Walking Through Traffic
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Out on a busy street and torn between two plans, a student asks how to be with a busy mind. The teacher explores how interpretation turns outer chaos into inner chaos, how the mind invents false choices, and how much of life is already being chosen without our involvement.
Walking Through Traffic
Out on a busy street and torn between two plans, a student asks how to be with a busy mind. The teacher explores how interpretation turns outer chaos into inner chaos, how the mind invents false choices, and how much of life is already being chosen without our involvement.
I'm out at the moment, so I'm coming in with a bit of a busy mind. I've had quite a busy day, and I find myself pulled in different directions. Lately I've been trying to be fully with whatever is happening. If my mind is busy, I try not to pretend it should be somewhere else. I just stay with it: okay, this is what's happening. My thoughts are more active, there's more going on around me, and maybe the rest of you are in a slower state of mind. I'm trying to recognize that there are these different aspects of us, and to notice that a busy mind isn't bad, isn't shameful, and doesn't necessarily say anything about who we are. I've been paying attention to these states and simply noticing them. If I'm using a mantra or singing a song, I slowly notice my thoughts passing, and as I notice them passing, I can also notice them slowing down. But sometimes I get pulled. Sometimes it feels like I should be somewhere else. I'm curious what you have to say.
When you're out in the middle of busyness, as you are now, you could be on a busy street with heavy traffic, or on a busy corner, or in an office. There's a lot of noise, a lot of people, a lot of action and movement. Chaos, or organized chaos. You can walk through that. You can cross the street and not be too bothered by the traffic. Or you can be bothered: everything is too much, it's overwhelming, it's a problem. Or you can simply walk through. The light turns green, you cross the street, and it might be Times Square in Manhattan, or, for those of us who've been to India, a busy street in India, which is another level of chaos.
Interpretation makes chaos internal
The mind is really the same. It depends on the interpretation. If one interprets the chaos of the street as something that shouldn't be happening, or "I shouldn't be here," or "This is too much for me," then the chaos becomes internal, because there's a struggle with what's happening. I'm crossing a busy street and thinking this street shouldn't be busy, it should be different, the sounds are too much, and I want it to be different. Then that external chaos becomes an internal chaos. But it's only the interpretation.
The same happens with the mind. In certain circumstances the mind can be very active. If we interpret that this should not be the case, that I should be calm, or if we identify with the mind ("It's my mind, and the state of the mind reflects what I am"), then that will be made real, in a sense. It isn't real. That interpretation alone is the problem.
Right. Sometimes we obsess over a situation that gets a bit sticky. It's happening to me today. I had a situation with a friend: am I going to make plans, not make plans, change my plans? When I change the plans, part of my mind is still sticking to what could have been with this friend, while another part has already decided to do something else. There's still attachment, still a desire to go with the original plan. It feels sticky, but I'm trying to see it as a natural stickiness, nothing unusual.
Yes, that's the natural experience of circumstances that are a little tricky or unclear, where plans change and so on. It's about letting what we really want become clear. What is the deepest desire? When the deepest desire is revealed, the decision happens automatically, or rather the right decision does, unless there's a lot of fear. Then that needs to be seen.
What is moving and choosing
It's similar to what I said before. If we interpret that we are the mind, and the mind is very active, we will feel awkward and distressed. The limitation "What I am is this body, this mind," the creation of that illusion, making it real, interpreting it to be reality, makes the conditioning, the body, and the mind operate under that assumption. So they operate through a mechanism of limitation and distress. The more reality is seen, the more it is seen that what we are is not that, the more the body and mind are enabled and released to operate in alignment with reality, with freedom, with wisdom.
In a sense, this whole process of awakening involves two opposing poles or forces. On one side is operating as limited. The body-mind has its programming: the instincts, the genes, and the conditionings of the mind that come from our past. If that limitation is taken as totally and absolutely real, then that mechanism of choosing and behavior is fully active. The more it is seen that this is not what we are, the more something else is, let's say, in charge. Something else starts to move. Then the conditionings that are more like software can change, and those that are more like instinctual habits can be overridden.
So what you're sharing, the changing choices and the struggle around them, has to do with what you are and what is moving. What is the reality that is operating? Is it an absolutely and totally limited, separate body-mind in time? Or is there some mystery of not knowing what you are, even if just a bit more, and then a bit more, not knowing what and who you are? Then that not knowing what we are starts to be what moves, what chooses. Externally, that can be recognized as wisdom. It is experienced as flow, well-being, and peace, even if only at times, only glimpsed, but potentially more and more.
Can I share the two choices? One is a two-day trip to the desert with about sixty other people, going with a friend of mine. The other is a job opportunity. Both involve stepping outside into the mystery, into something that could go either way. Both are growth opportunities with their own depth of experience. One might be more pleasurable and fun. The other leans toward structure and maturity, in a sense. Both are valuable. It feels like a big thing in my head, though I know it isn't really a big deal either way.
False dichotomies
Is it really a choice? By that I mean: is it one or the other? Can it be both?
That's an interesting question.
The mind tends to create these false dichotomies. It might be a real choice, but often it isn't.
Right. People call it FOMO.
FOMO is a little different. If it really is a choice, I would need to spend time with all the details before offering any recommendation, and that's for another place. But generally speaking, you can look at what feels more expansive and what feels more scary, what requires more courage. That's more likely the better direction, if it is ultimately a real choice between one or the other. Otherwise, do both. And you might then realize, "Actually, I'm not that interested in that other one. It was only interesting because of the false dichotomy." That's where the FOMO you mention comes in. If I see a false dichotomy, meaning the sense that I have to choose between two things, and then realize I can do both, I may find that one of them isn't that interesting after all. It was only interesting because it wasn't an option. That's the FOMO creeping in.
The bookshelf of DVDs
I'll tell you a story. Decades ago I was with my teacher at one of his houses, a vacation house, and we would watch a movie every night from his collection of DVDs. He had a big bookshelf full of them. I went with him to that room to pick one, and he said, "Okay, you choose." The whole family would be watching, and in that moment it was my choice. Then he said, very spontaneously, "Everything to the left of here is not available. Only from here to the right." Instantly, that's what I wanted. My eyes went straight to where I couldn't go, and I said, "Oh, but the one I really want is over there." He called it out immediately: "That's your mind." It was all in a spirit of playfulness, but he was always teaching. It was very, very revealing.
The mind is always looking for what it doesn't have.
In a way, but it's more complex than that. Even the sense of there being a choice is involved. When he said those weren't an option, they were no longer in the game we were playing. So why was there a desire for them? And why only at that moment? There was a longing for something I hadn't experienced as needed or wanted until it was removed.
That's why I would first see whether it's really a dichotomy. If he had then said, "Actually, now you can choose anything," I might still have chosen from the side that was allowed. I was only drawn to the other side because it wasn't allowed.
Right. When the choice was offered to me, it suddenly felt like I wasn't allowed to choose the thing I really wanted.
Yes. So consider that both are possible and you can do both. Then which one do you prioritize? Which one is preferred? It's all playing with the mind, understanding and seeing through how the mind operates and how we use it to create illusions. Even the interpretation that the mind is tricking us is an illusion. We are the ones using it to create an illusion.
It's fascinating. So in that sense, even slowing down the mind isn't necessarily a choice. It's just something that happens, and it doesn't really affect our choices.
Yes, one hundred percent. The whole notion that if the mind isn't calm, something needs to be done, something isn't right, is an illusion.
Crossing traffic in India
As I said, metaphorically, you can walk through a busy street and be completely calm. You can cross traffic in India absolutely calm, just very careful and moving the right way. That's actually the best way to cross. As soon as a pedestrian, usually a tourist, gets nervous on a street in India, they get hit, because they start moving in nervous, rapid, fearful ways. The drivers are used to predicting a pedestrian's movement, and if the pedestrian is erratic, they can't predict it. That's when people get hit. There are motorcycles, bicycles, cars, tuk-tuks, and buses, all going in the wrong direction, crossing lanes where there are no lanes. But if you walk very carefully and calmly, they all dodge you. It's like dodging bullets. You have to be calm and move in careful, steady steps so they can anticipate where you're going.
Right. Sometimes the moment you have a fearful thought, you stare at the driver, he stares at you, and it's "Oh no."
And the metaphor for your mind is that as soon as you try to control the traffic, the traffic of thought, you get into trouble. You just need to observe it and recognize: that's a bus, that's a car, this one is going that way. You calmly observe and move through it. That's a fear thought. That's an illusion. This is an assumption.
Effort in practice
I have another question. When you're starting out with meditation, you can't be conscious the entire day, because your mind isn't used to being aware. So you have to be very gentle. You have a moment of meditation, and then you're surrendering to whatever is here. At some point, putting unnecessary, overly conscious effort into what's happening isn't good.
Let's refine the semantics a little, because we use the word "consciousness" in different ways. I understand your usage, but it can mean very different things. When you speak of being conscious during the day or not, I would rather say being in illusion or not. Meditation, which you could call a practice, is the approach of observing illusion and recognizing illusion. Whether you're moving or living, you are conscious. Consciousness is, even when asleep.
What can happen is that, for that which we are, there can be an appeal to illusions. When that is happening, there is a sense of suffering, a sense of something missing, which is like a calling for freedom. What we are is already free. What can happen is that the illusion can be seen: the illusion that something is missing, the illusion of being a mind, or a person in thought, or an object of thought.
I'm saying this because seeing things a little differently actually helps with what you're asking. If we believe consciousness is gained or attained through a practice of calming the mind, for example, that's an infinite loop.
Calm as contrast, not the goal
It does help, though. When there are a bazillion illusions, like the traffic in India, it's harder to see them all for what they are. That's why it helps to have moments of contrast where one can be calm, look at the one truck, and say, "Okay, now I understand the illusion of that. I see it." That's why calm settings for meditation and this kind of exploration, which calm the mind and body, are useful. But calm is not an end in itself. The end is to be able to walk through traffic, see all of the illusions, and walk calmly through them.
In today's society there are so many choices and so many illusions passing so quickly that there can be almost an addiction to wanting nothing, just peace of mind, always. I've been in a place where I didn't leave my room, as if the outside were too much.
Yes. It's a sense of peace of mind, but it's a misinterpretation, because it's an addiction to a state of mind that is identified with, or assumed to be, peace. There is a well-being and a peace that is possible which has nothing to do with a state of mind.
I'm curious about that.
What I'm calling possible is actually already actual. What's possible is for it to be recognized.
Right. When I say I'm curious, I mean I like popping my own balloons. I thought it had to be one way, and suddenly I'm noticing all the ways it could also be.
The choices that make themselves
It's simple. You mentioned all the choices in the day, the complexity, the overwhelm of choices. When you walk or ride a bicycle, are you consciously activating every single muscle that's needed? Or is something in the body-mind doing it, while you simply experience it as it happens? If you really consider all the muscle activation needed to walk, does walking seem like an overwhelming experience of choices?
Sometimes. In today's society it feels like we're overly aware of everything.
Really? If you were to stand up, walk ten feet forward, and come back, would the choice of every muscle feel overwhelming?
Oh, no. I'm not aware of every individual muscle. I couldn't be.
Exactly. Every choice of muscle activation is happening, and you're neither bothered by it, nor aware of it, nor overwhelmed by it. The body-mind has the capability of making millions of choices. There may be a sense of "I'm choosing to go over there," but that's a very high-level movement. Underneath it is the orchestration of every neuron firing and every muscle activating. I use this example because it's an actual experience. If you had never had this human experience and I described what walking involves, you might imagine it to be completely overwhelming. How could anyone make all those muscle choices at the speed required?
What I'm getting is that we're conscious of what we choose to be conscious of.
I'm also saying that it's not so much about consciousness. It's about the nature of reality, and the reality of body and mind, where many choices happen without your involvement, without needing your involvement. The assumption that your involvement is needed, that you are the gatekeeper of every choice, is not true. So you can go about your day and start to realize that many choices happen in the same way, no longer only in walking but in living, in work, in relationships.
Two ends of the spectrum
In fact, there are two ends of a spectrum. At one end, we can be completely identified, in total illusion. From that perspective there are no choices, because the body-mind conditioning predefines every choice. At the other end, when we're more fully disidentified, it comes back to there being no choices, but now it comes from mystery, from what can be described or seen as wisdom.
In the middle is the process of discovering the illusions and the freedoms. Then the body and mind do shift, so that the moving, the choosing, all of it, starts to happen not from preconditioned mechanisms but more from a spontaneous wisdom: more connected and aligned with totality, less based on body-mind fear.
That was beautiful. I want to leave time in case someone else has a question.
Thank you. It's been great. Thank you for stepping up.