
Attention and the Moral Life (2016) - longdefeat
https://thefrailestthing.com/2016/09/13/attention-and-the-moral-life/
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pmoriarty
In the article's conclusion, the author writes:

 _" Finally, and briefly, we should be wary of imagining the work of
cultivating attention as merely a matter of learning how to consciously choose
what we will attend to at any given moment. That is part of it to be sure, but
Weil and Pieper both knew that attention also involved an openness to what is,
a capacity to experience the world as gift. Cultivating our attention in this
sense is not a matter of focusing upon an object of attention for our own
reasons, however noble those may be. It is also a matter of setting to one
side our projects and aspirations that we might be surprised by what is there.
"We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them," Weil
wrote, "but by waiting for them." In this way, we prepare for "some dim
dazzling trick of grace," to borrow a felicitous phrase from Walker Percy,
that may illumine our minds and enliven our hearts."_

This sounds an awful lot like meditation, which was surprisingly not mentioned
at all in the article.

~~~
glial
Meditation, and prayer.

Excerpt from 'The Summer Day' by Mary Oliver[1]

    
    
      I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
      I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
      into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
      how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
      which is what I have been doing all day.
      Tell me, what else should I have done?
      Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
    

[1]
[https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html](https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html)

