Saturday, March 28, 2009

Cure for attention deficits and hyperactivity

"Might 'genius' be a potential we all share––each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it? (p.3)" 

From a Buddhist perspective, the untrained mind is dysfunctional in the sense of being afflicted with attention deficits and hyperactivity.

"Like a wild elephant, the untamed mind can inflict enormous damage on ourselves and those around us. In addition to oscillating between an attention deficit (when we're passive) and hyperactivity (when we're active), the normal, untrained mind  compulsively disgorges a toxis stream of wandering thoughts, then latches on to them obsessively, carried away by one story after another. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders and obsessive/compulsive  disorders are not confined to those who are diagnosed as mentally ill; the normal mind is prone to such imbalances, and that's why normal people experience so much mental distress! (p. 14)"

Quotes by Alan Wallace, Ph.D. See his book, The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind.

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