Difference between concentration and attention

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

There is a difference between concentration and attention. Concentration is to bring all your energy to focus on a particular point. In attention there is no point of focus. We are very familiar with one and not with the other. When you pay attention to your body, the body becomes quiet, which has its own discipline; it is relaxed but not slack and it has the energy of harmony. When there is attention, there is no contradiction and therefore no conflict. When you read this pay attention to the way you are sitting, the way you are listening, how you are receiving what the letter is saying to you, how you are reacting to what is being said and why you are finding it difficult to attend. You are not learning how to attend. If you are learning the how of attending, then it becomes a system, which is what the brain is accustomed to, and so you make attention something mechanical and repetitive, whereas attention is not mechanical or repetitive. It is the way of looking at your whole life without the centre of self-interest.

There was no clear reference for the quote today.

Here is my reflection.

This distinction came up at the study group last night. Concentration comes from a mind that is in contradiction with itself. It is the effort to end contradiction, which is the movement of thinking that creates the "me" and the "you." Effort involves a method and a teacher, even if that teacher is only the author of a book. Around all of this is subordination and domination. We submit ourselves and our mind to domination, we force our mind to concentrate on this or that idea or object. Concentration, force, and subordination go hand in hand. We don't end the contradiction this way because there is no moment of self-awareness, no moment when we ask why are we doing that this, acting as we are acting.

Instead, we just want the result. It is fed by desire, the desire to be free, which can never lead to freedom. Only by observing the movement of desire within ourselves, which is very subtle as it appropriates the high and the low of life, can we be free. This observation is awareness. It has no focus and so it is total attention; there is no seen and unseen. This can't be learned as K says. Instead you have to be a light to yourself. Can the mind that is in contradiction observe its own contradiction?

Best wishes

Robert