In the last podcast I gave an example of the wandering mind, which mind preceded from an image of stripping wall-paper to one of riding a big, black horse in the mountains. This is the action of the mind through its processes of association, free association, which is documented in the Abhidharma, 2500 years ago, as one of the ways in which the mind is conditioned. This is the behaviour of the natural mind.
Of course, this is very different from the current popular idea of “mindfulness” as something which is a deliberate, non-judgmental attention to the “here & now”. In my example of the associations in the mind it was not deliberate, it was spontaneous. It was not concerned with the “here & now”, it was wandering over reminiscences from long ago, imaginings of what is happening far away. It was not the “here & now”, it was the “there and then”. And, was it judgmental? Well, certainly slightly so, because the things that the mind wanders over are the things it values. Sometimes the things it fears, but certainly things that it has an opinion about. At one point I was being the happy child, at one point the proud father, at another point the conscientious social worker, at another point the enthusiastic horse-rider. There is an element of judgment in all of these sentiments.
So, is this wrong, you might say, is this the wrong thing to do?
Some advocates of mindfulness in the modern sense might say so.
But I would suggest that, if we are in the business of stress-reduction, which is how the modern mindfulness is usually sold, then the free association, travelling of the mind can well be regarded as a more effective way of reducing stress than the deliberate exercise, because it’s about the natural mind, the mind returning to its natural state. This is very close to the Daoist ideal. When we allow the mind to be natural, it’s like the mind of a child. Like the mind of a child at play. I call this the playful mind.
So, today I’m recommending to you the playful mind, giving your mind some space. This is in many ways the source of creativity. Creativity comes much more out of imagination than it does out of deliberation. Of course, deliberation and imagination co-operate. When one has deliberated about an issue or a problem, and perhaps reached a dead-end of some kind, one should then back-off and give the mind some space, give it some play-time; and when the playful mind is operating, then often enough the Gods come along and lend a hand; and something new, some new angle, something that had not been imagined before, suddenly comes into view. In this way, often, what seemed quite intractable problems, get solved; and one is liberated from what had seemed like a dead-end or a prison.
In Buddhism we say we are interested in the liberation of the mind. Cultivating releasing the playful mind is certainly an element in this. I recommend it.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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