Gil Fronsdal, a teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, speaks on narrow, focused attention. He cites a saying that in mindfulness practice we should look at reality but not stare at it.
Sometimes you have to look first and after looking relax and just see. Looking is intentional so seeing is not intentional, but see clearly. So how does it happen and how to get there.
People who do mindfulness practice have two general options of being mindful. One is looking carefully with focused attention, another is having open awareness to have a wide attention, expansive awareness. The third is a combination of the two, if you focus on a particular point maybe the sensation of the breath on the chest or the belly. The expansion and contraction. One idea is to focus on and then kind of look at it carefully.
Another is to have a consciousness wide and broad, but don’t narrow it, but let the sensations of breathing come into the center of that expansive awareness.
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