Dr Ian Ellis-Jones ... Living Mindfully Now

NOTE. This blog is in recess. Nevertheless, you will find here over 500 of my posts exploring many aspects of spirituality, mindfulness, psychology, philosophy, literature and the performing arts. A member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association, I lectured at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry (now the mental health portfolio of HETI) for 14 years and at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) for 16 years. Mindfully yours, Ian Ellis-Jones PhD. 26 July 2021.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

ZEN AND THE ART OF CALMING THE MIND

‘Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day,’ wrote Etty Hillesum, ‘is the rest we take between two deep breaths.’

Here’s a famous bit of Zen. A pupil goes to the master and says, ‘I have no peace of mind. Please calm my mind!’ The master replies, ‘Bring your mind here and I will calm it for you.’ The pupil then says, ‘Yes, but when I look for my mind, I can’t seem to find it.’ The master replies, ‘There, you see, I’ve calmed your mind already.’

There are many interpretations of this piece of Zen wisdom. Here’s my take on it, but first I want to say a few words on the subject of the mind and the brain.

The classical materialist view asserts that the mind and the brain are one and the same. However, recent discoveries in neuroscience and quantum physics suggest that the mind and the brain are not co-extensive or identical. There is mind—or intelligence—throughout the whole body. The brain uses the mind—to think, feel, and so on—but the mind is ‘larger’, for want of a better word, than the brain. The brain is infused with mind, as are all parts of the human body. In addition, mind exists outside of and even beyond the brain. Mind is intelligence and there is intelligence wherever there is life in any shape or form. The brain is a physical object that can be seen by the eye. It is perceptible by the senses, and like all material objects it has size, weight and form. Not so the mind which has no constituent parts.

In a fundamental sense, we have no individual mind at all. Hence, there is no mind to calm. So, what exactly are we, each one of us? Well, each of us is a centre—both an inlet and an outlet—of consciousness from which all things are a matter of observation and awareness. We are made up of ‘mind-stuff’ and consciousness is the ‘stuff’ or very ground of our be-ing. Let me explain. You have a body but you are not that body. You experience sensations in your body but you are not those sensations. You have a brain but you are not that brain. You have thoughts but you are not those thoughts. You have emotions, feelings and desires but you are not those emotions, feelings or desires. All those 'things' are impermanent and insubstantial. So, what are you? You are that in you that lives and moves and has its be-ing in and as you. You are the impersonal, and you are the personal. You are your very own be-ing. Life is be-ing, and its be-ing is your very own be-ing.

There is no need to calm your mind. For starters, where is your mind? Can you find it? You cannot calm it—or for that matter do anything else with it—unless you can first locate it. In the Zen exchange set out above the master does the only thing any teacher or so-called guru really can do. The master manages to get the pupil to have an enlightening experience in which the pupil comes to ‘see,’ know and understand for himself or herself, perhaps for the very first time. Here, the master successfully leads the pupil to experience, in that Zen direct intuitive way, the fact that they have no mind to calm. All the pupil—and all of us for that matter—has to do is to … be calm.

Do you want to be calm? If so, practise calmness. Practise stillness. Practise quietness. Practise silence. The very truth of your be-ing is calmness, stillness, quietness and silence. A good way to start—and finish for that matter—is to get the body calm. Yes, the body. If the body is calm, you will soon be calm. Dr Norman Vincent Peale offered this gem of advice: ‘Sit still, be silent, let composure creep over you.' Got that? Sit ... be ... let ... .

So, stop looking for your mind. Stop analyzing and judging the contents of what you take to be your mind (eg your thoughts, feelings, memories and mental movies). Stop identifying with those ‘things’ as if they were you, the person among persons that in truth you are.

Sit. Be. Let.

There, I’ve calmed your mind already. You're welcome.

Note. The photos in this post were taken by the author in the Topes de Collantes, which is a nature reserve park in the Sierra del Escambray mountain range in the central region of Cuba. The bottom photo is of the famous Vegas Grande Waterfall located in the park.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

WHO ARE YOU?

Recently, I left my cell phone on the bus. Fortunately, the phone was handed in to the bus driver and was taken to the lost property office at the bus depot nearest to where I live. The next day I went to the depot to collect my phone. Now, on the home screen of the phone was a photo of myself, taken in July 1991. I am seen at the summit of Diamond Head, at Waikiki, on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. I am wearing a T-shirt to prove it. (LOL.)

Anyway, the man at the lost property office brought out some phones. I pointed to the one that was mine and said, ‘That’s my one.’ He looked at the photo on the home screen and said, ‘Is this your son?’ Now, I wasn’t at all taken aback. I simply said, ‘No, that used to be me.’ I was then 36.

I remember seeing a TV show around 1983 in which the American singer Patti Page sang a song ‘The Person Who Used to Be Me’.* In this song Ms Page contrasted her then present self with black-and-white images of a much younger Page projected on a screen behind her. The images were from some of her 1950s TV shows.

Here are some of the lyrics from the song:

Who is that person on the screen?

I am sure it is someone that I’ve seen.

Though it's been so very long

And I could be very wrong

To believe that the face I see
Is the person who used to be me.

Time can play tricks on me, I know.

I have trouble now remembering the show.

Yet I’m sure I know that face

From some other time and place

That is lost in the used-to-be.

It’s the person who used to be me.

Now, do you really think you are the same person you were 5 years ago … 10 years ago ... 20 years ago? Well, in one sense you are, but in another sense you are an altogether different person both in body and in mind. Even your sense of self this very moment is different from your sense of self 10 minutes ago, or 10 seconds ago, let alone 10 or more years ago. Your sense of self is undergoing constant change as a result of every new experience. Buddha taught that the so-called ‘self’ is only an ‘aggregate’ or ‘heap’ of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations and memories. The self, in the words of Manly Palmer Hall, is nothing more than ‘a summary of what is known and what is not known’.

Each one of us is a person who recognises that there was, yesterday, and even before then, a person whose thoughts, feelings and sensations we can remember today, and THAT person each one of us regards as ourself of yesterday, and so on. As a result of this, we create a sense of self. We even come to identify with that self as us … as you and me. Nevertheless, our ‘self’ of yesterday consists of nothing more than certain mental occurrences which are later remembered as part of the person who recollects them.

Here is a short ‘sense of being meditation’ which I penned many years ago. It is designed to assist you in the task of dis-identifying with ‘the self’:

I am a person who has a body, but I am not that body.
I am a person who has a brain, but I am not that brain.
I am a person who thinks thoughts, but I am not those thoughts.
I am a person who feels feelings, but I am not those feelings.

I am a person who senses sensations, but I am not those sensations.
I am the reality of me ... the person who I am.

I am not my sense of self ... the false and illusory ‘I's’ and ‘me's’ which well up and later subside within me ... from one moment to the next.

Yes, you are a person ... a person among persons ... a vital part of life’s self-expression. You are a person who sees, thinks, feels, senses and acts. More accurately, you are a person in which there occur, from moment to moment, the various activities of seeing, thinking, feeling, sensing and acting.

P F Strawson, pictured, a British philosopher, wrote much on the subject of the person. He articulated a concept of ‘person’ in respect of which both physical characteristics and states of consciousness can be ascribed to it. Each one of us is a person among persons—a mind-body complex.

The point is this. We are much, much more than those hundreds of waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ with which we tend to identify as 'us' in the mistaken belief that they constitute the ‘real me’, that is, the person each one of us is. Only the latter is ontologically real. None of those waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ are the real person each of us is. Never forget that!

Personal freedom, as well as personal transformation, come when we start to see, think, feel, act and live from our personhood as a person among persons. We need to get our mind off our temporary, ephemeral ‘selves’. We need to rise above them if we are to get real. Self can’t change self. Why? Because self is image inside a person. It is not the real person at all. The person each one of us is can indeed change—and change for the better—if we want, that is, really want, change more than anything else and are prepared to go to any length to get it.

Finally, please also remember that there is no human problem that’s not common to other persons among persons.