2026-08-16 | Dharma Talk | Attention | Nate Smalley

There's a word at the center of our practice that reads as mundane but might better understood as sacred: attention. At first attention is not very promising, is it? To the classroom teacher and parent in Nate, it sounds ludicrously ordinary. Paying attention seems so basic, so pedestrian. But Nate has come to think it may be the heart of practice, hiding in plain sight. For the final talk of our Zen and the Moment series, we treat this small, forgettable word seriously— with Dōgen, a poem by Ellen Bass, and practice together. Cover art: Sengai Gibon (1750–1837), ○△▢ (Circle, Triangle, Square), or Marusankakushikaku or The Universe; ink on paper. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo. By Sengai - catalogue, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26868326