The Depths of the Mind

I'm sitting on my cushion in the relative early morning cool. I’ve been practicing for three weeks, and I’m surprised at the ease with which I slip into sati (awareness), samadhi (mental stability), or a mix of the two. I’ve taken to heart the instructions for vipassana meditation: maintain awareness lightly but continuously, and don’t have any expectations of anything happening, for the moment or in the future. If an emotion-filled thought should arise, my task is to let it run its course while I mentally step back, look at it, identify its various aspects, and most importantly, investigate the process by which it emerges and dissipates.

One thought gains momentum so that it surpasses the dozens of others that are always there, just below the surface. Unless you’re expert at deep meditative absorption practices such as jhana, the mind is never completely quiet, there’s constant murmuring going on. Somehow this particular thought catches a wave and rides it to the surface. Since I am purposefully watching all of this happen, the process seems to take several seconds, but that’s illusory, it’s really just a blink of the eye.

And there it is, something  recognizable ... I’m at the Phinney Community Center in Seattle … it becomes a fully formed thought … if I’m not careful it will take me for a ride for longer than I want … it’s … it’s … Uncle Bonsai singing

“I need a theme song, I need a theme song …”

The mind will latch onto that lyric like an eagle holding on to a sockeye, and I will hear it in my mind’s ear dozens of times during the rest of the retreat. At first, that was the only lyric I remembered from the song—that’s why they call them “hooks,” right? Then I remembered one other lyric, about the poor quality of the Batman theme song from the 1960s TV series:

“Something that’s more fitting for a guy dressed like a bat.”

“I need a theme song, I need a theme song …”

Don’t bother asking about any other part of the tune.

“Theme Song” eventually lost its grip, only to be replaced by “Cleanup Woman,” the 1971 hit single by Betty Wright, with a great five-note guitar riff:

The cleanup woman, is a woman who,

Gets all the love we girls leave behind.

Such is how the mind works on the path to liberation. Another name for vipassana meditation is insight meditation, and I did have a few minor insights and one significant insight during my 30 days at Shwe Oo Min Forest Refuge Meditation Center. But for the most part the process simply entailed watching thoughts emerge and dissolve, looking at the associated emotions and feelings, and investigating the process through which it all happens. And since this particular mind is entering its seventh decade, there’s a bottomless supply of pop and blues songs, fantasies, emotions, and stories—some of them even true—to use as fodder. But as I was repeatedly reminded throughout the month, all of these thoughts have no “I”, no “Jon”, thinking them. 

And that’s all I have to say on that particular topic. Details to come.