The First Time The House Burned Down
Lava under the surface of my skin.
"What is troubling us," said Wittgenstein, "is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within."
Often I am faced [like a ton of bricks] with how difficult it is to appreciate each moment for what it is; one solitary moment. This post-modern brain of mine! Conditioned to reach out and grab at the future, reach out and grab at everything but the only thing that truly exists; the myriad goings on right here, right now. I have let my meditation practice slip, and must doggedly pick it back up. So many stray arrows riccocheting wantonly about, my mind is like a Roman battlefield. Time again to take up the collection.
The more deeply I go into myself... strange and foreign as this aspect of myself at first seems to be, I soon realize that it is me, and much more me than my superficial ego.
The training is to worry about whatever minutiae may pass through the goopy cavity between my ears. What is it like, in the brain of the little cat? Do cats know anxiety, or are they the true understanders of zen philosophy, living only in the here and now? Knowledge of the future brings about emotional reactions to future events before they happen, and thus anxiety because, for example, one may get sick or will eventually die. And apparently this does not trouble the creatures who act by instinct. To be dissimilar to Doestoevsky's Akakyavich and Chernyshevsky's ideal man, both.
"What is troubling us," said Wittgenstein, "is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within."
Often I am faced [like a ton of bricks] with how difficult it is to appreciate each moment for what it is; one solitary moment. This post-modern brain of mine! Conditioned to reach out and grab at the future, reach out and grab at everything but the only thing that truly exists; the myriad goings on right here, right now. I have let my meditation practice slip, and must doggedly pick it back up. So many stray arrows riccocheting wantonly about, my mind is like a Roman battlefield. Time again to take up the collection.
The more deeply I go into myself... strange and foreign as this aspect of myself at first seems to be, I soon realize that it is me, and much more me than my superficial ego.
The training is to worry about whatever minutiae may pass through the goopy cavity between my ears. What is it like, in the brain of the little cat? Do cats know anxiety, or are they the true understanders of zen philosophy, living only in the here and now? Knowledge of the future brings about emotional reactions to future events before they happen, and thus anxiety because, for example, one may get sick or will eventually die. And apparently this does not trouble the creatures who act by instinct. To be dissimilar to Doestoevsky's Akakyavich and Chernyshevsky's ideal man, both.
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