Each morning at work you may get a lot of important emails, and you have to decide which one to read first. There may be two that seem to be equally important, but you have to choose one. After making that decision, you should be only with that email. When you are crossing a bridge, you just cross that bridge. Don’t think of the next bridge. You will have to cross it, but only after you have crossed this one. This is our practice, this is concentration: one-pointed mind. If we haven’t trained ourselves in bringing all our attention to just one object, there will be dispersion and disturbance. This is a question of training. You have to be 100 percent with what is there in the here and the now; concentration is essential.
If you are a therapist, you do the same. When you are with one patient, don’t think of the other patients. You have to focus 100 percent of your mind on this one, and to be with them entirely. Maybe you have the desire to do many things, to help many people. The Buddha also had the desire to help many people. But he was capable of being fully present with one person, in order to understand them deeply enough that he could offer them the best teaching and solution. So we, as a teacher, as a therapist, as a parent, have to practice the same way, focusing our attention on one object in the here and the now.