Monday, August 31, 2009

attention deficit disorder?

perhaps the "professionals" are mistaken.
i like what Osho wrote in his book Joy: The Happiness That Comes From Within -

The teacher goes on telling small children, "Pay attention to me! Be attentive!" They are attentive, but they are attentive to something else. A bird is singing with all its heart outside the school building - and the child is attentive to the bird. Nobody can say he is not attentive, nobody can say he is not meditative, nobody can say he is not in deep concentration - he is! In fact, he has completely forgotten the teacher and the arithmetic that the teacher is doing on the board. The child is completely oblivious to all that, he is utterly possessed by the bird singing its song. But the teacher says, "Be attentive! What are you doing? Don't be distracted!"

In fact, the teacher is distracting the child! The child is attentive - it is happening naturally. Listening to the bird, he is happy. The teacher is distracting him, the teacher says, "You are not being attentive" - the teacher is simply lying! The child was attentive. The bird was more attractive to him, so what can he do? The teacher was not so attractive, the arithmetic had no appeal.

We have been distracted into unnatural preoccupations: money, prestige, power. Listening to the birds is not going to give you money. Listening to the birds is not going to give you power, prestige. Watching a butterfly is not going to help you economically, politically, socially. These things are not profitable - but these things make you happy.

A real human being takes the courage to move with things that make him happy. If he remains poor, he remains poor; he has no complaint about it, he has no grudge. He says: "I have chosen my way - I have chosen the birds and the butterflies and the flowers. I cannot be rich, that's okay! I am rich because I am happy."


first image source

second image source

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