Page 152 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

distracted as that. Sometimes it is a bluebottle buzzing against

the window-pane, or the dropping of a sheet of my notes, that
distracts people. Such things show how easily we are distracted,

which is why we tend to forget in the affairs of everyday life.

Why is it that we are so easily distracted? How does it come

about? We are easily distracted because our concentration is
weak. If, for instance, you were really listening to me, and really

concentrating on what I was saying, an elephant could come in
at the door and you would not notice it. Because we are not
concentrated in this way, distraction occurs very easily — just

because our concentration is so weak. We do not concentrate
wholeheartedly on what we are doing. Usually, we attend to

what we are doing or saying or thinking only in a very half-
hearted sort of way.

Why is our concentration so weak? Why are we so halfhearted?
This question too can be asked. Our concentration is weak

because we have no continuity of purpose. There is no one
overriding purpose that remains unchanged in the midst of all
the different things that we do. We just switch from one thing to

another, one purpose to another, one wish to another, all the
time, like the character in Dryden's famous satire who

Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;

And because there is no continuity of purpose, because we are
not bent on one main thing all the time, there is no real

individuality. We are a succession of different people, all of them
rather abortive, not to say embryonic. There is no regular
growth, no real development, no true evolution.

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