TYPE: Vipassana

PURPOSE: This Audio-visual Meditation Loop prepares you for the practice of noting by setting your motivation.

Nothing is more difficult than noting. Nothing is more comfortable than identifying with present contents and automatic positing—aka free association—and getting carried away with it. This meditation loop gives you a taste of the challenge ahead.

CONTEXT:

Uhura is about to be raped and screams,

Uhura rightly points out that the robot is running on random. The positor is a crucial function of the executive function—it reproduces past scenes and plots new ones to help us emulate and anticipate real threats. It works by mere association—we hear a crunching twig and we fantasize Tiger! and this saves us.

But when we are alone and safe, the association-based positor is still running. We posit a random image, we react to it with feeling, and this pushes a new positing. The action of daydreaming is one part random and one part habit—useless.

Yet daydreaming is the mind’s default mode. The sequence of positing is absurd. As Goenka notes:

The mind is so ignorant. At times you will notice how ignorant the mind is. A thought arises in the mind—past or future, doesn’t matter; pleasant or unpleasant, doesn’t matter—a thought has arisen in the mind. And before even one sentence is over, some other thought has started. And before on sentence is over, some other thought has started. Irrelevant thoughts. There is no sequence of thoughts.

(For the full lecture, see  Broken link .)

METHOD: Uhura screams the Greatest Question. The intellect is alerted to the fact the executive function has an idiot for a navigator. The camera alternates between Kirk, the principle of Vipassana, and Chekov, the navigator of the Enterprise.

Your job is to stay with Kirk and Chekov. Hear the voice—note it—but stay with the calm circumspection you see on the faces.