When was the last time you listened to the sound of the wind in the trees? How about watching the gentle movements of a leaf or a pine needle? When our senses meet an experience, a complex chain of events occurs nearly instantly including the “feeling tone” of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral and leading all the way to thoughts and reactions. This is going on constantly, without cease. There’s no way we can be consciously aware of all of these events, these micro-judgments that color every moment of our lives, but we do pay attention to some of them. What do we pay attention to? An important question in meditative practice. But perhaps even more important is the question: what do we not notice? This week, Payton guided the Sangha’s investigation of what experiences we allow to filter into our conscious awareness and what other experiences there are.
Payton played a talk by Nathan Glyde which you can listen to here:
