They say, “accept everything, let everything pass through without distinction, be awareness watching awareness, while all phenomena come and go." Easier said than done, I think. True, everything passes. Every moment vanishes, And everything we are aware of In every moment dissolves. What stays? The I that watches the vanishing, The eye that is the same, Year in and year out Until our very bodies vanish. How to stay with it though, And let the waves of phenomena Come and go as they wish? Augustine once imaged the experience Of recalling a memorized psalm As attention watching the lines coming Toward it, speaking them in the moment, And letting them recede behind it As the next one comes toward the place Where attention has taken its stand. Attention is fixed, always here and now. That is where we really are, not in the past or the future, but here and now. But how to stick with it and not let it Trickle into times and places That are not right here and right now? "Stop dissipating attention," they say. "You will have so much more energy." It sounds right. But, again, how?
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