What do we mean by attention? Is there attention when I am
forcing my mind to attend? When I say to myself, “I must pay
attention, I must control my mind and push aside all other
thoughts,” would you call that attention? Surely that is not
attention. What happens when the mind forces itself to pay
attention? It creates a resistance to prevent other thoughts from
seeping in; it is concerned with resistance, with pushing away;
therefore it is incapable of attention. That is true, is it not?
To understand something totally you must give your complete
attention to it. But you will soon find out how extraordinarily
difficult that is, because your mind is used to being distracted,
so you say, “By Jove, it is good to pay attention, but how am
I to do it?” That is, you are back again with the desire to get
something, so you will never pay complete attention. When
you see a tree or a bird, for example, to pay complete attention
is not to say, “That is an oak”, or, “That is a parrot”, and
walk by. In giving it a name you have already ceased to pay
attention. Whereas, if you are wholly aware, totally attentive
when you look at something, then you will find that a complete
transformation takes place, and that total attention is the
good. There is no other, and you cannot get total attention by
practice. With practice you get concentration, that is, you build
up walls of resistance, and within those walls of resistance is the
concentrator, but that is not attention, it is exclusion.
J Krishnamurti, The Book of Life