Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Probably the best living attitude is concentration – whatever you do, concentrate on the task you are doing.

The way to understand the importance of concentration is to watch people with no concentration – these people are called airheaded or scatterbrained. When they talk in a conversation, they are all over – they talk rapidly on one subject for three minutes, and switch suddenly to another subject without warning, and three minutes later they switch suddenly again to a new subject, and just like that, they go through 10 subjects in 30 minutes. You really can’t understand what they are talking about.

Concentration requires time to concentrate. When you solve a calculus problem, you need time to concentrate on solving it. Same thing with cooking, bike repairing or guitar practicing… Every task requires time and your concentration to finish.

Concentration means focusing on the task you are doing until the task is done. And focusing on only one task you are doing, not two tasks or three tasks at the same time. More than one task, you don’t have concentration, but only divided attention for each task.

Your ability to concentrate on the task is your guarantee that the task will be well done and your result will be good.

During the 1980s, the business world has the star class in each company, called Type A people. These people talked fast, moved fast, and did multitasking, meaning doing 3, 4 tasks at the same time. They were successful, making good money and usually in supervisory positions. From the end of 1990s and beginning of 2000s, lots of Type A folks got sick and dropped dead, one after another. The body and the mind were under constant stress for so many years and, at one point, they just collapsed.

More than a working technique, concentration is a living attitude. If you have a goal, say, becoming a heart surgeon, you need to concentrate on your journey from here to the goal: getting into a medical school, obtaining your MD, then entering residency for heart surgery specialty. Keep your eyes on the goal, concentrate on your studies, and finish the 12-year journey from here to there.

You will have to sacrifice many other things during that time – you want to be a superb guitarist, a swimming star, a judo champion, and Olympic marathoner. Well, you may need to shelve some of those dreams for the time being. Focus on becoming a heart surgeon first, everything else takes second priority.

Concentrating on your tasks and your goal is the key to success.

Concentration (also called “mindfulness”) is a very important path in the Buddhist “Noble Eightfold Path”. It is the 7th path, called Right Concentration or Right Mindfulness (Pali, Samma-sati; VN, Chánh niệm). It is a long lesson. I’ll make simple here by saying Right Concentration is to concentrate on the one task you are doing. You are eating, concentrate on eating – chew slowly and feel the taste of the food in your mouth, think about the cooks who prepare the meal, the farmers who grow the produce, when you swallow be conscious that you are swallowing the food down to nourish you body…. That is called mindful eating or Eating Zen.

When you walk, take each step slowly, be conscious of your heel touching the ground, then your sole down, then the heel lifting to transfer the weight to the toes, the feeling of the ground under your foot… That is Walking Zen.

The purpose is to keep you mind concentrated on one thing only – the task at hand. Or to be exact, the purpose is to keep the mind from wandering and jumping everywhere like a monkey. Focusing the mind on only one thing will keep the mind quiet and calm.

And a quiet and calm mind is the ultimate purpose of Zen.

Right Concentration is also called “one mind undisturbed” (nhất tâm bất loạn). When practicing concentration constantly during the day, in every task we do, it is called “Every-minute Zen.”

The mind that is concentrated constantly will become constantly quiet and calm. And that is the threshold into Enlightenment.

So, concentration gives you three benefits: First, you get the current task done well. Second, you achieve your long-term goal. Third and most important, your mind becomes quiet and calm and wise.

Wish everyone concentrate well.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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