Plain Field Meditation

Nostrils flare scenting time and

probabilities; mouth

waters anticipating

the fun of the right moment.

I went to have brunch with my son’s family this morning.  Not far after I merged onto the interstate highway I saw a huge blinking yellow arrow pointing to the right.  Roadwork ahead.  As I got to the work site, the Illinois Department of Transportation had helpfully placed a sign to explain the narrowing of traffic lanes: WEEKEND LANE CLOSURES – speed limit 45 MPH strictly enforced; $345 fine.  As I passed the barricaded worksite, no work was taking place.  How kind of IDOT, I thought, to provide practice in proper work zone driving etiquette at the very beginning of the peak road repair season.

But then it also seemed to me to be perfectly fitting for my weekend so far.

I have applied for a job, and I am waiting to see if I get a call for a job interview.  I’m led to believe that the company looked over applicant resumes last week.  So as we got to the weekend with no expectation of a phone call, I have found myself putting much, but not all, of my anticipation aside until Monday.  Oddly enough the part of the anticipation that I was not able to put aside so easily was the “What if they don’t call?” anxiety.  You know.  “What if they don’t call on Monday?!!!”  As though somehow Monday was the last day when Human Resources could be making job interview appointments for such a vital new position.  It is the loss aversion element of seeking something that one considers really, really important.

Jonah Lehrer has an excellent summary of the interaction between the emotional gut mind and the rational mind.  In my current case, given too much time between the point when one begins a decision making process and the point when one can finally make and implement a decision, both my gut mind and my rational mind go a bit berserk.   Here is Lehrer’s sage advice: “Why is thinking about thinking so important?  First, it helps us steer clear of stupid errors.  You can’t avoid loss aversion unless you know that the mind treats losses differently than gains.  And you’ll probably think too much about buying a house unless you know that such a strategy will lead you to buy the wrong property.  The mind is full of flaws, but they can be outsmarted.”  [Lehrer, Jonah.  How We Decide.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  2009.  Page 250.]

Which brings me to two good refresher lessons life has given me with this job opportunity experience.  How kind of life to provide two good practice experiences in the proper handling of job hunting expectations.  Both refreshers relate to meditation.

One of these is that no matter how entrained the mind gets, how attached to an expectation, there will come a point when the nonattached observer self recognizes that the mind has been hijacked by that attachment.  And right after that, one again has a point of choice.  I can continue to wallow in this attachment, or I can step back from it.  I think this is one practical application of what Lehrer is saying about why it is important to know about the thinking process and the ability to outsmart the flaws inherent in human thinking. 

Now I must admit I have wondered today why my own personal observer self took so long to  pull me up short and to whisper “Get a grip” into my ear.  Maybe it was his annual vacation week.  Well, at least life is always happy to provide new learning opportunities for people like me.

The second refresher lesson is that if one is going to blast off all gung ho – “Warp nine, Mr. Data.  Make it so!” – on gripping adventures such as applying for the ideal job, then one had better be prepared to enjoy all aspects of the adventure.  That includes the entrancing emotional ride while surfing the probability waves of the adventure.  “What if HR doesn’t call on Tuesday either?!!!  How kind of HR to prolong the waiting.  Good practice for next weekend.”

And as for my nonattached observer self, I’m deducting at least two days from his annual vacation allotment.  

On my computer screen Chen

Rong’s dragon pearl of wisdom

in claw drifting live daring

come and get it Chumster.

This Christmas I took two of our grandchildren to see the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  I had seen the 1951 original when I was a kid and loved it.  To this day I remember part of the phrase that the human mother had to say to stop Gort from exterminating an entire American army battalion, “Klaatu barada nikto.”  Every time my grade school had an atomic bomb drill, and I crawled under my desk and dutifully hid my face to avoid the glass that would shatter inward and not to be blinded by the sudden light from the bomb detonation, I remembered the message of the movie: Atomic weapons were dangerous.  (I was glad helpful space aliens had come to explain that to Washington, DC.) 

I did like the giant robot, Gort, in the remake better than the old Gort.  This time Gort fragments into millions of tiny, self replicating, locust-like destructors that simply devour all humans and human-made objects.  Much tougher for any one human being to shut down the entire ravaging swarm with a simple cease and desist order.

Which brings me to talk about President Obama and the stock market crash.  I suppose maybe first I should mention that all of the NINA ARM’s (no income, no assets adjustable rate mortgages) and the CDS’s (credit default swaps) reminded me of the ravaging Gort hoards the way that they destroyed the stock market and were chewing away at the value of my retirement savings.  When Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter began declaring Obama to be the Messiah, I really hoped that a god-like alien (i.e. anyone with more smarts than the Bush administration and greater personal ethics than the Wall Street bankers) had in fact given the incoming president some magic words, words that would instantly cause the stock markets to cease and desist from their free fall.  I think it would have been great to see President Obama step to the podium a few weeks ago – you know, just after it was made public that AIG Financial Products executives would be receiving retention bonuses despite the fact that they had created the voracious little CDS critters.  I hoped he would hold up his hands and in loud clear voice would speak into the roiling stock market destruction saying, “Klaatu barada nikto.”  Instead my sister sat me down and told me to pull my vanishing money out of stock funds and put it into CD’s.

It turned out for me that the 21^st century translation of Klaatu barada nikto is in fact “Get out of the market now.” 

I think there must be some sort of space alien sentence that the 1951 heroine did not tell us movie goers.  It would have told us to get back into the market when the global economy begins to reestablish itself.  I’m pretty sure about that because in both the original and the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu, the wise space alien, does come back to life and earth does continue happily to pursue a wiser course of action.

Blago speaks expounds his side

of the show slides his semblance

dissembles his perceptions

The ayes have this story’s end

I have a growing passion for a particular Chinese, hand scroll painting, Chen Rong’s Nine Dragons. It was painted over a period of years around 1244 AD.  It is 50 feet long.  Here’s an interesting thing about really old Chinese paintings, no one can be sure if the painting is authentic.  In China copying old master works is not a matter of forgery, it is the sincerest form of flattery.  And a good way to improve the artist’s brush work.  But for the person, me, who would love to get his hands on a copy of the Nine Dragons scroll, there is the cloudy question of whether I would get a good copy of the real nine dragons or a good copy of some other artist’s flattery. 

My guru used to talk about surfing the waves of life’s ocean.  I could see in his eyes a certain joy in the prospect of a storm tossed sea.  In that day he might encounter one of his meditators who was blissfully grateful for a lesson learned from the day before.  But another might have been shocked by something he said or really angry at being called out of a sound sleep at 2 AM because the guru wanted to give another important lecture.  Among his meditators stories abounded of times when the guru had embarrassed them in front of their friends or work colleagues.  This usually took place after the meditator had spent a lot of time trying to convince his/her work mates that this guru, this enlightened being, was someone they had to meet.  Gururaj was a capricious dragon of a guru.

I bring up Gururaj and his joy of surfing because the print I downloaded of one of Chen Rong’s nine dragons reminded me of surfing.  In the print a dragon looks to be swimming or surfing through turbulent seas.  I would guess that for Chen Rong the dragon represented the Daoist concept of the natural power inherent in the universe.  Maybe for Chen Rong this dragon is not so much surfing the turbulence as a creaturely embodiment of the turbulent waves themselves, waves that roll into themselves as well as reach outward to grasp what is ahead.

But when I printed out the picture and looked closely, I noticed that this dragon is looking out of the picture plane at the viewer.  I laughed.  I couldn’t decide whether the dragon was having a sly dialog with the viewer or betraying a certain emotion due to the turbulence.  Is it about to say, “Watch me slide through the next set of waves!!!”  Or is it saying, “Holy smoke!! What have I gotten myself into?!!”

You see?  This is why it is important to know whether the copy I downloaded is a faithful rendering of Chen Rong’s masterpiece or if it is a flawed flattery of the original.  I want to know this dragon’s thoughts.

Of course when you read this blog entry, you are reading only my flattery of Gururaj and his thoughts.  Who knows how close to the original that is?

She sits a bit back shadowed

hands tightly together no

smile giving her self away

Twilight too bright for headlights

Does it seem this way to you too?  In a new or mostly unpredictable situation, the first response is a kind of fearful emotion?  Maybe just a bit of anxiety or apprehension, not full blown terror. I have often wondered about this especially because I seem to be more blessed with this reaction than Babs is.

Actually it makes sense to me.  Emotional responses are the first responses.  And, if one is confronted with a new situation, then the emotional mind, often called the gut mind, attempts rapidly to assess whether this is going to hurt a lot , a little, or not at all.  That’s a working description of anxiety as a first response to things new.

It could also be argued – probably by Babs – that being anxious is just my basic nature.  I can’t really disagree too strongly.  I grew up in a household where being anxious wasn’t just a matter of happenstance; it was the preferred mentality.  My mother and I have long agreed that when confronting a situation, one should envisage the worst possible scenario and figure with some confidence that it won’t be that bad in reality.  This is a more dire approach to facing things than pessimism.  Pessimism is just the possibility that the glass is only half full.  I think preparing for the worst and hoping it won’t be that bad trumps mere pessimism.

Modern psychology has recognized that human beings respond first from their emotional, gut mind, and then a bit later the rational mind kicks in to process the situation at hand as well.  It’s a well documented fact that perceptions from the five senses get cycled to the amygdala, the seat of the gut mind, before they get all the way upstairs to the newer brain parts.  So before the rational mind can begin to figure out from all the clues that a piece of left-over rope lying next to the twilight path is just a piece of left-over rope, the gut mind has already jumped ahead to the “be afraid; be very afraid” response.  So despite Babs’ protestations, my mother and I aren’t completely nuts.  I’d just like the record clear on that point.

Interestingly, my guru, Gururaj Ananda Yogi, didn’t split out the gut and rational minds so separately as modern psychology does.  This I have found unusual because Gururaj was a pretty with it guy when it came to science.  He was perfectly happy to use the Big Bang theory in talking about the origins of the universe.  In some comments, one can almost read in a conceptualization of the Absolute Divinity that would not be far out of line with multiverse “brane” cosmologists.  But, curiously he lumped the gut mind in with the rational mind, one big lump, the “conscious mind” in his terminology.  So the way to handle the quick emotional reaction of the gut mind was to “do your meditation and spiritual practices” because that simple maxim applied to all things involving the conscious and the subconscious minds.

Still I know many meditators who struggle with their emotional responses.  I certainly have and do.  Somehow it is a contest.  Just as one should always be nonattached from the ego’s attempt to grab the steering wheel of one’s life, my friends sometimes seem to want to blot out strong emotional responses.  “I know I shouldn’t feel that way.  Gururaj used to say that a mountain could fall behind him and he wouldn’t notice it.  So why am I so easily upset after all these years of meditating?!!!”

Now it makes sense!  The gut mind reacts more quickly than all those years of meditation and nonattachment.  It reacts on some very oversimplified reaction patters.  “Have we experienced the same sensory input recently?  Then this must be the same thing as last time.”  So if you are in the habit of eating a lot of banana cream pie, and the gut mind gets sensory input regarding a triangular shape of yellow with white on top, it is likely to be sending out a strong “Grab it” message before the rational, conscious mind has much chance to react by remembering that the piece of pie in the refrigerator is the piece of lemon pie that Babs saved for her dessert and that touching it will only bring a great deal of pain into one’s greedy life. 

See, it is at this point that the nonattachment gained in meditation really does pay off.  One needs to be nonattached to the immediate gut reaction in order to give the conscious mind time to fine tune the mind’s perception of what the sensory input is really all about.  In short, react, assimilate, then choose.

At the very least one can use all one’s faculties to make up a good story why you ate the piece of lemon pie before Babs gets back to the refrigerator.

Blue their old gray hound whimpers

hearing passersby wanting

action fresh air a place to piss

I have no key to their door

I’m writing this morning from the home of my son-in-law, a well know UK artist.  Last weekend we saw a five-second slice of a Microsoft commercial that used one of his civic sculptures as an iconic background in a TV commercial.  I was thinking this morning about what an average life I have had.  I know one shouldn’t admit to an average life.  There are no merit badges for average.  Still I have had a wonderfully average life so far.

My grandfather was a farmer.  As a kid I remember it was always interesting to look in the toolbox mounted to the fender of his tractor.  I usually could find an arrow head or two; sometimes just a fragment and sometimes a nearly perfect point.  One my grandfather’s fields had been the site of an Indian encampment, a site close to an outcropping of flint.  Of course, when I saw the field, there were no signs of the camp.  There were no post holes for woodland hogans, no fire pits, no rotted remains of a village.  My grandfather only had the flint points that he found every spring when plowing.  I have often wondered if the field had ever been a real village or just a site where Indians had chipped the flint to make tools and weapons.

The flint points are the only bits left of the lives on that Indian tribe – at least for me.  In a way then, the Indians lived invisible lives.  That, I think, is what average is all about, invisibility.  On the face of it being invisible would seem like a rather miserable fate.  Not leaving a mark in history to show for having been alive, now that’s pretty awful, isn’t it?

I’m not so sure.  Here’s the thing.  Just being alive seems like quite a gift. 

I remember as a child seeing people in all stages of life – a bit like watching a film.  As an adult classroom teacher it was interesting to watch the students and meet the parents – each with their own individual life dramas.  In short, I am always fascinated watching all those lives playing through.

And, here’s the other thing.  I also get to live through my own individual existence and interact with life.  I have my own drama, quite absorbing for me of course, and it fits in perfectly to create harmony or strife or both in the individual lives of those around me.  I know from experience what it feels and tastes and moves like to be meeting a girl for the first time.  So when I see my grandsons discovering another dimension to girls I can enjoy their discovery.  I know what it means to have a business strategy in progress.  When I get emails from former Chinese students about their first jobs, I know the welter of hopes and anxieties that go with entry-level jobs.  Increasingly I know the slow melting of ache one feels when one stands up after sitting in one position too long.  And, as I observe my mother, I know that I will feel those minor aches and pains grow longer and deeper in duration.  It happens to most people as another part of the average life progress.

Still in a way I am leaving small chips along my path in time.  I post these blog entries.  I wonder if in fifty or hundred years time, some electronic harvester will find a way to plow through all the different blog assemblages and toss them into the electronic version of a toolbox.  I wonder if some small child or AI will come along and read through them and will in turn wonder about the people who left all those shards littering the electronic past.  Probably.