A few weeks ago, I wrote about waking up in the middle of the night and noticing the beauty of moonlight outside my very rural home. Or of distant city lights etching tree limbs against the gray sky⎼ or turning parked cars into mysterious, almost animal shapes. And I’d like to report that when sleep is interrupted and I do this looking-out-the-window practice, intently looking for the beauty that is there, my nights have been more engaging. I’ve become a connoisseur of darkness, a night watcher studying what is seen.
I look forward to the moment of looking. And even the pain and other issues that wake me have become more interesting⎼ or less annoying. Even my dreams have taken up this practice. Last night, my dream-self said that instead of window washing, I was window watching.
And I’ve become a night listener. Like a bird watcher searching for a rare bird or one we love, we can listen for any rare sound to focus on for study. There are few loud sounds at night near my home. Yet, no matter where we live, we can listen to the sounds of the neighborhood, the city, or the forest, for example, as if there was a concert going on outside the window. Or we can listen for trees bending, people talking, cars honking, or leaves spinning in the wind. We watch and listen for the beauty, for patterns, for interconnections.
We can do this not only at night, but all through the day. Sleeping and dreaming help us integrate one day’s thoughts and happenings into a fresh, new morning. The past creates the ground of the present.
Of course, at night, sometimes there is no moon or distant city lights, and our windows become holes into nothing. I like that less, but can study how even emptiness, and my not liking, feels. We often imagine nothingness as a distant event, or thing. But what are we seeing when we notice a hole in our knowing now?
We can also watch the sky during the day. Many of us continually look down, narrowing our attention and reinforcing self-concern. Looking up and out into the distance can spread our awareness, open us up, let us take in more.
One of my favorite books is the classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. The first story in the collection is about a university professor visiting a Zen Master named Nan-in. The professor could be anyone full of their own opinions, and sure that what they think is true is the one and only truth.
The professor asks Nan-in about Zen. In response, the Master invites the professor in for tea. After they sit and the tea is ready, Nan-in pours the visitor’s cup full and keeps on pouring. The professor gets nervous while watching and exclaims, “It’s overfull. No more will go in.”
You, too, are overfull⎼ of opinions, not tea, says Nan-in. “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
It’s not just when or where we look, but how. In The Open-Focus Life: Practices to Develop Attention and Awareness for Optimal Well-Being, Les Fehmi, Susan Shor Fehmi, with Mark Beauregard, outline four styles of attention.
- Narrow: We can look in a narrow, concentrated manner on one thing, like looking through a microscope. We can converge all our energy on one task, so we work efficiently. But this might narrow our viewpoint too much, and we overreact to an angry voice, for example, or we hold on too long to a disturbing memory.
2. Objective: We can objectify a perception and think about it rationally so we perceive more clearly or with less subconscious bias. But this also abstracts and removes what we study from the broader context, and creates a sense of distance, separation. It can lead us to decreased empathy, and our mind can turn people or other beings into objects.
3. Immersed: We can immerse our conscious awareness in a person or other living being, or a project that we usually don’t view as included in our self. For example, becoming absorbed in a piece of music or a dance. In Zen, there is a consciousness-as something as opposed to of-something; for example, in baseball, the batter is usually focused on consciousness-of the pitcher and the ball, while also consciousness-as the hand-as-bat. This style of attention can provide great benefits, and joy. But it can also hurt us if we become immersed in something like a painful emotion.
4. Diffuse: instead of a microscope or a narrow beam of light, we can use a wide-angle lens and spread our perception out in all directions. We can be open, inclusive, soft, expansive. This attention is on others and the world around us, not narrowed on oneself, or our memories, plans, and worries. A bird watcher can be focused on spotting one bird species; or they can walk through a forest or city letting their attention spread out to any species, and the whole area around them⎼ the sounds, smells, and sights. The diffuse style can be relaxing and help us integrate material from all the disparate areas of life but can also make accomplishing tasks more difficult.
So, a practitioner of window watching is more likely to be mindfully aware of the act of perceiving itself, of where attention is directed and how. Our consciousness is more fluid, more ready to learn from whatever occurs ⎼ more primed to perceive the world with an openness to beauty, to being kind, and less focused on oneself ⎼ unless another sort of attention is required. Knowing these different styles of attention can allow our actions to best fit whatever is needed in whatever situation we’re in. We’re more likely to sleep better at night and be more comfortable, awake, and accomplished during the day.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
