Can you make your mind as focused as an arrow?

“People get close to the goal but go astray because they lack that one quality essential for success: focus.” This is no metaphysical maxim by some art-of-living guru, but a practical observation made by Amitabh Bachchan on his KBC talk show. Many achievers believe that inspiration is the windfall from focus. And of course we all know how Edison talked about genius as 90 percent sweat, what we can call undistracted labour. Steve Jobs agrees: “Focus (also) means saying no to a hundred good ideas… to pick carefully”.

For me this single-mindedness is personified by the man on the magnificent sculpture panel in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu. Arms raised, one leg folded, ribcage pushing against emaciated frame, his flowing beard testifies to long-term austerities. “King Bhagiratha of the solar dynasty did what his father, grandfather and great-grandfather could not do,” my grandma would say. “He brought Ganga from the heavens to nourish the earth.

His first penance ended with Lord Brahma warning him that the earth would be shattered by the river’s descent. A second penance resulted in Lord Shiva agreeing to break the force of the flooding Ganga, only to absorb the whole river in his dreadlocks. Bhagiratha continued his tapasya until Shiva relented and let the waters trickle down.” 

This story had no glorious combat or bloody war, no romantic damsel in distress, no derring-do, no magic tricks, not even a battle of wits. And yet, as grandma described Bhagiratha’s unfaltering resolution through travails and setbacks, I found myself breathless, fascinated.

Ancient India often deploys the archery metaphor to show how intractable goals can be reached by mindforce rather than might. “Make your mind an arrow as you draw the string,” says the Upanishad. Then the act of hitting makes the arrow meld with the target – means and end are now indivisible. 

Don’t you recall Arjuna saying, “I see neither the tree nor the branch on which the bird is perched. I see only the eye of the bird that I must hit”? Philosopher Shankara went one step ahead when he asked his disciples to learn concentration, not from the bowman -- but from the “maker of arrows”! 

Insisting on right vision (ditti), mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samadhi) the Buddha says, "What we think, we become". I once saw five monks in a remote Ladakh monastery, seated on the floor -- ceaselessly tapping slender metal cones to dribble rainbow colours into their mandala design. Surely they were aligned to some cosmic force! 

Is focus the interface between the self and the world? Islam believes that focus breeds humility. Listen to sufi kalam and you will know how concentration lifts you into transcendence. 

To artistes across the world, focus is holy grail. Look at any Indian classical musician tuning a tanpura –(s)he is clinical concentration incarnate. (Some saw the same rapture in that flamboyant vocalist Bhimsen Joshi when he tinkered with his prized car!) 

Is deep focus a mirage in our fluttery, fidgety world? ‘Where men and bits of paper whirling in the cold breeze are distracted from distraction’? How to silence the din around us? Find the silence within? Equally important, how do we stop focusing on our anxieties?

I find modern thought quite brilliant in outlining obstructions. But the ancients have a way of suggesting practical steps to deal with such distractions. Twenty five centuries ago, Socrates exhorted Athenian youth; “Focus your energy — not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Bhagiratha did just that. He picked his goal carefully. Not for self-gain, but to renew life ever after. 

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist, writing on the performing arts, cinema and literature