Hi John,
I think you are over-interpreting the instruction a bit. Think about the sitting practice. In Stages One through Six, even though your intention is to focus attention solely on the breath sensations, attention will still be alternating with distractions, both gross and subtle distractions in Stages One through Four, and subtle distractions in Stages Five and early Stage Six, at least until you’ve achieved exclusive attention.
Exactly the same thing happens during walking meditation, only more so because your eyes are open, you’re moving, and the number and variety of stimuli is so much greater than when sitting quietly. The intentional focus of attention is always the sensation of walking, but attention will continue spontaneously alternating with visual, auditory, and other stimuli. The idea is to just let this happen, don’t make any deliberate attempt to stop or restrain it. As you progress through the Stages, attention during walking meditation will naturally do this less and less, while all these same stimuli will continue to be known through peripheral awareness. The various exercises described for walking meditation in Stages One through Six all contribute to this gradual shift toward more peripheral awareness and away from spontaneous movements of attention.
It’s helpful to keep the goal in mind. In the beginning, attention is very unstable and exhibits frequent spontaneous movements, while peripheral awareness is quite weak. As your practice develops, the goal is for attention to become more and more stable, while at the same time peripheral awareness becomes more and more powerful. And all you need to do for this to happen is to keep bringing the attention back to the meditation object (breath when sitting, feet when walking), while holding the attention to be conscious of everything else via peripheral awareness.
I hope this helps,
Culadasa
Upasaka Culadasa 7 years, 11 months ago.
