PAYING ATTENTION

Paying attention is being "mindful," to use the Buddhist term for it.  "Correct" or "right" mindfulness is the seventh element of the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path.  The earlier Upanishads also reference mindfulness, mindful meditation.

The Buddha taught that a person should practice mindfulness in his everyday life, maintaining as much as possible a calm awareness of his bodily functions, sensations (feelings), objects of consciousness (thoughts and perceptions), and consciousness itself.

He taught that mindfulness is important from the standpoint of attaining enlightenment, enlightenment being a state in which all misery-producing fetters have been overcome, abandoned, and no longer present in the mind.

To be mindfulness is to be aware of the present moment, as well.  This is as opposed to always thinking of the past, which has already occurred, and of the future, which has not yet taken place.  Mindfulness, or paying attention, is, in this way, an antidote to all that is delusional.