One day a man approached Ikkyu and asked: “Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the higheset wisdom?”

Ikkyu took his brush and wrote: “Attention.”

“Is that all?” asked the man.

Ikkyu then wrote: “Attention.  Attention.”

“Well,” said the man, “I don’t really see much depth in what you have written.”

Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three timets: “Attention.  Attention.  Attention.”

Half-angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean, anyway?”

Ikkyu gently responded, “Attention means attention.”

– Zen Story quoted in The Little Zen Companion

David Schiller’s The Little Zen Companion is a fine little collection of Zen or Zen-related sayings and stories, nearly 400 in all.  At least a half-zen are directly related to attention, and I will quote a few of them here in later posts.