The Gift of Concentration

It’s a common shibboleth that multi-tasking is an unpleasant but necessary fact of life in the high-tech 21st century. As with so many hyperbolic statements, the idea is true enough after a fashion but ignores human history and evolution. We evolved with short attention spans, a critical survival characteristic in a species that needed to be on the lookout in all directions at once. Over there, a hungry lion; over there, potential food; over farther, a potential mate. Danger here, hiding place there, food, water, run, hide, stay. In the veldt, unobservant primates were headed towards a lunch date with a hungry predator.

Human society marched on, however, and as civilization took root some of our long-established plusses became minuses. Agriculture, reading, writing, studying, and learning require sustained concentration and long attention spans. As we settled into villages our minds needed to settle down as well. But they didn’t. Mother Nature has programmed us to stay in full multitasking mode, ever vigilant, ever shifting about, ever keeping an eye and ear cocked for the next threat or promise.

The earliest spiritual traditions of which we have record tend to emphasize long attention spans, patience, and concentration. We’re fortunate in that our minds contain compelling reward mechanisms for sustained concentration, as anyone who has experienced the ecstatic kundalini of long meditative immersion can attest. But the rewards need not require the protracted practice of samadhi meditation. Just the pleasure of feeling the mind sink comfortably into a focused groove is reward enough, not to mention the benefits that such concentration can bring: higher grades, less time required to master topics, greater professional success.

Meditation is a wonderful tool for increasing concentration, but it’s but one among many. For musicians, the fine art of practice can offer a platform almost as compelling. How to stay focused on a passage of music, with the mind fully engaged, always filtering and listening and asking and answering, without drifting off into mindless fantasy: this is a musician’s samadhi. Just as meditators can fall into a half-sleep state known as sinking concentration, not alert at all and certainly not in anything approaching a state of concentration, musicians can fall into comfortable practice grooves that may provide respite or comfort, but amount to little.

My childhood at the piano undoubtedly mirrors the young years of many other conservatory-and-career bound musicians. For me, the piano was a refuge. When I was in front of the piano I could leave the real world for a while, improvise or play by ear, even sometimes tinkle through my assigned pieces, and while I was there, I didn’t have to worry about my homework or my parents or school bullies or anything else. Thus “practice” was more in the nature of fantasy role-playing, certainly comforting and (possibly) therapeutic, but when you get right down to it, probably less valuable than building stuff with my Erector Set or Tinkertoys or reading one of my Hardy Boy books.

I carried that stuporous mindset with me into my conservatory years and immediately headed for trouble. I had to get things done when I practiced. I had to learn pieces, and fast. I had to make progress. I had to pass juries and recitals. The stakes had gone way, way up and I wasn’t anywhere near ready. I had the talent, I had the reflexes, I had the necessary time spent on a piano bench. But I didn’t have the discipline, which is to say, I didn’t have any concentration. I thought I did. I could sit at the piano for hour after hour, after all, without a break. But those hours weren’t productive. They were vegging-out time, comparable to sitting mindlessly slack-jawed in front of the TV.

Eventually I began to learn the difference between doggedly mindless repetition and actual concentration. The most potent enemies were the avatars who would appear in my mind: the people (either wholly invented, or edited versions of real folks) who were criticizing me, or praising me, or just plain getting in my way. Thoughts would arise regarding those people, and a scenario was born. Maybe it was an argument (in which I was always the triumphant victor) or a performance, or an encounter, usually fictional but occasionally re-worked from the recent past. Before I knew it, I was off on my mental journey, all the while sitting at the piano, playing through something, apparently practicing but actually missing everything I was supposed to be catching.

The trick was to spot those distracting little scenes in their most embryonic form, as soon as they began to arise, long before my emotions became engaged, and thus long before I was swept away. If I could catch them quickly, and name them—you’re that teacher, you’re that colleague, you’re that critic, you’re that student, you’re that story—they lost all power over me. The wonderful Dhamma teacher Joseph Goldstein calls such scenes cassettes: stick them in your mental boombox and push play, and before you know you’re off to wherever. But once you know the cassette and give it a name, you’ve got a measure of control over it. Oh, there’s the Obnoxious Student Cassette. Oh, there’s the Bitchy Colleague Cassette. Oh, there’s the Great Teacher Pontificating to the World cassette. Got it, now moving on back into the business at hand.

Thus practice became a form of insight meditation, in Sanskrit vipassana. The point of concentration moves with the targets as they arise: breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, twinge in left elbow, heat above left eyelid, Obnoxious Student Cassette, breathe in, breathe out. In piano practice, all but the noting of the cassettes focuses entirely on the music at hand: phrase, tone, fingering, blurred passage, clarify that, what does this mean here, check hand position there, listen to that more carefully, what about playing this more loudly here, what does Beethoven mean here by rinf? Stay focused. Stay concentrated. And if the mind’s index finger moves towards the “play” button, note it: cassette coming! and move back into pure practice.

Retaining such focus requires vigilance and the maintaining of one’s intentions. Cassettes are seductive. They are mine, after all: I spent many years making and refining them. My mental index finger is trigger-happy where some of those cassettes are concerned. But I can learn to keep my finger off the button. Every time I manage to avoid another playback, I have given myself the priceless gift of concentration, however fleeting, however weak.

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