The Practicing Mind

A wise, agnostic little book that offers a hyper-relevant application of “Eastern wisdom” (i.e. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism) to our busy, stupid Western lives.

Touched on ALLLLL the things I worry about: our society-wide attention deficit disorder (thanks, peripheral-vision push notifications); the hamster wheel of materialism and lifestyle performance via social media; the mediation of our entire careers, social networks, lives by screens designed by profit-seeking platforms; MAN, I COULD GO ON AND ON AND ON. And it spoke to my deep hunger for an escape from all this: a digital sabbath, an alternative way of to be, Deep Shit and so forth.

This book would probably be valuable to anyone, and I guess a few people will be turned off by anything that smells like self-help or religion. But the basic ideas are:
- We should focus on the process, not the product, of anything: building a career, learning an instrument, building a life, being a good person. This reminded me of Confucius's “as if” rituals, and my ol' motto, fake it til you make it.
- Keep it simple, short, and slow.

Much is made of mindfulness, or flow, or mono-focus, or whatever. Indeed, maybe this book had one of the better descriptions of this concept. But the author also reminded me of how INCREDIBLY DOOMED being mindful 100% of the time is, given the way our human brains have evolved. He gave a(n excellent) description of Zen's “beginner's mind” concept: remember when you were learning to drive, and - while driving - you were effortlessly hyper-focused on it, tuning everything else out? And now, you drive + talk + listen to the radio without exerting almost any mental effort? While your brain jumps around, looking for something else to think think think? Yeah, of course, that's our brain getting bored! Learning! Getting good at shit, making patterns. It's what our brain does. It's very valuable! But that un-patterned beginner's mind is also sacred indeed, and if we could bring it to the rest of our lives, we would be much better for it: less anxious, less obsessed with fantastical futures, and so on. Anyway, it seems impossible. It also seemed like his encouragement to essentially engage in walking meditation, washing-dishes meditation, learning-piano meditation and so on was just Advanced Buddhism and thus doomed to failure for we plain dharma noobs and mortals. But maybe I speak only for my anxious, restless self!

Anyway, of course my lens was super explicitly Buddhist, but if that turns you off, there is NO MENTION of it throughout the book - you can take it as it is, as a secular philosophy for slowing down and enjoying the ride, a la Ferris Bueller. Ah yes! One more thing! I did enjoy the author's excellent koan-ish non-koan, “When is a flower perfect?” WE ARE ALL FLOWERS, ahem.