Meditation 3
When sitting, just experience what it is like to sit. The experience of the color red is fundamentally different from its description, from a description of the optical system, from details of its wavelength, how it is generated – in short, everything about it except the direct perception. Similarly, there is a direct experience of sitting that is not the same as thinking about it or observing it. If the mind is thinking, the focus is not on sitting. The injunction to follow the breath is the touchstone that reminds us to stop the train of thoughts and bring attention back to the body. My point is that the experience of actually sitting, of just being there, is not one that takes place in the mind. Once you connect with that experience, thoughts will continue to arise, but they will drift away, like clouds across a mountain. And if they do carry you away, no problem. As soon as you see that, drop them and follow the breath.
One in a series of meditation posts. See the others.
• Some of the questions seem to be as much philosophical as scientific. For instance, we can dismiss the notion of the homunculus (and the notion of vision as putting a detailed image somewhere within the brain). How, then, do we characterize visual perception? We certainly see (and hear, and feel, …) the world as a result of sensory transduction and resultant brain activity. But how does our unified perceptual experience of the world emerge. We can characterize the problem as one of binding together the activity in quite distant areas of the brain. Having done so, however, does not necessarily move us closer to understanding how it all happens. Some clever researcher(s) will one day unlock that problem (and others)…maybe you’ll be one of them.