..续本文上一页o its end. This point is important to bear in mind when we reflect on the two criticisms often leveled against the four categories of appropriate attention. The first criticism is that they provide a limited view of the fullness and variety of life, that they don”t encompass the virtually infinite number of skillful ways of approaching experience. When formulating a theory of being, you could argue that the more variety it can contain, the better. But when choosing a doctor, you wouldn”t want one who insists on exploring an infinite variety of approaches to your disease. You want one who focuses on the approaches most likely to work. The same holds true with appropriate attention. The four categories, with their attendant tasks, are meant not to encompass reality but to focus your attention at the right factors for curing the most basic problem in experience. The Buddha limits his discussion to these four categories because he doesn”t want you to get distracted from the problem at hand.

　　The second criticism is that the four categories are dualistic and thus inferior to a non‐dualistic view of the world. Again, when formulating a theory of being, you could argue that a non‐dualistic theory would be superior to a dualistic one, on the grounds that a non‐dual concept of being is more encompassing than a dualistic one, yielding a more unified theory. But appropriate attention is not a theory of being. It”s a guide to what to do in the present moment. Because the present moment is so tangled and complex, the multiple categories offered by appropriate attention are a strength rather than a weakness. Instead of limiting you to one way of understanding and approaching events in the present, they provide you with a more discerning understanding and a wide variety of options for dealing with the tangles and complexities of suffering.

　　When offering options for solving a problem, no particular number of options is, on principle, superior to any other. What matters is that the options are enough to be adequate for the problem, but not so many as to obscure its solution and become a tangle themselves. In other words, the options are to be judged, not against abstract principles, but by what they enable you to do. And although the Buddha describes his path to the end of suffering as the one form of doing that ultimately puts an end to doing, as long as you”re still doing something in the present moment, appropriate attention ensures that what you”re doing stays on the path. And once the path is developed to the point where it can untangle the problem of suffering, everything else gets untangled as well.

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