unexamined

Some ancient Greeks reckoned that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Some contemporary meditators notice that the unexamined life is full of mental proliferation (papanca) which gives rise to an ongoing flood of autonomous thoughts, moods and emotions.

The meditator notices that ‘I’ am not in control of the flood. It is rooted in the unconscious where ongoing and immediate inputs from the sense organs are churned with memories to generate thoughts, moods and emotions that generate patterns of behaviour that ensure survival on a daily basis and thus the chance of being a successful breeder in the longer term.

 BUT – if ‘I’ do not control the generation of mental proliferations – who or what does? They are constantly changing. Can the mind (conscious or unconscious) turn in upon itself and be the agent of its own transformation? This begs the question of who or what controls the agent and who or what controls the controller.

Some meditators appreciate the idea of mindfulness. It is possible to notice the flood of thoughts, moods and emotions and to step back from it; to observe it from a safe distance. How long does a thought, mood or emotion last? Where was it before it appeared in the attention centre and where does it go to once it has passed through?

I tend to be intellectual. My world view embraces the expanding horizon from quantum to cosmos that stretches back to the Big Bang and forward to the death of our sun and its Universe. BUT the mind is not engaged with those things all the time. Other more detailed and fleeting thoughts, moods and emotions appear. There can be micro mindfulness.

The sense of smell kicks in to remind me of the burned toast at breakfast time; the sense of hearing kicks in to notice traffic passing in the street and birds singing in the garden; the kinaesthetic sense kicks in to raise awareness of slumping in the chair, and of an itch on the lower left leg. And then the memory sense kicks in with tax forms, the dishes that need washing, and the grass that needs mowing.

Conscious attention cannot be focussed on all the details all of the time. There are filters (how are they calibrated?) that cut the level of multi-tasking to manageable proportions. (Do people really multi-task or are they just good at rapid channel hopping in single-task mode?)

How long is a thought moment? How variable is a person’s attention span? The media people design their products on the assumption that the attention span is very short. Think of advertising and soap operas. Slogans and soundbites. Anything that demands focussed attention for more than a few seconds is ruthlessly cut back.

As an intellectual I specialise in holding on to complex thoughts for extended periods. As an absent minded professor I can easily lose track of space, time and my self for a couple of hours. It could be thought of as a pleasurable mind state but only in retrospect. There has to be an ‘I’ to experience pleasure. It is the same basic process for athletes in the zone and musicians in the groove. No self, no problem.

For a meditator the goal is to focus attention on the breathing and to have it stay there. If mental proliferation kicks in then this is noticed and attention is gently returned to the breath. Again and again. The path is made by walking. Be still and know. Then you are in a better position to examine your life and make it worth living?