driving home from my workout this morning, i turned on the radio. oh yeah, that piece on the guy with PTSD who raped a girl, and the civic strike, and someone got stabbed overnight, and …
“hey, stop!” i said to myself, “wasn’t i going to do a driving meditation?”
“but i want to hear the news!” (whiny)
“think about it. how much are you going to get out of listening to the news, and how much are you going to get out of doing a little meditation? how much is anyone going to get out of you listening to the news as opposed to meditating?”
“but i want to hear the news! i like it! i like listening to people talking on the radio!”
“it’s distracting. you like being distracted. you’re addicted to being distracted!”
now a third person chimes in, some professorial guy with glasses down on his nose, lecturing on the definition of addiction (“no! dependency!”), the difference between dependencies and compulsions, and the seemingly useful but rather abstract nature of utilitarianism. (and these links/hypertexts belong here more than ever, because that’s exactly what our brains do – hypertext and link, all day long. worse than the internet.)
“can’t you turn the radio back on, please?”
“you’re addicted to these distractions and even more so, the squirrelly thoughts in your heads that get triggered by these distractions. do you want to be addicted?”
“no, i don’t want to be addicted but i want to listen to the radio!”
“you’re addicted to reviewing the past and fiddling with the future. what’s wrong with right here, right now?”
“it’s not so comfortable.”
“how is it not comfortable? and what’s so comfortable with your brain running a mile a minute all the time?”
“i guess i’m used to it.”
the professor in the background is mumbling about eckhart tolle and the value of staying in the present and didn’t krishnamurti …
finally it occurred to me that thinking and talking about meditation doesn’t equal meditation. and i actually spent a few moments
just
driving.
(“most of us,” says krishnamurti, “are caught up in words.”)
(this post appears in the 107th carnival of healing)