Quotes from James H. Austin

Attention is malleable. We can intensify it, shift it either voluntarily or involuntarily. We can soften it, diffuse it. We can deploy global attention toward tangible external objects, or to their intangible attributes. We can direct attention internally to retrieve items that we have stored in memory. We can sustain attention by infusing a component of motivation, either from the top-down (by intention) or by much more subtler means related to our habitual ongoing attitudes.

Perceiving Clearly The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. William James (1842-1910) Can we trust what we perceive? William James pointed to another attribute of attention: it helped augment the ''clearness of all that we perceive or conceive.

Perhaps we remember them, too, because their lives show us how malleable our own futures are. In their work we perceive how many loopholes fate has left us—how much of destiny is still in our own hands. In them, we see that nothing is predetermined. Chance can be on our side, if we but stir it up with our energies, stay receptive to its every random opportunity, and continually provoke it by individuality in our hobbies, attitudes, and our approach to life.

Chance I is completely impersonal; you can't influence it. Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore. Chance III favors those who have a sufficient background of sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, recalling, and quickly forming significant new associations. Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.

Experimental ideas are very often born by chance as a result of fortuitous observations.

To some persons nowadays, mindfulness might seem to be just another short course. After auditing it for only a few weeks, they could thereafter meditate casually, whenever … This isn't where Living Zen Remindfully is coming from. Authentic Zen training means committing oneself to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This preparation enables one to unlearn old unfruitful habits, retrain more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life. Currently,

This book extends some original implications of mindfulness. It explores the many positive, helpful subconscious aspects of remindfulness. It suggests ways that long-term meditative retraining can help cultivate hidden, affirmative resources of our subconscious memories. Accessing these subtle processes of transformation can enable us to adapt more effectively and to live more authentic lives. To

Research worldwide is starting to clarify both how greater degrees of mental clarity can evolve and how the older biased judgments and concepts that we had attached to scenes can be softened, suspended, or dissolved.

Do some involuntary forms of ''no-thought'' attention normally exist that can be cultivated during long-term meditative training?

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here (pointing to himself) and you are out there.

The early masters also introduced walking meditation and hard work to the monastery, for too much sitting could reach the point of diminishing returns.

Zen values the simple, concrete, living facts of everyday direct personal experience.