Insight-Seeing

What a busy long weekend it has been for me. I had earlier planned to write my weekly blogpost on Friday when I was on leave but other urgent matters overtook me and I had to attend to them first. Thankfully all that is settled now, and finally I have a chance to reflect on things.

Last week, I talked about attention as being key. When we pay attention, we are minimising noise and ensuring the quality of input data. The neural network of the mind does the rest. It sounds pretty simple. What I've not mentioned as a corollary of that principle is that, we are also being non-judgmental and non-attached when we pay pure attention.

Judging means applying some kind of logic and moral algorithm to process the input information. No, we don't need that at this stage. That is application specific. When we are learning, all accurate data is good data. We don't filter, eliminate or transform them.  Let our deep learning network within be the 'judge'.

Part of the value of taking a break and going on a vacation is being able to get fresh input data. When on vacation, we enjoy new sights and sensations. The mind has a natural tendency to crave for novelty. This 'craving',  given a positive spin, is simply curiosity. Anything that's familiar and mundane is automatically pushed to the background. When too much of the familiar is repeated, we enter into a state called 'boredom'. 

We take sight-seeing as a kind of recreation, which all humans  enjoy as part of the good life. If we think about it, why should we waste time gawking artificial statues and other kitschy constructions made to pander to tourists who are only interested in taking selfies and boasting about what a good time they are having in social media? 

Do we learn anything from these kind of sight-seeing vacations? You might ask: why do we need to be such a boring spoilsport to insist that anything we do must be 'educational' and 'useful'? Why can't we relax and enjoy doing something that doesn't have any purpose for once? 

I'm all for doing 'useless' activities, as long as one enjoys it. What I probably would suggest is perhaps we could also kill two birds with one stone: dumb activities could also be useful data for the neural network, which we call the mind. 

We can enjoy doing silly things but be mindful at the same time. We can be attentive, even when we 'let go'.  When we are attentive in anything, we always gain insight into things. Insight is like a phase shift in the mind: a new pattern suddenly emerges out or chaos; the cumulative succession of things and events reveal a larger picture, hitherto hidden. Insight is emergent. 

Even the most mundane things we do, have the potential to give us great insight into life and the universe. The mind simply has to be tuned to receive them. Sometimes we call these insights 'inspiration'. 

Mindful attention is a quality of mind that comes with practice. There's a sensitivity and sharpness to one's perception that grow over time. How do we cultivate that?  One becomes attentive by not being goal-oriented at every moment in time. Goals are macroscopic conceptions. When we look at every moment of our experience, there's no such thing as goals, hopes or fears. The moment is as it is. We take it in its totality and move on to the next.

When we do that, we are attentive to the moment and all the sights and sounds that wash over us. Let them nourish the mind. Enjoy your vacation by taking a cosmic selfie every moment of your time. It's called insight-seeing.