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My mind is not a monkey
Feb. 22nd, 2021 10:11 amYou know the Buddhism-derived notion that our minds are monkeys screeching, scratching, leaping, and crashing-about in fantastic distraction, an unstopperable barrel of chaos? Is it actually accurate?
I had always unquestioningly accepted the monkey's aptness as a metaphor to describe the workings of the (typically busy) human mind. But I recently discovered that it doesn't describe my experience well -- not because I've quieted my internal chatter or reached some sort of Zen tranquility of thought, but because monkeys are pretty much outside my realm of experience (with the exception of a few unnerving incidents in Southeast Asia, which may have more to do with this than I'm admitting) and I think it might be more useful to look right in front of our noses to see what the universe is trying to show us about ourselves.
My mind, it turns out, is a dog.
It'll take a little bit of effort to get into the nuances of the comparison (and no, it's not just that dogs like to roll in poop, though a case could be made that the human mind does as well - no, there's more to it than that), so let's see if I can adequately express the logic, which might go a bit against common dog tropes.
I subscribe to the theory that the human-canine connection was seeded by a shared complex of need/passion manifested in the hunt, rather than that some random occurrence of picking up a puppy or four at the nearest wolf den caused canine domestication.
Wolves (and by extrapolation, proto-dogs and dogs) are energized by and live for the collectively-created hunt that allows them to experience themselves as simultaneously one-with-the-group and a group of one-mind. Humans, likewise, are hunters by nature. It's something we desire. Hunting is hunting, gathering is hunting. Crafting and art are hunting (for the imaged thing to reveal itself in the material). Education is hunting (see the elder pointing out the quarry, see the learner searching, observing, capturing, using). Courtship is hunting. Driving is hunting (for the route that generates seamless flow and in the end, a parking space). Obviously shopping is hunting.
(Momentary tangent: In an untested grand theory of everything related to learning, I speculate that every learning activity undertaken by a human is actually language learning. Even skills - for skills to be learned, we must learn to comprehend and express a specific pattern that we learn like a language - vocabulary, grammar, syntax, all are involved. Anyway, in a kind of interlocked way, we're frequently hunting for the right way to express what we know, as I am here in this post).
Well, my big aha moment came when I realized that so, too, internet surfing is hunting. The mind doesn't distinguish between productive hunting and ... flabby hunting (for lack of an immediately-to-mind better term). I saw my periodic forays "down the rabbit hole" quite literally. Was I not searching for some integral fulfillment that was buoyed by the search itself and the potential of catching the appetite-whetting, momentarily satiating prey - the information, the knowledge, the comment or community, that could/would make the search worthwhile? The very search revealed its role in stimulating the hunter-instinct. Ultimately, online surfing is a kind of pseudo-hunt, though the average mind doesn't recognize it. But I'm jumping ahead by equating this with the mind. Let's go back to dogs and humans.
As the modern world's superabundant, poorly-trained-dog can attest, a dog's drive to hunt, when not properly channeled, looks like distraction, like "oh squirrel!" and leash-tugging, like running away from the owner because there are scents on other winds and scurrying animals over other hills! A properly trained dog requires a properly trained human so that the drive to hunt, the "pack's" intention, is directed toward a suitable goal and they can join together. What's worth noting is that in many cases, the outcome isn't the motivating factor - the experience of the sublime (for that is what flow/communion are) is more powerful than catching, killing, consuming (though there's a link with the communion-community-communication aspect). If you have two items of high value to a dog (two sticks, or tennis balls, or what have you) and you play fetch with a dog, it'll drop the first target as soon as it sees you ready to launch the second. Likewise, a wolf pack moves in utter harmony, accessing deep sensitivity and sensibility while on the hunt. As soon as the kill is made, the squabbling starts back up and the (less fun) hierarchy reasserts itself. On the trail and during the hunt, though, each wolf flows into position irrespective of social position. Wolves track and hunt even when they're not hungry - and they may not even go for the kill. That's not totally relevant to the topic other than to point out that it's the hunt that is the wolves' true passion.*
So, if this metaphor is to hold, what does it suggest if I say the mind is a dog? Why is this useful? It suggests that the hunting-mind is trainable or redirectable. The will, as handler, can be shaped to take advantage of this. No longer must the assumption be that the choice is only between the untrained troupe of havoc-wreaking monkeys and the detachedly mindful monk who sees but ignores the rumpus. It suggests a long, strong, relationship between human (will) and dog (mind) that can give both parties what they seek through their shared love (heart) - directed goals, enspiriting/inspiring seeking, and continued opportunity to engage and connect and improve the hunting capacity.
The mind can hunt themes and ideas, it can hunt ideals and skills, new topics of study, or revisits of old subjects that might yield new spoor. Seeing my mind as a dog who WANTS to hunt (to run, to pursue, to be on point) but who is constantly drawn by other potentialities and new prey allows me to understand why I conceive of stories and build worlds and characters and plots, write them partially, then drop them for other projects and ideas and stories. It acknowledges the motivations (or lack thereof) that have me dawdling over reading Hawking and that has thus tied up my forward momentum on the trivium project.
It explains my meandering, wandering nature (there's a reason for my avatar) but also the territory I circle, nose to the ground, that reins the distraction in somewhat and contains it in the landscape-of-meaningfulness I've defined for myself.
In the long run, with the help of spiritual and personal-development practices, I'm training my dog-mind to learn to follow through to complete the tasks my will sets. It's taken a very long time to get all my players (will, heart, mind) on board with the program, but that's one of the things I'm fated to work with in this life. Meanwhile, sheer doggedness (heh) keeps me keeping on trying.
-----
* Please don't roll your eyes too hard at my folly. What really happened was that (as I mentioned in my previous post) I recalled a book I'd read and I dug around to remember the title and author (Natural Dog Training, by Kevin Behan), then I dug around to find what else he'd written and what his writings had spawned for others. And then I was totally on some sort of weird quest to absorb as much as I could about the natural dog training method. A lot of it, to the casual observer or one who comes to the topic with preconceived dog-notions, looks incomprehensible. Some unsophisticated video work presents it kind of incoherently and unflatteringly - except that with my new-found familiarity with beginner level occultism, I sensed something very profound in what Behan was talking about in terms of energy and dog-cognition, about emotion as connected with complex (evolved) energy and sense-ability, about overcoming resistance and grounding energy, and about the dog as a feeling creature rather than a thinking creature (etheric as opposed to mental-plane existence). It was a deep rabbit hole but my experience being on the trail through it is actually what brought home to me the fittingness of the dog as metaphor for mind. Behan's second book is called Your Dog is Your Mirror - though he didn't have exactly this parallel in mind, he came pretty close via the other direction. At first, I thought myself ridiculous (but somehow couldn't stop the hunt) throughout the process because I actually don't even have a dog (what am I chasing here? I wondered). Yet somehow this was an incredibly fulfilling, nourishing exploration in and of itself and also because this is what I found.
I had always unquestioningly accepted the monkey's aptness as a metaphor to describe the workings of the (typically busy) human mind. But I recently discovered that it doesn't describe my experience well -- not because I've quieted my internal chatter or reached some sort of Zen tranquility of thought, but because monkeys are pretty much outside my realm of experience (with the exception of a few unnerving incidents in Southeast Asia, which may have more to do with this than I'm admitting) and I think it might be more useful to look right in front of our noses to see what the universe is trying to show us about ourselves.
My mind, it turns out, is a dog.
It'll take a little bit of effort to get into the nuances of the comparison (and no, it's not just that dogs like to roll in poop, though a case could be made that the human mind does as well - no, there's more to it than that), so let's see if I can adequately express the logic, which might go a bit against common dog tropes.
I subscribe to the theory that the human-canine connection was seeded by a shared complex of need/passion manifested in the hunt, rather than that some random occurrence of picking up a puppy or four at the nearest wolf den caused canine domestication.
Wolves (and by extrapolation, proto-dogs and dogs) are energized by and live for the collectively-created hunt that allows them to experience themselves as simultaneously one-with-the-group and a group of one-mind. Humans, likewise, are hunters by nature. It's something we desire. Hunting is hunting, gathering is hunting. Crafting and art are hunting (for the imaged thing to reveal itself in the material). Education is hunting (see the elder pointing out the quarry, see the learner searching, observing, capturing, using). Courtship is hunting. Driving is hunting (for the route that generates seamless flow and in the end, a parking space). Obviously shopping is hunting.
(Momentary tangent: In an untested grand theory of everything related to learning, I speculate that every learning activity undertaken by a human is actually language learning. Even skills - for skills to be learned, we must learn to comprehend and express a specific pattern that we learn like a language - vocabulary, grammar, syntax, all are involved. Anyway, in a kind of interlocked way, we're frequently hunting for the right way to express what we know, as I am here in this post).
Well, my big aha moment came when I realized that so, too, internet surfing is hunting. The mind doesn't distinguish between productive hunting and ... flabby hunting (for lack of an immediately-to-mind better term). I saw my periodic forays "down the rabbit hole" quite literally. Was I not searching for some integral fulfillment that was buoyed by the search itself and the potential of catching the appetite-whetting, momentarily satiating prey - the information, the knowledge, the comment or community, that could/would make the search worthwhile? The very search revealed its role in stimulating the hunter-instinct. Ultimately, online surfing is a kind of pseudo-hunt, though the average mind doesn't recognize it. But I'm jumping ahead by equating this with the mind. Let's go back to dogs and humans.
As the modern world's superabundant, poorly-trained-dog can attest, a dog's drive to hunt, when not properly channeled, looks like distraction, like "oh squirrel!" and leash-tugging, like running away from the owner because there are scents on other winds and scurrying animals over other hills! A properly trained dog requires a properly trained human so that the drive to hunt, the "pack's" intention, is directed toward a suitable goal and they can join together. What's worth noting is that in many cases, the outcome isn't the motivating factor - the experience of the sublime (for that is what flow/communion are) is more powerful than catching, killing, consuming (though there's a link with the communion-community-communication aspect). If you have two items of high value to a dog (two sticks, or tennis balls, or what have you) and you play fetch with a dog, it'll drop the first target as soon as it sees you ready to launch the second. Likewise, a wolf pack moves in utter harmony, accessing deep sensitivity and sensibility while on the hunt. As soon as the kill is made, the squabbling starts back up and the (less fun) hierarchy reasserts itself. On the trail and during the hunt, though, each wolf flows into position irrespective of social position. Wolves track and hunt even when they're not hungry - and they may not even go for the kill. That's not totally relevant to the topic other than to point out that it's the hunt that is the wolves' true passion.*
So, if this metaphor is to hold, what does it suggest if I say the mind is a dog? Why is this useful? It suggests that the hunting-mind is trainable or redirectable. The will, as handler, can be shaped to take advantage of this. No longer must the assumption be that the choice is only between the untrained troupe of havoc-wreaking monkeys and the detachedly mindful monk who sees but ignores the rumpus. It suggests a long, strong, relationship between human (will) and dog (mind) that can give both parties what they seek through their shared love (heart) - directed goals, enspiriting/inspiring seeking, and continued opportunity to engage and connect and improve the hunting capacity.
The mind can hunt themes and ideas, it can hunt ideals and skills, new topics of study, or revisits of old subjects that might yield new spoor. Seeing my mind as a dog who WANTS to hunt (to run, to pursue, to be on point) but who is constantly drawn by other potentialities and new prey allows me to understand why I conceive of stories and build worlds and characters and plots, write them partially, then drop them for other projects and ideas and stories. It acknowledges the motivations (or lack thereof) that have me dawdling over reading Hawking and that has thus tied up my forward momentum on the trivium project.
It explains my meandering, wandering nature (there's a reason for my avatar) but also the territory I circle, nose to the ground, that reins the distraction in somewhat and contains it in the landscape-of-meaningfulness I've defined for myself.
In the long run, with the help of spiritual and personal-development practices, I'm training my dog-mind to learn to follow through to complete the tasks my will sets. It's taken a very long time to get all my players (will, heart, mind) on board with the program, but that's one of the things I'm fated to work with in this life. Meanwhile, sheer doggedness (heh) keeps me keeping on trying.
-----
* Please don't roll your eyes too hard at my folly. What really happened was that (as I mentioned in my previous post) I recalled a book I'd read and I dug around to remember the title and author (Natural Dog Training, by Kevin Behan), then I dug around to find what else he'd written and what his writings had spawned for others. And then I was totally on some sort of weird quest to absorb as much as I could about the natural dog training method. A lot of it, to the casual observer or one who comes to the topic with preconceived dog-notions, looks incomprehensible. Some unsophisticated video work presents it kind of incoherently and unflatteringly - except that with my new-found familiarity with beginner level occultism, I sensed something very profound in what Behan was talking about in terms of energy and dog-cognition, about emotion as connected with complex (evolved) energy and sense-ability, about overcoming resistance and grounding energy, and about the dog as a feeling creature rather than a thinking creature (etheric as opposed to mental-plane existence). It was a deep rabbit hole but my experience being on the trail through it is actually what brought home to me the fittingness of the dog as metaphor for mind. Behan's second book is called Your Dog is Your Mirror - though he didn't have exactly this parallel in mind, he came pretty close via the other direction. At first, I thought myself ridiculous (but somehow couldn't stop the hunt) throughout the process because I actually don't even have a dog (what am I chasing here? I wondered). Yet somehow this was an incredibly fulfilling, nourishing exploration in and of itself and also because this is what I found.
