Mind vs Grape Jelly 101
Most mornings - I’d say somewhere between 300 to 330 of the annual 365 days- I sit for the first couple of hours in order to practice and meditate. Some of those mornings, I spend an inordinate amount of time in conversation with my self, either sorting things out or talking different scenarios out. It is mostly garbage. Generally speaking, this running away of my mind is caused by some part of it wanting to either express or make sense of stress.
Admittedly, truckloads, boatloads, oceans of thought-stream garbage during the attempt to meditate is not helpful and can actually be harmful on the path to liberating the self or dissolving the self. So I don’t tell my teacher about this and he doesn’t ask, which makes me think that this sort of Mind-running -away-with-a-thought is probably a very normal beast that most people deal with.
During one of these garbage runs, I wanted to find a way to describe the nature of the mind, just in case a yoga student ever asked me in class. I remember the scenario popping into my head, I imagined it would be the wise, 80+ year old student who attends on the regular. I imagined he’d say, “Teach me something really Buddhist.” So that made me beg the question - what’s really Buddhist and how can I explain it in three to five minutes?
One thing that’s really Buddhist is the idea that the Mind is luminous and indestructible by nature. Like, definitively so.
Indestructible is a high hurdle, to say the least. The Mind’s indestructible nature is often compared to lightning. There’s no destroying lightning. I haven’t talked to any physicists about whether tests have been done on this, but I welcome any future conversation with them. So, as far as I know, lightning remains something that we can’t destroy. It’s also luminous in the most basic sense that it manifests as light.
Comparative study can be helpful, so I went ahead and picked something I could reasonably assert some kind of definition of its nature. Grape Jelly came to mind, probably because it’s something I’ve known since really early on- I’ve known it long enough to be fairly sure of what it is. From my own experience, and you are welcome to argue with me, Grape Jelly is, by nature, somewhat gelatinous, sweet, spreadable, and gooey. Like, definitively so.
So Mind has a nature and Grape Jelly has a nature. Mind can be gelatinous, sweet, spreadable, and gooey. It can even color itself purple. I’ll offer that Grape Jelly can, on a really good day, be luminous. If it’s in a crystal bowl that’s reflecting the light of the sun, Grape Jelly could appear luminous, not of it’s own doing, but let’s give it that, for argument’s sake. However, Grape Jelly is not indestructible.
Take Grape Jelly and put it in a hot pan on the stove. It will melt, maybe boil, maybe become a burnt char in the pan depending on how high the heat is for how long. It will no longer be Grape Jelly. After even a short time on low heat it will become a more liquid state of a grape-jelly-tasting-thing that is no longer a spreadable goo. At high heat for longer periods, it will become unrecognizable. In any of these cases, the Grape Jelly in that pan will never return to its definitive nature.
Put the Mind in a hot pan on the stove, even a metaphorical hot stove, Mind might get hot, Mind might boil, Mind might burn to a charred state, but take it out of the pan, it will return to being just Mind- free to run, jump, play, pray, talk ad nauseam to the self, examine YouTube interviews of Prince, worry, envy, love, hate, etc. Further, I’d argue that while Mind is in the hot pan, it is still free to do all that other stuff, though the channel or habit focusing on the hot pan condition might make it act like its tunnel-visioned.
Put Grape Jelly under pressure. A particle physicist can probably think of a better method than I can, but I’ll propose we put it in cheese cloth wrapped in canvas, inside a thick plastic bag, then close the whole thing in the jaws of a metal vice. Undo the vice, turn the contained jelly package, and repeat until we are satisfied that we have applied a lot of pressure to the Grape Jelly over and over. The Grape Jelly will no longer be the spreadable sweet somewhat gelatinous goo it was. Much of its water content will have been squeezed out, and it certainly won’t be spreadable on your bread. Pressure will have made it into something that is no longer Grape Jelly.
Put Mind under pressure. Make your mind fit for a year into a very limiting job. Like being the manager of one Excel spreadsheet that only calculates one thing, say two identical cells as True. One cell will have a 3 in it, the cell below it will have an identical 3 in it. The final cell will have an if/then formula that will reflect the word “True” when the first and second cell have identical values, which they do. Lets say for 40 hours a week every day for one year you are under contract to reference only this one spreadsheet, to consider it, think about it, make it live and breath. Present its content in multiple weekly meetings in which you are required to find new ways of making it palpable and interesting, thereby paying your mortgage. At the same time, make your mind deal with your looming divorce, the loss of your beloved pet, and the very real threat that the bank is going to foreclose on your house because your contract with the spreadsheet job was for one year and you haven’t fessed up to your overbearing boss who holds great personal disdain for you anyway, that you accidentally deleted the last cell in the spreadsheet three months ago, which makes you in breach of contract, and you haven’t eaten in two days and you have to pee.
Then, one year and a day from the start of your contract with this soul-sucking job, you are free to leave it and you walk away, eat, and pee. You are still getting a divorce, and you are still grieving the loss of your pet. But some pressure is off. Mind is still free to run, jump, play, pray, watch Prince on YouTube, hate, envy, plan what you think is a very reasonable scenario for the “accidental” death of your former boss. Mind still has its nature. It’s still moving, still figuring, reckoning. Great pressure does not destroy it. Great pressure might create certain pathways for it to go into if left to it’s own devices, but its nature, how it moves and what its made of, is not broken.