The Mind Is of the Chattering Class
Why you should meditate
Gentle Reader,
If I were to ask you on a given day, ‘Do you like your hands?’ you are liable to give me a variety of responses.
On one day, you might say: “I like them because the callouses on my palms feel manly to the touch.”
On another day you might say: “I do not like them because their roughness reminds me of my physically demanding job.”
Overall, you probably have a sort of gestalt feeling about your hands, an overall impression that they are nice, or not nice, but this impression will be flavoured by many hues and textures, will be the sum of many declared and undeclared parts. These parts are liable to come forth at any time, revealing themselves in your answer.
Why does this matter?
It reveals not just the stochastic nature of the mind, but of reality itself. Two people can meet for a coffee on any given day, and will never have the same conversation twice. I can sit on my laptop every day trying to write a great opening chapter to a novel, and it never comes out the same. Every time I throw a balled up piece of paper into the wastebasket, it either goes in or doesn’t, in an entirely different way.
Reality is stochastic, but what interests me more is the stochastic nature of the mind. Some days, I find myself thinking: why do I continue to do my job? The hours are long, the pay is good but not amazing, and it hampers my social life. Other days I think: I like my job – the hours are long but the position is stable, they pay a decent pension, and I work with people whose company I enjoy.
Which answer is correct? Both, and neither.
The chattering mind
Have you heard of the chattering classes? Described thusly by the Cambridge dictionary:
Well-educated middle-class people who enjoy discussing political, cultural, and social matters and who express opinions on a lot of subjects.
This rather diplomatic answer hints at a sort of annoying class of people who are always giving their unsolicited opinion. These people meddle in the affairs of others and have an elitist view on topics ranging from art and politics all the way to how to eat a chocolate digestive and which way your grandmother should suck eggs.
The mind is of the chattering class. It chatters away. It’s job is to be a factory which produces thoughts. Many of these thoughts will be negatively valent (e.g. you are a deadbeat; you suck at tennis; your family is disappointed in you), and some will occasionally be positive, just to keep things interesting.
Becoming aware of this is useful. When you have a thought which might perturb you, instead of having feelings about that thought which will cause you to have a bad day, you can recognise its true nature as a consequence of the monkey mind’s production function, just another sheet of metal coming around on the conveyor belt.
The taming of the mind
The ability to discard such thoughts requires some training. This is where meditation comes in.
When you sit in silence, the conveyor belt will jank into action, sending you a stream of superficially-plausible garbage. The trained meditator sees each item coming on the conveyor belt, observes each thought, and remains undeterred.
Once you learn to do this meditating, you can begin to do it in everyday life. The end result will be that you have fewer bad days, and that you are less susceptible to the whims of your own chattering thoughts. You will become more focused in your everyday pursuits, given that setbacks are less likely to derail you and shake your state of attention, allowing you to remain fixated on the bigger picture.
In the end, you will become aware of the stochasticity and subjectivity of everything that happens under the sun, and above it. This thought framework has quite a stilling effect, and allows us to almost invert reality as we see it, moulding it to our tastes.
If, on a given day you decide that you like those callouses on your hands, because they are a testament to your diligence and work ethic, you can choose to take ownership of that story and narrative, bending a new reality for yourself in a way that makes the dance of life a little more enjoyable.