eight factors of that Path, it is Right Mindfulness that represents the indispensable element of thoroughness. It is obvious that the practice of Right Mindfulness itself will have to employ thoroughness of procedure to the highest extent. The absence or neglect of it would be just the opposite of a quality deserving the name of Mindfulness, and would deprive the method of its chances for success. Just as detrimental consequences must result from an unstable and carelessly laid foundation, so the blessings of a solid and reliable one will extend far into the future.Therefore, Right Mindfulness starts at the beginning. In employing the method of Bare Attention, it goes back to the seed state of things. Applied to the activity of mind this means observation reverts to the very first phase of the process of perception when mind is in a purely receptive state, and when attention is restricted to a bare noticing of the object. That phase is of very short and hardly perceptible duration, and it furnishes a superficial, incomplete, and often faulty picture of the object. It is the task of the next perceptual phase to correct and to supplement that first impression, but this is not always done. Often the first impression is taken for granted, and even new distortions, characteristic of the more complex mental functions of the second state, are added.Here starts the work of Bare Attention, being a deliberate cultivation and strengthening of that first receptive state of mind, giving it a longer chance to fulfill its important task in the process of cognition. Bare Attention proves the thoroughness of its procedure by cleansing and preparing the ground carefully for all subsequent mental processes. By that cleansing function, it serves the high purpose of the entire method set forth in the Discourse: "for the purification of beings. . .", which in the Commentary is explained as the purification, or cleansing, of mind.Bare attention consists in a bare and exact registering of the object. This is not as easy a task as it may appear, since it is not what we normally do, except when engaged in disinterested investigation. Normally we are not concerned with a disinterested knowledge of "things as they truly are", but with handling and judging them from the viewpoint of our self-interest, which may be wide or narrow, noble or low. We tack labels to the things which form our physical and mental universe, and these labels mostly show clearly the impress of our self-interest and our limited vision. It is such an assemblage of labels in which we generally live and which determines our actions and reactions.Hence the attitude of Bare Attention — bare of labels — will open us to a new world. We will learn that whereas we first believed ourselves to be dealing with a single object presented by a single act of perception, there is in fact a whole series of different physical and mental processes presented by corresponding acts of perception following each other in quick succession. We will also notice how rarely we are aware of a bare or pure object without the addition of subjective judgements, which spoil the pureness of the object. We may see something as beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, useful, useless, or harmful. If it concerns a living being, there will also enter into it the preconceived notion that: "This is a personality, an ego, just like myself," which connotes substance and hence individuality to the person. We won't see them as a consciousness living inside a body like we are, but rather as a substantial being set before our path which we must somehow deal with.In that condition of mind (i.e. closely intertwined with subjective additions) the perception will sink into the store house of memory. When recalled, by associative thinking, memory will exert its distorting influence on not only present perceptions but also those which occur in regard to similar objects in the future, as well as on the judgements, decisions, moods, etc., connected with them. The task of Bare Attention then becomes to eliminate all those additions from the object proper which is in the field of perception. These additions may be considered later singly if wanted, but the initial object of perception has to be kept free from them. This will demand persistent practice during which the attention, gradually growing in its keenness, will filter out first the grosser and then the ever subtler admixtures until only the bare object remains. In the beginning this process may take an act of will in order to break our mental habits of making choices. But as we become more adept, having trained ourself to mentally slow down and stop ourself from making snap judgements etc., our mental habit changes to one of Bare Attention from one of instant reaction, and the effort involved on our part will become less and less as this new habit is reinforced through our subsequent behavior.Bare Attention has the same threefold value as attributed earlier to Right Mindfulness, that is, it will prove a great and efficient helper in knowing, shaping and liberating the mind.Mind is the very element in and through which we live, yet it is what is most elusive and mysterious. Bare Attention, by first attending to the basic facts of the mental processes, is capable of shedding light on mind's mysterious darkness, and of obtaining a firm hold on its elusive flow. The systematic practice of Mindfulness, starting with Bare Attention, will furnish all that knowledge about the mind which is essential for practical purposes, i.e. for the mastery, the development, and the final liberation of mind. But even beyond this, when once clear awareness and comprehension have been firmly established in a limited but vital sector of the mind's expanse, the light will gradually and naturally spread, and will reach even distant and obscure corners of the mind's realm which hitherto had been inaccessible. This will be due mainly to the fact that the instrument of that search for knowledge will have undergone a radical change: the searching mind itself will have gained in lucidity and penetrative strength."Only things well examined by Mindfulness can be understood by Wisdom, but not confused ones," said one commentator to the Sutras. A specimen of research that is to be examined with the help of a microscope has first to be carefully prepared, cleaned, freed from extraneous matter, and firmly kept under the lens. In a similar way, the "bare object" to be examined by wisdom is prepared by Bare Attention. It cleans the object of investigation from the impurities of prejudice and passion; it frees it from alien admixtures and from points of view not pertaining to it; it holds it firmly before the eye of Wisdom by slowing down the transition from the receptive to the active phase of the perceptual or cognitive process, thus giving a vastly improved chance for close and dispassionate investigation.This preliminary work of Bare Attention is of importance not only for the analytical aspect, i.e. the dissecting and discriminating function of mind by which the elements of the object's make-up are revealed. It is also of great assistance to the equally important synthesis aspect — for finding out the object's connections with and relations to other things, its interaction with them, its conditioned and conditioning nature. Many of these will escape notice if there is not a sufficiently long period of Bare Attention. As a maxim of great importance and of varied application, also to practical matters, it should be kept in mind that the relations between things can be reliably ascertained only if first the single members of that relationship have been carefully examined in their various aspects which are pointers to diverse connections. Insufficient analytic preparation is a frequent source of error in the synthetic part of philosophical systems and scientific theories. It is just this preparation that is carefully attended to and remedied by the method of Bare Attention.Bare Attention first allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drown in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives. Because Bare Attention sees things without the narrowing and leveling effect of habitual judgements, it sees them ever anew, as if for the first time; therefore it will happen with progressive frequency that things will have something new and worth while to reveal. Patient pausing in such an attitude of Bare Attention will open wide horizons to one's understanding obtaining, in a seemingly effortless way, results which were denied to the strained efforts of an impatient intellect. Owing to a rash or habitual limiting, labeling, misjudging, and mishandling of things, important sources of knowledge often remain closed. This attitude of Bare Attention will, by persistent practice, prove to be a rich source of knowledge and inspiration.When practicing Bare Attention, the first powerful impact on the observer's mind will probably be the direct confrontation with the ever-present fact of Change. In terms of the Dharma, it is the first of the three Characteristics of Existence: Impermanence (anicca). The incessant sequence of individual births and deaths of the events observed by Bare Attention will become an experience of growing force and will have decisive consequences on the meditative progress. From that same experience of momentary change, the direct awareness of the other two Characteristics of Life will emerge in due course, i.e. of suffering (dissatisfaction; dukkha) and Impersonality (Not-Self; anatta).Though the fact of Change is commonly admitted, at least to a certain extent, people in ordinary life will generally become conscious of it only when it challenges them fairly vehemently, in either a pleasant or, mostly, unpleasant way. The practice of Bare Attention, however, will bring it forcibly home that Change is always with us; that even in a minute fraction of time the frequency of occurring changes is beyond our ability to fully comprehend it. Probably for the first time it will strike us — not only intellectually but touching our whole being — in what kind of world we are actually living. Coming face to face with Change, as experienced in our own body and mind, we have now started "to see things as they really are." And this refers particularly to the "things of the mind." Mind cannot be understood without knowing it as a flux and remaining aware of that fact in all investigations devoted to the knowledge of mind. To show the fact as well as the nature of Change in mental processes is a fundamental contribution of the practice of Bare Attention to mind-knowledge. The fact of Change will contribute to it in a negative way, by excluding any static view of the mind, assuming permanent entities, fixed qualities, etc. The insight into the nature of Change will be a contribution in a positive way, by supplying a wealth of detailed information on the dynamic nature of the mental processes.In the light of Bare Attention focused on sense perception, the distinctive character of material and mental processes, their inter-relation and alternating occurrence as well as the basic objectifying function of mind will gain in clarity.After the practice of Bare Attention has resulted in a certain width and depth of experience in its dealings with mental events, it will become an immediate certainty to the meditator that "mind is nothing beyond its cognizing function." Nowhere, behind or within that function, can any individual agent or abiding entity be detected. By way of one's own direct experience, one will thus have arrived at the great truth of No-Soul or Impersonality (anatta), showing that all existence is void of an abiding personality (self, soul, or over-self) or any abiding substance of any description. Bare Attention will, in addition, supply surprising as well as helpful information about the workings of one's own mind: the mechanism of one's emotions and passions, the reliability of one's reasoning power, one's true and pretended motives, and many other aspects of mental life. Clear light will fall on one's weak and strong points as well, and of some of them one will become aware for the first time.Thus, this method of Bare Attention, so helpful to mind-knowledge and, through it, to world-knowledge, is analogous with the procedure and attitude of the true scientist and scholar: clear definition of subject-matter and terms; unprejudiced receptivity for the instruction that comes out of the things themselves; exclusion, or at least reduction, of the subjective factor in judgement; deferring of judgement until a careful examination of facts has been made. Thus the Buddha has in some quarters been favorably compared with a super-scientist or spiritual super-scientist, and we begin, at least in a small way, to understand the immense complexity of his vast intellect and why he is so revered by those who have come to know and understand his Dharma.