Avoiding Mental Junk Food.

Avoiding Mental Junk Food

A blank page is a welcome mat begging to be adorned with words. Writing to write, without any hopes or ambitions that the material is read, is a joy. Binod Motilal, the philosopher of language, says we are “languaging beings” and cannot be separated from language even if we try. So, may as well embrace it!

Just to what extent we are “languaging beings” is generally underappreciated, something His Holiness the Dalai Lama has addressed in recent talks. He says that no depth of reasoning or analyses can take place without language. Often, we think we can intuitively see things, but even this, upon examination, will be seen as a fallacy. A little reflection will reveal just how much stage setting is involved in even the simplest actions, actions we think we can do without language.

Take for example a cup falling off a countertop. If we are in range, we will try to catch it instinctively. Is language involved? It may seem that we rescued the cup without language, but those who have studied language say that anything we do, we must have the language to do or we cannot do it. Therefore, we could not have rescued the cup if we did not know the words cup, break, falling, and so forth, and knew the syntax to put them together in a meaningful sentence.

To demonstrate this is easy. Consider someone without the needed language and how they would react to a similar situation. We can imagine how a baby might react by simply being amused as the cup tipped off the counter and fell, shattering on the ground. Even if it were big enough to react otherwise, it wouldn’t because the language is lacking.

We engage with the world as we do because we have the language to engage with it as we do. Whether we are conscious of it or not, there is language going on that determines how we respond to and initiate action. Many masters think we don’t appreciate this enough.

Most of us engage in allot of background thinking we are not aware of and often it amounts to nonsense. This nonsense is not as harmless as it may seem because it leads to actions we later regret or getting sucked into something we wish we weren’t baited into.

Sri Yukeshvara, Paramhansa Yogananda’s teacher, used to advise his protégé, “Think, think, think, all the time. The Dalai Lama advises the same.

Keeping the mind engaged in a train of thought makes us less vulnerable to nonsense, externally arising and internally arising.  Since the mind is going to be busy anyway, the theory goes, why not consciously, give it something to chew on.

Consciously engaging the mind does not mean we have to engage in deep analyses and reasoning as in analytical meditation, but rather simply maintain a train of thought. If we are going shopping for food, for example, instead of musing about it, we should delineate our musing into words and formulate clear ideas with clear sentences. We should consciously think, rather than muse.

If we think with intention about what we are doing, it will reveal how much background noise we have. The mind may not enjoy being put to use and made a servant, but unless we want to be its slave, we better put it to use.

In practice, it is difficult to put our day and its activities into words, because our head is full of them running wild, and they don’t want to be harnessed. When we do, however, our life will begin to gradually change as a we get more skilled at consciously thinking. We will not be monkied around by distracting and scattering thoughts, pulling us and stretching us in every direction.

Most of the above is common practice in many Zen temples where actions are labeled, “I am picking up the cup”, “I am putting it down”, “I am walking out of the kitchen” and so forth. The idea is to occupy the mind, rather than have miscellaneous thoughts and ideas stage a sit-in. While labeling is a good practice, consciously thinking as the Dalai Lama and Yukeshvar point out is better because a train of thought is established, however mundane and simple, and maintained, while we stay out of the particulars of what we are doing as the Zen practitioners do.

The saying, “An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop” is true for a reason and the reason is if we can think, we should, and if we don’t, we are inviting trouble.

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