Can you relate to this cartoon? I can, only in my case it’s not my nose that goes wandering, it’s my mind.
A 2010 article in Science Magazine says,
Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and “to be here now.” These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Are they right?
That may be true for some people, but not for me. I’m with Brenda Ueland when she says,
So you see, imagination needs moodling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
And with Randy Pausch when he said,
Find your creative/thinking time. Defend it ruthlessly, spend it alone….
What about you?
September 24, 2017
I know that real meditators call it the monkey mind.
but I kind of like my monkey mind.
unless it’s just gone wild and is in an unhealthy state of worry or something.
I just let it calm down naturally and pretty soon i’m breathing slowly and enjoying the sounds outside and whatever thoughts i’m thinking.
not very enlightened I suppose. but i’m happy.
I often just think of things i’m grateful for. that helps.
LOVE the cartoon! LOL.
Why do you think that is any less enlightened? It sounds good to me.
Needless to say, I’ve been influenced by The Enlightenment as much as by Buddhism. But not believing in reincarnation, I don’t have to worry about the getting off the endless cycle of birth and death.
My mind is like all other minds and does wander even when I meditate. The trick in meditating is to bring back the wandering mind to the point of focus. With practice, staying with the focus gets longer and longer, but the mind will wander and it is perfectly natural for it to do so.
I’m afraid you missed the point of the post. Why don’t you want your mind to wander? I don’t have any trouble focusing on puzzles and technical problems. My mind doesn’t wander then, and that’s fine. Maybe it’s just that I don’t need meditation and when I’m not focusing can enjoy the richness that comes from letting my mind be free to wander and explore. The main thing is not to confuse ideas/mental images with reality.
My mind wanders, it takes me where it will, and I’m fine with that.
It’s fun, isn’t it? 🙂
Like Rummuser, I meditate, and when I do, I constantly try to bring my mind back to focus on my mantra. But, at the same time, I believe a wandering mind is part of the creative process. Can I have both?
I think we’re cheating ourselves if we don’t have both.
My wandering mind is my most creative mind. My focused mind is my most productive mind. But without the creativity what is there to produce?
So you too agree that a wandering mind is not an unhappy mind?
My mind said to my body last Friday when things went pearshaped on a certain matter “let’s go out tomorrow…and wander about, we can make some notes on where to go from here…?” The body agreed. And they set off together, quite early – actually before they had breakfast.
When they finally thought of making some notes they realised they had the pens but not the paper – so they called into “Look Sharp” (has everything that I love to wander about in…cheap/cheerful). So mind said “let’s just wander about in here, and since we’ve got a notebook, we have time…”
So the body with her mind did wander about, until the body said “actually I’m hungry, let’s go eat”…
So we did, then we wandered off on buses etc here & there, as we wandered so did our thoughts…
That was Saturday! On Tuesday we went to the place that had featured in the notes. And we wandered down library shelves, picked out the books we wanted and browsed through them…
We came home, feeling that at some point this week, we could get back in the saddle and do art-making!
Great example! We need a balance between the two.