(previous installment here)
Joseph Goldstein: I’ll give you an example of something you have experienced. When you’re listening to music, your mind is quiet, it’s concentrated on the music. Is your mind grasping at any one particular note you know? Probably not.
Wright: Actually, different music is kind of different.
Joseph Goldstein: But you have at least had some experience of being in that space of openness where the music is just flowing; the experience of the music is flowing.
Wright: Yes, but there are parts of the song that feel really good, and I want them to come, you know?
Joseph Goldstein: OK. Does the wanting them to come enhance your enjoyment of them when they’re there?
Wright: That’s a good question. It’s hard to say, because I’ve never let go of the wanting.
Joseph Goldstein: OK. Well I’ll suggest something even further. It may be that in the moment of wanting it to come, you’re missing the joy and the beauty of what’s actually there in the moment. Because in those times of wanting you are not fully open to hearing what is present, because the mind is engaged in wanting; and so it’s like you’re closing off to what’s here, in anticipation of what’s coming. What’s coming will come anyway, and you will have that enjoyment.
Wright: That’s true, although it always seems like — the degree of gratification you’re getting when that note comes — the way for that has been paved by your wanting, by your anticipation. It’s almost a release; a release whose prerequisite was the tension of wanting.
I am living in a world of delusion. Clearly I have not attained enlightenment.
Joseph Goldstein: No I think what you’re saying is a common experience. But I think it would be worth just experimenting. Again, not as a question of belief, but just in your own internal investigation of your experience. Just be watching your mind, and really notice you know as you’re listening to music, or you’re sitting by the side of a stream, just watching watching the water flow by. If you’re trying to — in a certain way,there’s a contraction. There’s an energetic contraction in the trying to hold what in its nature is changing, and there’s tension involved in that. When we can relax and open and really be open to the flow of change without the holding, without the wanting, then we are just there in a really full way. Full of the whole flow of experience. And that turns out to be a greater joy than the perceived pleasure of wanting, wanting, wanting — and then it comes and then it’s the release. Which may have it’s own level of pleasure. I’m just suggesting that there’s a much more refined, deeper more open, fuller kind of happiness because you’re not fighting with what’s true. You’re not relating to what’s true, not harmonizing with what’s true.
meditation
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