Organics: Practicing Bare Attention - Paperback

by Isidore Friedman (Author)

Bare Attention: If, in ordinary life, mindfulness or attention, is directed to any object, it is rarely sustained long enough for the purpose of FACTUAL OBSERVATION.

By Bare Attention we understand 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 the bare facts of a perception without reacting to them by deed, speech or mental comment. Ordinarily, the purely, receptive state of mind is, as we have remarked, just a brief phase of the thought process of which one is often scarcely aware. But in the methodical development of mindfulness, aiming at the unfolding of its latent powers Bare Attention is sustained for as long a time as one's strength of concentration permits.