The non egoic cowherd

Unfocused internet cruising takes the mindbrain to all manner of unnecessary places - local, national, and global. There are audio and video inputs as well as text. I often feel that I interact as a lazy, inactive observer and thus as an existential cop out.

BUT, yesterday I made a pile of about 30 books that I have recently read relating to mindfulness and to depression/ happiness. I also felt that another pile of about 20 older books dealing with ‘mind’ are now out of date.

An example of being out of date is the book by John Eccles (1989) “Evolution of the brain – creation of the self”. Eccles was an eminent neurologist who dabbled with evolution and anthropology. As well as being out of date, his writing is not as user friendly as in recent books such as Rick Hanson (2013) “Hardwiring happiness – the practical science of reshaping your brain and your life”. In comparing the two books the amazing level of progress in the last quarter century becomes apparent.

SO – I have dallied with about 60 books dealing with the mindbrain, and with many more on other topics. So I am not lazy. What about being inactive?

In earlier times I was questing to find what experts thought on a range of topics with a view to constructing lesson plans and lecture notes. This can be thought of as herding another man’s cows.

In recent times the goal is to feed the unconscious and let the creative rearrangements take care of themselves. This can be thought of not so much as herding my own cows as relaxing in the sun and letting the cows look after themselves.

That might suggest laziness but only from an egoic perspective. When there is ‘flow’ there is no ego and therefore no agent upon whom to pin the lazy label.

It now appears that the mindbrain is made up of many different modules each of which is an agent in its own right. The modules are in constant churn by way of ensuring that appropriate reactions and responses are made to external sense objects.

AND, 99.999% of mindbrain activity takes place in the unconscious. A frugal few of these activities are copied to the conscious and self conscious – usually after the event. Subjectively what seems like a self conscious giant is objectively a stunted shadow of a frugal few mindbrain entities chosen from the vast set that makes up the unconscious. Prominent amongst those is the illusory notion of an abiding ‘self’.

Such is my present world view. While sitting quietly doing nothing mindbrain stuff is generated. So there is no shrinking from the existential conundrum. Lao Tzu had a word for the process of non-egoic action – wu-wei.