Sometimes when I'm thinking about a problem, my hand picks up the wrong thing—what's going on?

When thinking about a problem, the mind consciousness may be very intently deliberating on the problem, with only a tiny fraction of its energy attending to the object the hand is about to grasp; therefore it cannot correctly judge and select whether the object to be picked up is really the one one wants. The body consciousness's ability to discriminate objects is very poor—it must work together with the mind consciousness to discriminate them. Once the mind consciousness is distracted, one will pick up the wrong thing. So when attention is not concentrated and not single-pointed, one will do things wrong. However, a well-trained person with meditative power can see in all six directions and hear in all eight quarters, coordinating and handling everything on all sides very well. Therefore concentration, dhyāna, and meditative power are extremely important.

When one has meditative power, the mind consciousness's deliberation can be clear and lucid, and with wisdom one can carry out affairs in an orderly fashion; this is true both for worldly wisdom and for wisdom in supramundane dharmas. In the Buddhadharma, to deliberate clearly upon a dharma meaning, one's attention must be extremely single-pointed, without the interference of scattered thoughts. Only after focused deliberation can one comprehend the content of the dharma meaning and understand the true meaning in the sūtras. Therefore concentrated attention is very important, and meditative power is the key and the prerequisite for the arising of wisdom. A very rare few who are well trained can use one mind for many purposes, handling several matters simultaneously, because their meditative power is highly developed; whereas some people cannot even do a single thing well, because their mind consciousness is too scattered and they have no meditative power at all—their deliberation is disordered and superficial, and thus they cannot do anything well.