Attend to Your Mind
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, closeup. Weaving by Rami Schandall © 2021
Two threads spinning in my mind this week, let's see how well I can weave them together :-)
Last week I wrote about waves of the mind, how meaning can be understood as mental patterns that make sense of what would otherwise be overwhelming stimuli. Pattern comforts even with implied meaning. I feel a sense of peace and satisfaction when I discover resonances between what I am paying attention to, and the tangible world outside of myself, as if my mind and environment are in alignment. We read meaning into pattern, make order even if the data is purely random.
Human psychology is primed to see and read pattern. This ability supports adaptation, helps us to recognize, learn, and discern in complex environments — what is safe, what is food, what is good. Culture itself can be thought of as clusters of patterns of behaviour and belief — each culture a kaleidoscopic fragment of vast human potential, no culture ever expressing all the adaptive possibilities.*
Within a culture, pattern is imbued with meaning, and that meaning deepens through repetition of practice or ritual, and through teaching those patterns, reflecting upon their shared meaning. These are fundamental human strategies for getting along together, and for working with the discomfort of uncertainty, the pain of change, and fear of the pain of change. They are strategies at the cultural, interpersonal level, and intrapersonal.**
Into these thoughts on pattern, let's weave the second thread — a teaching I heard yesterday from dear Anam Thubten, the gentle lama who is the main buddha dharma teacher I follow these days. The teaching is simple —and not—as always!
Who is your best friend?
Mind.
Who is your worst enemy?
Mind.
Attend to your mind.
There are so many responses that are automatic (autonomic) in our physiology, and in our beautiful neurology. And there are many ways that our responses are plastic — adaptable. We have many ways to attend to the mind+body. When we study the patterns and waves of mind, in creative work, in psychotherapy, in somatic practices like yoga, in meditation, we may learn to discern: how do the waves form in response to triggers (stimuli), what are our belief patterns that find meaning in those waves, what are cultural or personal mental patterns, and where do we have choice in this? This study, some learning, some change, is within our power as sentient beings.
I hope you are finding moments of peace in your days, whatever the shape of the waves!
* Riffing on ideas from anthropologist Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture.
**Care is needed with the dark side of this pattern-recognition super-power — confirmation bias, and the rigidity that comes with holding on, tight and intolerant, to the patterns of belief we prefer.
