Scattered thoughts about mindfulness

These thoughts are powered by (1) a 16 ounce can of Mike's Harder Margarita, which I've never tried before, but surely will again, and (2) a 16 ounce serving of the Sisters blend from the Sisters Coffee Company in central Oregon.  

This blend of alcohol and caffeine is guaranteed to produce a magnificently coherent amalgamation of scattered thoughts about this evening's chosen blog topic: mindfulness.

In my own mind at least, the only mind I really give a shit about, being clueless about all others.

Regarding mindfulness, I started meditating in 1969, so I've got 45 years of daily experience in observing the intricacies of what goes on inside my head. After all this time, I am pleased to report that I am now working on the greatest koan known to Zen pseudo-practitioners like me: What the fuck is going on? 

Beyond this non-realization, there is nothing more to be known.

Thank you for your adoration. Email me for instructions about how to contribute to my Dharma Fund, which, after today's shopping experience, will mostly go to buying more of Mike's Harder Margarita.

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Recently the dog and I were crossing a small creek on our property. I heard a rustling sound, then saw a dark shape zooming off a few feet above the water, heading downstream. At that moment I was in my elevated state of non-dual awareness, which I like to call "enlightenment" but my wife persists in calling "spacing out." 

Almost instantly, alas, my analytical, Western, dualistic, conceptual, abstract mind thought "Duck!" That destroyed the pure unfiltered awareness I had enjoyed a mere second before. However, it really was a duck. Regardless, this shows that my enlightenment has a few wrinkles to iron out before I can call myself Totally Nonconceptual Dude. 

This, undoubtedly, also will be what my colleagues in the mental hospital call me when I am unable to utter coherent sentences. "Tall. Round. Sweet. Metal. Yum-Yum" "Nurse, I think the Totally Nonconceptual Dude is asking again for a Mike's Harder Margarita."

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I have become adept at being mindful of what I am doing. Like, I am typing these words on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro. But I am not the typing of those words. I am the mindful observer of those words being typed.

More than that: having written that last sentence, it is clear that I also am mindful of myself being the mindful observer of typing these words on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro. Yet I am not the mindful observer of a mindful observer. I am more than that.

For I also am mindful of myself being mindful of being the mindful observer...

Oh, fuck. Where does it all end! At the bottom of the can of Mike's Harder Margarita, I can only hope.

Or maybe this mindfulness crap is just the same as my 1967 hippie pothead days (and nights), when we'd sit around blowing smoke rings, musing about how this whole universe could be a speck in the joint of a stoned dude, who lives in a universe that is just a speck in the joint of another stoned dude, who is... 

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In my happiest moments, to which I can now add while drinking Mike's Harder Margarita, I don't really know what the fuck it is I'm doing because I've just doing it, not being mindful of me having a happy moment. 

Like, when I first jump on my much-beloved StreetStrider (outdoor elliptical bike) and head off down a multi-use trail in Salem's beautiful Minto Brown Island Park. I'm just doing it. I'm doing what I've done since mid-December, three times a week, 7-8 miles at a time, so I'm in the StreetStrider groove, flowing along with my body moving the StreetStrider and the StreetStrider moving me.

Am I mindful? Hell if I know.

I'm not mindful of what I'm doing, because I'm just doing it. Once I start being mindful of doing my StreetStrider thing, I'm doing two things: StreetStriding and being mindful of StreetStriding.

Now I don't claim to be some non-dual Zen enlightened sage -- just someone who is one sip of Mike's Harder Margarita from fucking being sure that I am. (brief pause... done! I'm there!) But it seems to me that awareness of my StreetStriding awareness is one step removed from my actual experience.

So what's the point in me washing the dishes, while being aware of "I'm washing the dishes"?

Have I wasted my freaking time reading all those goddamn Zen books urging me to simply chop wood and carry water? Or simply update my Facebook feed and Twitter account with a link to another marvelous Church of the Churchless blog post?

Which, come to think of it, is the most enlightened thing for an enlightened being like me to do right now. 

Oh, after saying this to the guy who stole my idea for this blog post title from an advance look at the space/time continuum back in 2012. 

Dude, you think too much. You are too conceptual. You are too wordy. You need to be more like me. Your own "scattered thoughts about mindfulness meditation" clearly do not possess the pristine cosmic wisdom mine do.

And, yeah, that's the Mike's Harder Margarita speaking.

Readers of this blog post are just fortunate that I've stopped writing before finishing the last third of the can. Remember the Total Perspective Vortex? Man, that's what you'd have been sucked into if I had written anything after drinking the whole 16 ounces. 

TOO MUCH TRUTH! 

Comments

[Sita schilt]

I want have one!

[cc]

Brian, if in my comment I mention the four products you've plugged, will I get paid, too?

[Brian Hines]

cc, absolutely!

In fact, you've already received just as much money as I've ever gotten for plugging anything on my blogs during the eleven years I've been blogging...

Zero! Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

My genius "business plan" has been to pay TypePad $100 plus a year and then get nothing back in return monetarily. Works for me.

[tucson]

What have we been hoping for here? The answer to all eternal questions wrapped up in a nice neat bundle?

Isn't it remarkable that as imagined subjects we imagine ourselves to be objects while, as such pretend objects, we pose as our own subjects!

We don't know shit as Brian said.

What we are could not possibly be limited or defined by a grouping of words or ideas. In transcendence of such wordy concepts we are inconceivable because conceptuality cannot conceive its source. We can only be this source and as we are being it (without conceptualizing) we can't know it. As this inconceivable source there are no questions, no answers, no problems, no ignorance or liberation either. It all amounts to nothing. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't care.

[observer]

tucson: "We can only be this source and as we are being it (without conceptualizing) we can't know it." Very true.

But, perhaps this conceptual knowing is of the mind and different to the experience of where we go into a kind of zone and feel something different, like Brian's "spacing out" (preferably if we can do it without the use of caffeine and Margarita lol) then it is more like ESP "the faculty of perceiving things by means other than the known senses".

[cc]

We don't know shit as Brian said.

That's not what Brian said or implied. Stop misquoting and misrepresenting people.

It all amounts to nothing. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't care

The universe may not give a ratsass for you, tucson, but you can't speak for anyone else.

[tucson]

cc wrote:

"That's not what Brian said or implied. Stop misquoting and misrepresenting people."

-- I'll say what I like, got it? Besides, my saying, "We don't know shit" is akin to what Brian said, "What the fuck is going on?"?

Observer,
Yeah, I agree. I think conceptual knowing (mind) is different than what is "behind" it, and what is behind it has a sort of cohesive loving and bright quality. Still, I'm not sure it cares in any personal sort of way because in the end (beginning) there is nothing personal, imnsho. The sun shines equally on all that is under it, in a manner of speaking.

[cc]

Of course "conceptual knowing is different than what is behind it". Conceptuality is the way we try to grasp reality, not reality itself.

The point is that you can't speak coherently or credibly about what you can't grasp conceptually, but tucson (and others, apparently) can't grasp this.

[tucson]

"The point is that you can't speak coherently or credibly about what you can't grasp conceptually"

--I agree.

[Who else ... George]

I thought the eternal question was:

If a bear takes a dump in a forest and noone's around, does it smell.

[777]

"" Describe your first love or your last one ""

Try to tell
when it is a trillion of that

777

[777]

must be

a trillion times that

777