Attention is important. The ability to direct your attention where you want is important. If you can do it well then you can do tricks like “concentration”. Concentration is necessary for careful doing and deep seeing. Every engineer, scientist, artist, lawyer and professional thinker needs concentration to do their job.

People with ADHD have a problem controlling their attention. Or something. Normies aren’t too good at it either. (Is the ability to concentrate on stuff that you don’t really care about, to do that a lot every day, a power or a weakness? Good question but beside my point).

Meditation is all about getting better at using attention. Getting better control over it, seeing it doing its thing better, learning its ways.

We basically have 2 techniques. In the first one you practice concentration. It’s a skill that you get better at. And then you take it deeper and you learn a lot. You gain a superpower.

The second one is trickier but better.

The Buddhists call the techniques samatha and vipassana.

  • oceanAEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    I mod the Buddhism coms here and am working on a PhD in Buddhism. I think I got it covered.

    There’s a reason people take medication.

    • rainrain@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Do you meditate?

      You could say that you are concentrating harder. You could also say that you are concentrating better, with greater care and understanding. You could also say that the concentration is merely a foil against which the action of awareness becomes clearer.

      I mean, it’s a real thing. Therefore words can only hint at it, it has infinite depths and angles, etc.

      • oceanAEnglish
        7·
        1 day ago

        It seems like you’re having a different conversation than my comment.

        • rainrain@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          I think that I addressed your “concentration meditation is focusing harder” and “I’m experienced” (to paraphrase) comments pretty dead on actually.

          Your “people take meds for a reason”…ya, I skipped it as nebulous.

          So don’t give me that silly guff.

          But seriously, do you meditate?