A simpler approach would be for one or two weeks to stop taking any tea or coffee, to eat only one full meal a day (with everything nutrition-wise that one needs), to sleep early, have daily exercise, some time in nature everyday, and no distractions.
Wow, that would be an intense disruption for me! I’m so used to my coffee and tea, snacks and meals, late-night shenanigans, and distractions galore. It’s hard to even imagine.
Most of us are the same Rick! - But sometimes one can go on a retreat, whether spontaneous or organised. I’m sure you been on retreats before. Even a single weekend spent like this can noticeably break up one’s habitual frames of reference for a time. It doesn’t need to be dramatic.
I have retreated, 'tis true. It’s kind of my thing.
Of course, there are retreats and there are retreats. Retreating can mean retreating into oneself - I don’t mean that kind of retreat. Also, I personally have a low tolerance for organised retreats, because one has to accept a degree of corporate compromise. I.e. There is often some background dogmatism going on, and always one or two personalities whose presence creates unnecessary tension.
But whether together or alone retreating can have a non-trivial impact (to use an expression of yours!). I like this little statement of K’s on retreats
I think it is essential sometimes to go on retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely, and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like a machine whether you believe or do not believe. You would then let fresh air into your mind. That means that you must be insecure, must you not? If you can do so, you would be open to the mysteries of nature and to things that are whispering about us, which you would not otherwise reach; you would reach the God that is waiting to come, the truth that cannot be invited but comes itself.
So, where are we in this discussion @macdougdoug and Rick and @danmcderm and @Inquiry (and everyone else)?
Are we happy with considering pure attention, total attention, as
a state of perception in which psychological thought and memory do not exist;
or, if this is too drastic, then as a compromise
a state of perception in which psychological thought and memory are wholly peripheral
?
We have also touched on a couple of reasons why such a state is not immediately forthcoming for people:
- It requires a certain quality of sensitivity of the whole organism, a gathered energy of attentiveness, that may only be possible when we have health, leisure and the right environment.
- One may project onto this state a fear of emptiness, of insecurity, something threatening and destructive.
Naturally, both these issues need to be addressed.
But it is also worth pointing out that for K seeing and listening, awareness and attention, are qualities that we need in daily life.
Ultimately attention and seeing aren’t about retreating into the wilderness or facing some metaphysical emptiness, but about relating to the world around us as it is - to people and nature as they are - without the interference of habitual images and thoughts.
It is about meeting ourselves as we are directly, in our light and darkness, without the interference of intellectual conclusions and moralistic judgements.
I’m good with the exploration thus far.
I get:
But I am unsure about:
What I mean is that I don’t know if I know that state and/or if I have been in it, except perhaps for fleeting moments now and then.
I really don’t know what to say about “pure attention”.
The only thing that seems of any importance to me might be to address these bits :
Complex thought is by definiton not present in pure attention, but it seems to me that if nothing can arise in consciousness without attention (not pure attention, just attention) being lost (due to habitual reaction/relationship to thought) until the next moment of attention happens to arise due to circumstance, then freedom from experience/the known/thought/the past etc is not solid, not well anchored.
So here’s a definition for whatever is more better than simple “pure attention” which I will call “pure love” : the space which embraces all movement without resistance
Freedom is flowing between this and that whilst clinging to neither.
This is surely of tremendous importance. The implication is that we live permanently in a world of images, including images of those we are closest to and see every day. Here on this forum we probably have images of each other which prevent us from communicating, at least to some extent. I mean, we probably don’t give full attention to a contribution here because we filter it through images of past experience of the writer. Is this not so?
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Perhaps, as Sean suggests, if we take the example of how images interfere in our relationships with each other, the question of thought not entering into the state of attention will become more clear.
I think everyone will understand that if I place my hands in front of my eyes and try to look at the sunset, my hands are necessarily interfering with my perception of the sunset.
Can we see that this is true with mental images also?
If I try to look at the garden outside, with its late Autumn flowers and turning leaves, and yet my mind is churning with worries, anxieties, daydreams, etc - which are all forms of mental image - then these images and thoughts must necessarily prevent me from giving the garden my full attention.
And in relationship with each other - whether here on the forum or in daily life with the people we know - if we have become habituated to certain images of each other, are we not aware that these mental images must necessarily interfere in our communication with each other?
So what is being pointed to in all of these examples, is how our thoughts, our mental images, interfere in our perceptions and relationships all the time.
So are we aware of this fact? And if we are aware of it, what is our feeling about this fact? Are we comfortable with it, attached to it, welcoming of it? Or do we see it is an imprisonment, something that prevents real relationship, real perception? Do we see, for example (as Sean says), that
?
Can we come close to this fact that mental images prevent real relationship as well as perception?
It also occurred to me that it isn’t just what thought and mental images prevents - these being authentic relationship and clear perception - but also what thought and mental images do to us inwardly:
they create fear and hurt, comparison and envy.
Recall that K said fear equals time plus thought (or thought plus time). He said to hold this statement like a jewel 
, to look at it, have an insight into it.
Are we aware of what thought and mental images do to the mind itself, the unhappiness and suffering they bring?
I’ll just jump in here before anyone says that they also bring the solutions (pleasue, escape etc) to the problems (that they create)
the understanding (or clear vision) of this (the self as the center that imagines its problems and acts out the suffering and its implications) seems like the essential kernal of freedom.
The understanding of the movement of self is what allows for attention.
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Yay: The big(ger) picture! Merci. 
I’d add they bring not only ‘solutions’ but happiness and joy.
That said, I think it can be very illuminating to home in on one detail of the picture, particularly if the whole is kept in mind.
To put this in the language we have been using so far on the thread:
the seeing of this - ‘this’ being the unhappiness and suffering brought about by thought and mental images - is the beginnings of attention.
Yes, I think that sounds right.
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The self has taken the unbroken course of life and divided it? It divides the ‘beginning’ from the ‘end’? And not aware that it has created this image, it welcomes one and dreads the other? As if there could be such a thing!
I did say that for you - but probably not managing to get the full message across clearly.
In an addicts daily routine, there are moments of bliss (ie. fulfilment of need) - but looking at the whole picture we shed a tear at the cost of their joy.
On the subject of drugs, hallucinogens do not produce “pure attention” they provide an excitement to certain parts of the brain. Their main (potential) benefit lies in providing a different, altered state of consciousness. Thus showing that reality is a projection, freeing us (somewhat) or softening reality’s grip on us.
Figured!
Point taken. But, while addiction may be a reasonably accurate metaphor for certain aspects of human life (samsara), it doesn’t provide anywhere near a full, accurate picture.
What I want to say about images is that, since most humans live mostly through images, it follows that most thoughts, beliefs, feelings, emotions are dependent on images.
We know that “unhappiness and suffering” are feelings we are familiar with and try to avoid and escape, that thought and the mental images it conjures is a mechanism intimately associated with feelings, but we don’t know what it is to live without them in the way we currently are.
We know this because there are moments when dreaded feelings and intrusive thoughts and images are not muddling and distorting awareness and preventing complete attention.
So we know what our predicament, our disorderly condition is, and we feel that remaining with unwanted, dreaded feelings is a more reasonable (and perhaps fruitful) response than escaping them.
We know also that we need thought to be inoperative for awareness to be choiceless and for attention to be complete, pure. But it seems that all we can do about this is to take an interest in what thought is doing and perhaps find out why it’s causing confusion and conflict. Is it because the brain is too stupefied to do anything else, or is it reacting to its fear of transformation, its dread of being nothing but a brain that is better off being nothing?
How can the metaphor be improved? What details are missing? Or a better, completely different metaphor that mirrors samsara more accurately - especially the mechanism of suffering/pleasure business.
Or forget metaphors, what is missing in the addict metaphor? In what way is the suffering/pleasure of real folk different/more complex?
trying to escape the suffering, is the suffering.
motivation is key - if it is in order to progress towards an eventual escape from suffering (which is quite normal human behaviour/conditioning) this is just further effort to escape suffering.
So tricky (but simple) - either we are ready to give up our life to avoid harm, or we can practise awareness meditation (because of some authority or intellectual understanding)