“We will not complain that we concentrate poorly, but we will proceed to train ourselves to concentrate wonderfully.” (8)
Christian D. Larsen closes his first chapter in the brief (less than a hundred pages) but enthusiastic volume on Concentration with this phrase. As the new semester approaches in the US, learning concentration skills may be on the mind of more than one student preparing to return to the classroom. Larsen’s book will have a familiar ring to anyone who has studied mindfulness meditation or, even more relevantly, “single-pointed” meditation where the student is directed to train his or her attention on a single thing.
A reader of this particular volume — from the Brandeis University Libraries — has annotated it regularly in pencil with heavy underlining, arrows, and marginal commentary: “Do-onething-at-a-time,” reads one comment; “The solution of any problem is locked in that problem,” says another.
Flip through the pages of Concentration below or follow this link to read the full text.