Zen and the Art of My Morning Jacket

[MamaKel]

How does one practice non-attachment to things that bring them true joy?  I can understand the practice of non-attachment to that which causes suffering...which is the seeking of pleasure.  But how does one resolve the practice of non-attachment to something which has been a source of transcendent light? 

For example, Buddhists are often advised to practice non-attachment, for attachment brings with it suffering.  But are Buddhists not attached to the teachings of the Buddha?  Are they not one-in-being with the divine?  So, is it that one must simply be, and not think about the state of being?

I'm going to be totally honest, I am thinking about this in terms of My Morning Jacket.  I want to write essays under the blanket "Zen and the Art of My Morning Jacket".  And I guess I am trying to resolve that thin line between meditation and fixation.  Because meditation is kind of that process of 'being"...that point in the music, where you are just "gone"...but fixation is that point where you are kind of stuck...where you can't get past the notion of how something is supposed to be, or to sound.

So, yeah...I've got a lot of time on my hands, gang.  Would love to hear your thoughts...or verbalizations on Mind Essence...whatever the hell it's called.

[LeanneP]

I don't know if this is helpful at all, but frankly, pleasure and suffering must come with each other for life to have any meaning whatsoever.

All that non-attachment stuff is bullshit, imo. Why live a life free of pleasure and attachment in order to not experience suffering?!  What's the point to a life like that? Far better, I think, to attach oneself to lots of things and risk suffering; better to live the adage 'better to have loved and lost...' .

But then I'm a sensualist. I like to taste wonderful food and laugh loudly and often and to hug and kiss people. I life to feel stuff. Feeling stuff makes like interesting and worth living.

[MamaKel]

Damnit, Leanne...there you go rockin' my world with your face-melting wisdom again.  I will learn your ways, wise sage.

I agree with you.  But I think there is a balance.  I have a tendency to love everything so damn much that my heart breaks all day, everyday.  And I walk around wondering if that's the way it's supposed to be.  Because if I let myself, I'd ask every question and open every door and take everything in and down and kiss and touch everything I love...but that gets me into so much damn trouble...

And being an extremist by nature, I'm either all in, or nothing at all. Maybe that's my way of balancing...but goddamnit I love this band...as musicians, as people...I love their fans, I love their hearts...and sometimes it just makes me feel like I'll explode because I want all of it all the time. One big fucking holiday.

[LeanneP]

I totally understand what you are saying.  I am not good at moderation. I don't know how to have casual relationships with anything (people, chocolate, music...).

So, maybe we could learn moderation. Or we could become "zen" with the suffering. 

PS - I know you've had a really hard time lately, so my saying "be zen with the suffering" probably comes off as both cavalier and douchey. I'm sorry about that. I'm being philosophical.

[MamaKel]

A work in progress, my dear...Zen is the art of being, of perpetually becoming...

As Aristotle says, "Moderation in everything...including moderation"

(:

[LeanneP]

We need to listen to a couple other bands, too!    That will help a little with moderation.

[MamaKel]

And as our boys say..."Always starting over, but somehow I always know where to begin..."

[MamaKel]

I DO!!! I listen to everything I can all day long! But they're my drug of choice, so to speak.     They're actually my moderation. I don't party anymore, so the music is kinda my zen.

[LeanneP]

I got through funny phases where I won't do something for a really long time and then suddenly I do it all the time. Like drinking or m/j: didn't drink for a dozen years (after a really bad episode in Detroit at a Guided By Voices show *shudder*) and in the last year I've been drinking again but just with my RPG group on weekends. Haven't smoked anything in years, either, and lately it's what I do after the kids are safely asleep.

Eventually, my intense infatuation with those things will fade out and I'll feel "meh" about them again. My intense MMJ fascination will eventually dial down, too. Probably never to "meh" status, but it'll be way more normal. But, for now, I love how much I love the music because I'd lost my love of music for many years and now I'm enjoying listening and discovering again.

I think those of us who are passionate need to kind of burn off the heat of passion a little before the slow burning embers take over a little, iykwim.

  I'm interested to see your writing on the zen of being a crazy mmj fan, tho!

[MamaKel]

Yeah, I'm in my slow-burning phase.  I was in a live-fast, die young phase for most of my 20s...and there were times that it was really fun, but for the most part, it just kind of left me empty.  I am in what I call my singer-songwriter phase right now...like after the 60s were done, and a lot of musicians turned inward in the 70s.  I think that is who I really am.  I'll do rock n roll still, but I think I'm a pretty quiet person by nature, and I'm just letting myself be that.  But I can't help that I have this tendency to fall in love with things, and just absorb it until it becomes a part of me.  Sometimes, this has resulted in overexposure...but with the ones that are, what I refer to as my spiritual soul mates, the music/literature/art is like prayer to me.  You never get sick of it...because it is like an appendage.  And I feel like my spiritual test with a lot of artists is to risk losing them to passion.  If something can continue to teach and inform me long after I discover it, I consider it art that is true (at least to me).  I feel like certain art is almost holographically biblical...that it can shed light no matter what vantage point it is experienced at...

Right now, I'm not wearing rose-colored glasses, but the view is pretty good.

[Tracy 2112]

Non attachment is a tricky thing and somewhat unattainable , thus making it a life's work. Sort of like the Christian tenant of Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.

Start with not attaching judgment to your actions.

Start with doing the opposite.

Start with stepping into the fear; listen to an entire album of your least favorite music and find empathy for the people who created it. Hate comes from fear.

Start over every morning. There is no good or bad. Start there.

Namaste

[MamaKel]

Namaste, Tracy. Well said.

"Start with stepping into the fear; listen to an entire album of your least favorite music and find empathy for the people who created it. Hate comes from fear."

I have long been a believer that most negative emotions stem from fear...but I LOVE what you said about listening to your least favorite music.  That is perhaps the biggest challenge to me.  I have such a hard time with hearing, that when it is not what I want to listen to, I get so frustrated that it feels like my nerves are shot.  It's interesting how even a physical weakness or disability can be a reflection of your internal reality.

This is a really good exercise, and I thank you for enlightening me. To really love, we must begin with what we don't love.  To give validation to anything, we must start with what we invalidate. 

Shit. I just woke up, and this already has the old tugboat chuggin'. Thank you again, my friend!!!

[MamaKel]

Okay...I have a quandary...

How does one practice non-attachment when it comes to their dreams?  Because, in mediation, a large part of the aim is to dispel thoughts/feelings that linger...but as an artist/dreamer...those persistent thoughts/feelings kind of act as your guides...and while I'm aware that everyone is subject to the laws of physics (change), how do you stay true to inner vision, if your inner visions are illusions?

[MamaKel]

" I realized people are attached to their dream of existence because it has logical and interesting symbols & makes for fascinating speculation when you analyze it, but what is this after all?...mere tsorises over the details of causes and conditions without realizing that causes and conditions have no source in reality since Mind offers no such ground for illusion, are merely visionary shapes in a gray void, are not therefore to be believed in, so why consider and analyze and become interested in the unreal?  It would be like a man seeking to study visionary blossoms in the sky---I can see all my friends this minute yakking absorbedly about the details of their lives without realizing the utter unreality not only of lives, time changing them and blind Happy New Years, but of death which will still their poor puppet doll bodies...I can hear them say of me, of the Tathagata, "I couldn't be less interested."  But wisdom's in that remark."

-Jack Kerouac, Dec. 31, 1954

[MamaKel]

"You mark the distinction
    Between Ananda
And the Not-Ananda
And resent the coming-in
Of the True Ananda.
---which is the Triyaka of Mind Essence, the True Body Indivisible and Invisible.
In other words, walk down the street realizing you're not there (in essence)---no walker, no walking, nothing walked---

No Singer
No Singing      =   NIRVANA"
No Song

" I realized people are attached to their dream of existence because it has logical and interesting symbols & makes for fascinating speculation when you analyze it, but what is this after all?...mere tsorises over the details of causes and conditions without realizing that causes and conditions have no source in reality since Mind offers no such ground for illusion, are merely visionary shapes in a gray void, are not therefore to be believed in, so why consider and analyze and become interested in the unreal?  It would be like a man seeking to study visionary blossoms in the sky---I can see all my friends this minute yakking absorbedly about the details of their lives without realizing the utter unreality not only of lives, time changing them and blind Happy New Years, but of death which will still their poor puppet doll bodies...I can hear them say of me, of the Tathagata, "I couldn't be less interested."  But wisdom's in that remark."

-Jack Kerouac, Dec. 31, 1954

[MamaKel]

IPSO FACTO:

Evelyn is Not Real (Octoplasm) - My Morning Jacket

Evelyn is NOT Real...

Only the 8-Fold Path, OCTOplasm, will teach us this.

Someone let Jim know that there is no other boy, because there is no Evelyn...and there is no you to be used...nor a toy from a lover, who is also not real, to possess.  No truth to be had, and no heart to be broken.

[Tracy 2112]

IPSO FACTO:

Evelyn is Not Real (Octoplasm) - My Morning Jacket

Evelyn is NOT Real...

Only the 8-Fold Path, OCTOplasm, will teach us this.

Someone let Jim know that there is no other boy, because there is no Evelyn...and there is no you to be used...nor a toy from a lover, who is also not real, to possess.  No truth to be had, and no heart to be broken.

or not

[MamaKel]

Amen.

IPSO FACTO:

Evelyn is Not Real (Octoplasm) - My Morning Jacket

Evelyn is NOT Real...

Only the 8-Fold Path, OCTOplasm, will teach us this.

Someone let Jim know that there is no other boy, because there is no Evelyn...and there is no you to be used...nor a toy from a lover, who is also not real, to possess.  No truth to be had, and no heart to be broken.

or not

[MamaKel]

"I don't want to feel a thing."

No truer words were ever spoken.

[woodnymph]

Start with stepping into the fear; listen to an entire album of your least favorite music and find empathy for the people who created it. Hate comes from fear.

Start over every morning. There is no good or bad. Start there.

Namaste