Just like fabric, or food, or a recording can be of higher or lower quality, our attention has a gradation of quality to it also. We can learn to detect this – and other people can detect it too. High-quality attention is stable (not wavering), and has both depth and lightness to it. That is, there is some substance and strength to the attention, but it is not heavy and penetrating. In addition, it feels open, receptive, and allowing – it is not colored by views or judgments. (Here is a talk I gave on Quality of Attention)
 
Mindfulness and Dharma practice have the effect of increasing the quality of our attention over time. I have also found that practice makes me more sensitive to noticing the quality of attention (in myself and others), and that I have started to value this. I find that I value having higher-quality attention.

I have heard this phrase for advertising a circus performance: "Live, without a net.”
 
In that case, we are supposed to be awed that someone would do acrobatics up high without a safety net. Truthfully, this sounds unwise to me. But in the realm of Dharma practice, it is the perfect phrase.
 
"Live, without a net” is what practice moves us toward. 

What are the “nets” that we use? I am using the word “net” to mean something that we bring into an encounter as an extra, often unseen, prop. It lowers the quality of attention. It hangs in the wings or beneath us, not as a beneficial support, but as an appendage / something awkward. It is not an accident that a net is also something that can bind us. When a net like this is not seen, it ties us up.
 
One such net is actually called that -- the Internet. The mere presence of a cell phone on the table during an interaction has been found to reduce both the cognitive ability and emotional / empathetic connection between the people.

But if the nets were only external, it would be a pretty easy problem to solve. The far bigger issue is the internal nets that bind us. One is the past.

Important and often unseen components of our experience are the past associations that come up based on what’s happening now. For instance, someone we meet might resemble an old romantic partner or college roommate, and so we bring in emotions or reactions associated with the older experience and not necessarily relevant to what’s happening now. Sometimes this happens subconsciously if the association is subtle, such as the person’s accent or way of walking.

It’s not so much that we need to delve into the psychology and figure out what relationship issues are coming up through this past association. A more Dharmic approach is simply to notice how perception works in the mind: Past experience automatically comes into present-moment experience, and we need (a) mindfulness to see that, and (b) wisdom to know whether the past association is relevant or not.
 
If we lack sufficient mindfulness or wisdom, then the past association divides our attention, drains away energy, and generally lowers the quality of the attention we have to respond truly to this person right in front of us.
 
Our views (or ways of seeing things, or orientations toward things), have quite an influence too. If I carry the view that meditators are generally boring to talk with, then I am much more likely to be bored at a meditation center than if I didn’t carry that view. I would walk in with that filter, and it would influence my experience.
 
And that actually lowers the quality of my attention because I am only attending to part of the picture. Remember that high-quality attention is fresh and receptive, open to what is actually here. Fixed views limit and confine what I can see.

So stepping back, we have now talked about internal conditions that may prevent us from having high-quality attention: Memories or past associations, and also views. When are they an actual distraction? In general, we get distracted by internal events if we don’t have enough attentional strength. We have a reaction or a response because of our past or because of views, and if we can’t hold it, it can take over. 

Quality of attention is part of the path – it shifts and changes over time. And each moment of awareness is an advance; you never go backward. The quality gets higher and higher, on average. More and more, we are "live, without a net." And as we get used to practicing this way, it can actually feel as if there is “no net,” no ground. Or sometimes it feels more like having no reference points. This too is practice.

Sometimes it is said that practice includes developing the ability "to care and not to care." Commonly this refers to the balancing of compassion and equanimity: Through spiritual practice, we are learning to care for ourselves, others, and this world -- and this caring must be done wisely such that we are willing to accept things as they are. We need equanimity to accept that sometimes the suffering cannot be alleviated right away, or in the manner we would like.

Another way to look at the phrase "to care and not to care" is as an invitation to challenge habitual relationships to experience. Our conditioning tells us to care about (make important) things that are pleasant, make us look good, and otherwise confirm or prop up our sense of identity. We also care about things that threaten this sense of identity. On the other hand, habitually we do not care much for things/people that aren't connected to us or are otherwise neutral to us.

Spiritual practice takes a different, somewhat orthogonal approach. We train ourselves to care about (notice, make important) the aspects of experience that are uncomfortable, unsatisfactory, or bring a feeling of contraction. We learn to care for what hurts. And conversely, we learn to care less about fame, fortune, pleasure, and other things that are mere temporary hits. Interestingly, over time, these together create a new caring for what is peaceful, tranquil, or sublime.

The emergence of this new type of care is surprising to some, but also tends to feel familiar. Many practitioners discover that "neutral is more pleasant than pleasant." To find the peace in a given situation, it is necessary both to care and not to care -- to be connected and engaged, but with an openness to what will unfold.

We’ve been looking at body, speech, and mind as domains of practice that the Buddha articulated. Of course, the mind is central – we are engaged in “mind training.” The body is only going in one direction – toward decay and death. But the mind/heart can continue to develop to the very end of life.
 
The first two stanzas of the Dhammapada say a lot (Fronsdal translation):
 
All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.
Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows, as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox.
 
All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.
Speak or act with a pure mind, and happiness follows, like a never-departing shadow.
 
A natural question is thus: How to work with the mind? The rest of this post is a summary of realms we may work with in the territory of “mind.” It’s a big topic, and it differs by Buddhist tradition. But even this much is the work of a lifetime.
 
As we’ve noted in the case of the body and speech, there are two broad realms of training: through intentional practices, and through observation. These apply in the mind too. I go into more detail in this talk.
 
Creation of Beneficial Mindstates

• Examining our intention and motivation to practice: This includes remembering the dangers of death, impermanence, illness, and chasing after delusions. It also includes remembering the preciousness of human birth and our beautiful aspirations to realize deep peace, compassion, love, or liberation.
• The Brahma-Viharas. Deliberate practices of the heart: goodwill, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
• Concentration: Learning to gather the mind into a nondistracted state. These states are very pleasant and free up an enormous amount of energy. Discovering this potential in the mind is valuable and it must be well-directed toward the aim of liberation.
• Investigation/Inquiry: Generating the interest to examine the mind. It can be done using specific questions, or in a more wordless way. It provides a segueway into the practice of observing the mind.

 
Observation of the Mind

• The Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10) offers realms and modes of observation in the mind: Feeling tone; the presence and absence of various beneficial and unbeneficial qualities; the arising and passing away of various mindstates.
• We are especially directed toward observing the conditionality of experience.
• This leads to seeing particular qualities of experience more precisely: Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and emptiness (of inherent existence)

• In my experience, this tends toward a broad awareness in which everything can arise and pass

 
At some point, we start to get a feel for what mental activity itself feels like. Then the mind can move toward relaxing this. Even these “observations” still employ the mental activity of Investigation (which is good – it’s a factor of Awakening – but at some point starts to feel too “active”). And this leads to letting go. In the end, the mind is let go; development is necessary, but is not the final goal.
 
Development of the Mind
 
We tend to go through cycles of intentional development and observation. This can occur in a single sit, when we spend some time getting concentrated or gladdening the mind, and then change to a more open awareness. It also occurs over the months and years of practice. You may feel drawn to developmental practice for a while: concentration, metta, compassion practice, challenging your internal assumptions, strengthening intention, etc. And then at some point, this may seem too active and even agitating, and you begin to settle back and just watch the flow. This may lead to insight – the result of which might very well be the understanding that more needs to be developed.
 
It’s good to trust what you are drawn to in practice. The path of development and the path of letting go are two sides of the same coin. They both lead toward the deep insights of the path that free the heart from the vicissitudes of the outer and inner worlds. Fully freeing the heart will probably take both a lot of development and a lot of observation and letting go.
 
All of this is not to diminish the role of the body and speech in practice. Those who try to ignore these two realms (or simply "transcend" them) are in for a rough ride: We must ultimately have an integrated development of all aspects of our being. Getting into alignment is much of the path. May your practice be multidimensional.

The three domains of practice offered by the Buddha are body, speech, and mind. Although not fully separate, they are worth examining distinctly.

There is a possibly apocryphal story from IMS (a retreat center in Barre MA) about a yogi on an extended retreat. Early one morning, when the breakfast cook arrived to start the oatmeal, she found a yogi with his hand in one of the food bins in the kitchen. Surprised to see the cook, the yogi said, "I was looking for a spoon."

We can laugh, but how often do we notice that our own speech is not perfectly aligned with our actions (or thoughts) in the moment? We may not be so skilled at speaking straightforwardly, finding instead that we hedge the truth, omit details that would make us look bad, or otherwise shade the language in our favor.

Looking at the suttas, we find this interesting reference from Iti 4.112 ("The World"): “As the Tathagata says, so he does; as the Tathagata does, so he says: therefore he is called the Tathagata." (Tathagata is a word for the Buddha). This quote says that perfect alignment between speech and action is a quality that characterizes Buddhas. Thus, we can realize that we may have a ways to go, and we may need some guidance on how to get our speech aligned.

For more detail on this topic, here is a talk I gave about it at Insight Meditation Center. 

Two practices that provide excellent background and preparation for working with speech are mindfulness of the body and listening practice. It is amazing how much information is contained in the body, and how grounding it can be to rest the attention in the feet or belly while speaking. It is also worthwhile to attune to tensions in the body with the aim of relaxing them if possible. If you are not able to sense your body while speaking, begin by consciously practicing feeling your feet on the ground. As for listening practice, there are many resources out there for learning mindful or heartful listening; these are worth pursuing if it's of interest.

Moving on to speech practice, Right or Wise Speech is said to have four key qualities: It is true, beneficial, timely, and spoken with a heart of kindness. Note that "true" means both factually true and "true to the moment": It should express something appropriate to the situation, which often means it must be spontaneous. Although there are times when planned speech is necessary, often things that we have thought of ahead of time become conceptual and not quite "true" to the situation.

The Buddha was once asked (MN 58§9): “…when [people] go to the Blessed One and pose a question, has there already been in the Blessed One’s mind the thought, ‘If they come to me and ask me thus, I shall answer thus’? Or does that answer occur to the Tathagata on the spot?”

The Buddha replied, “It occurs to me on the spot.”

As with the domain of the body, there are two ways of practicing: Taking deliberate action to create wholesome or mindful speech, and observing our "natural" speech to feel how well it aligns with our intentions, the truth of the moment, etc. Both are useful modes of practice. In the second case, as with the body, it may take some practice to be able to speak and observe the speech carefully at the same time. It is well worth learning this skill. In the end, we want to speak spontaneously, like the Buddha, not relying on a mental filter that checks for the qualities of "right speech."

Sometimes people think that spiritually correct speech must always be pleasing to the listener -- in other words, it should be "nice." There are actually some suttas that say this. But other suttas place "pleasant speech" in the realm of timeliness. From MN 58§8: “In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.”

Teachers may say "unendearing" things in order to shock a student out of a complacent or deluded way of thinking. One teacher talks of a time when he was a beginning Dharma student, on his first retreat. He told his teacher in an interview that he thought he was the only person on the retreat who was not being mindful. She looked at him coolly and said, "What makes you so special?"

In the end, we are asked to speak with wisdom and compassion. That is all that "right speech" really points toward. 

The Buddha offered three broad domains of practice: Body, speech, and mind. Of course these are not entirely separate, but it is useful to distinguish them in order to talk about specific practices. Ultimately we are training the mind, but body and speech are excellent tools for doing so, in addition to working on the mind explicitly. (For a deeper exploration of this topic, here is a talk I gave at IMC).



From Hafiz:
What is the key
To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?
Benevolent thought, sound
And movement.
​
In each domain, we can imagine two modes of practice: Intentional actions that help us train the mind, and observation of how experience unfolds in order to learn and have insight. Both modes are valuable and necessary.

Using the Body
In the case of the body, the first mode of practice involves undertaking deliberate actions with the body. What we do with our body is consequential – how we hold it, how we use it, how we take care of it. The body is the key vehicle in ethical conduct: Not killing, stealing, or committing sexual misconduct. 

The body is also used to take the meditation posture. The sitting posture itself is designed to be a stable, relaxed posture, which helps the mind to calm down and relax too. If it's difficult for you to establish the practice of sitting every day, it helps to just take the posture daily for any amount of time, even 1 minute. As Munindra-ji said, "Just put your body there." (again and again).

This area of “using the body” includes both restraint and positive actions: Stopping yourself from having the third piece of cake, and also deliberately offering that person at work (whom you dislike) the use of your stapler when you see them looking for one. You will notice that you need to use your mind to do this – it’s an example of the body-mind link: Training your body has an effect on your mind. Positive actions like volunteering or otherwise being generous also assist in mental development.

Another example is sitting with pain, as all of us do at some point (even the Buddha). One option is to “breathe through” the pain – taking deliberate action with the breath to help ease the mind’s tendency to fixate on the pain and make it worse. 

Observing the Body
The second mode of practice is to observe the body. Many body awareness practices are recommended in the suttas: breath, postures, activities, elements, body parts. Some are external and some are internal. One function of these is to develop mindfulness. It is to make sure that we can have a continuity of mindfulness in all activities, which is very important for insight. 

But another function of observing is to learn about the body, and also the mind. We actually carry a lot of false ideas and assumptions about both body and mind that have never been checked, and only very careful, unbiased observation is going to expose their falseness. 

Joseph Goldstein said: “See what you do.” This means just letting the body act while observing carefully. We don’t always want to control our body so tightly – we can start to get caught up in how we look, or how we think we “should” be, missing what is actually there. We may have taken on a spiritual identity about how good Buddhists look and act, and be subtly controlling our experience to match this.

Try just acting, and observe what is going on. It takes some practice to find this balance - being able to act naturally while also be keenly aware.

When we combine the quiet sitting posture with the internal observation of the body – letting it express itself as it is – things get very powerful. Recall the idea of working with pain by “breathing through” the pain. If we combine that action with observing the result of this, we’ll notice that the pain no longer feels so solid. What used to be a solid wall of “pain” (an abstract concept) is seen to be a series of flashes, often in a very small region. Maybe heat, stabbing, tingling, burning, aching, all coming and going very fast. Once you see this, the mind stops believing the pain in quite the same way – the relationship changes, and there will tend to be less suffering. (But you have to see it directly – reading it right now is not enough).
 
This kind of open observation of the body is great in general. We may experience energy, tightness, openness, areas of heaviness or lightness, a sense of no boundaries, even different shapes or sizes of the body.
 
These are not necessarily significant in and of themselves, although they seem dramatic at the beginning. After a while, they get more commonplace. What is important is that the mind’s perception of the body is becoming more variable. You are getting less subject to fixed, habitual ways of seeing and feeling your body.

Observing the body carefully enough leads naturally to seeing into the mind, and then things really get interesting. But don't think of the body as "beginner's stuff" that you'll move past at some point. The body is an incredibly important realm of practice that will serve along the whole path.