The Quality of Attention

our benefit. They are so compassionate." She went on to explain to me that all the lamas of high attainment could walk through walls whenever they wished, including Chatrul Rinpoche himself! Odd Encounter!^ J The Quality of Attention i had for some time been perplexed about how and why tales of miraculous and superhuman occurrences were intermingled with the unfolding of profound revelation and rare insight in the traditional religions of the world. In Tibetan Buddhism, for example, I was amazed how obvi- ously absurd mythical stories of the ancient Tibetan adepts could exist side by side with some of the most exquisitely refined and profoundly subtle teachings ever given. That January in Bodhgaya, 1 found one way to understand. Genuine spiritual awakening is a shift in perception from the gross to the subtle. From a gross and unrefined state of perception, the individual draws conclusions about that which is being perceived. As the individual's percep- tion, through spiritual awakening, becomes more subtle and more refined, their conclusions about that which is being perceived also become more subtle and more dis- tinct. This reveals greater depth, width and breadth of that which is being perceived than was previously observed. The Qualitx of Attention This movemeni from the gross to the subtle continues from subtle to even more subtle and refined, and continues to deepen until ideally the individual becomes firmly established in a condition of subtlety of perception and cognition that is stable and irrevocable. The awesome depth and subtlety discovered in profound spiritual revelation is, due to the generally gross condition of perception, out of reach for most. Not only is it usually out of reach, but the magnitude of that subtlety and depth is almost impossible to recognize unless one is able to achieve some degree of direct insight oneself. Even then, the individual's ability to discriminate is entirely deter- mined by how far they have actually gone. Therefore, its plausible that stories of miraculous and superhuman feats could, by their dramatic and concept-challenging nature, indicate to any human being the inconceivable subtlety and vast depth of perception attained through extraordinary spiritual transformation. As a result of the ongoing events in my own life and speeded up by my meetings with different teachers from different traditions, something even more significant dawned on me. It became apparent in ever new ways thai it was the interpretation of our experience rather ihan ihc lad of experience itself thai delerniinccl real dcj^lh aiul iruc wisdom. It was the ability to interpret, decipher and ulti- mately be able to make extremely subtle distinctions in the H An Vfuonduional Rclatumship to life whole realm of human experience, thought and feeling that determined the ultimate depth of insight or wisdom that resulted from the fact of experience itself. Mere experience in and of itself did not, 1 was coming to discover over and over again, necessarily result in the attainment of any last- ing insight or depth of understanding. The importance of this became more clear as 1 began to see that the conclusions we draw about that which is true are entirely based on our ability to perceive the depth, width and breadth of subtlety in that which is being perceived. This means that the quality of attention that has been either cultivated or realized by the perceiver ultimately deter- mines the degree of subtlety of understanding that the individual is capable of. The Quality of Attention