Supersaturated solution

Garbage in, Garbage out.

What you read, what you see (and enjoy) deeply impacts how you think and the way you interpret events and people. These things are also major factors influencing what kind of ideas you generate, how you detect patterns, think of abstract concepts and make connections between disparate entities.

This is an obvious piece of wisdom, but is sometimes overlooked because it is so obvious.

In Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes the incident where his thinking process started coming together into one coherent mass. Although in the beautiful analogy below, his emphasis is on the suddenness of the event, in this post I'm focusing on the causes leading up to that event.

That was the moment it all started. That was the seed crystal.

A powerful fragment of memory comes back now. The laboratory. Organic Chemistry. He was working with an extremely supersaturated solution when something similar had happened. 

A supersaturated solution is one in which the saturation point, at which no more material will dissolve, has been exceeded. This can occur because the saturation point becomes higher as the temperature of the solution is increased. When you dissolve the material at a high temperature and then cool the solution, the material sometimes doesn't crystallize out because the molecules don't know how. They require something to get them started, a seed crystal, or a grain of dust, or even a sudden scratch or tap on the surrounding glass.

He walked to the water tap to cool the solution but never got there. Before his eyes, as he walked, he saw a star of crystalline material in the solution appear and then grow suddenly and radiantly until it filled the entire vessel. He saw it grow. Where before was only clear liquid there was now a mass so solid he could turn the vessel upside down and nothing would come out.

The one sentence "I hope you are teaching Quality to your students" was said to him, and within a matter of a few months, growing so fast you could almost see it grow, came an enormous, intricate, highly structured mass of thought, formed as if by magic.

Whether we get a seed crystal to consolidate our thoughts into a clear, significant mass or not, the prerequisite for forming even less well-thought out ideas remains the same - saturating our mind with information and thoughts relevant to the topic (prior to that event, Pirsig had spent years reading, exploring and thinking about Quality). It is only when we fill or over-fill our mind with thoughts about our chosen subject, obsessively, passionately focusing on it till our brain becomes supersaturated with it, that we can create something truly remarkable.

Unless we do that (passionate pursuit), Prof. Larry Smith argues, we will not have great results.

If the solution contains enough of other residues and impurities, it may not get saturated with the stuff you want. If you fill your mind with pop culture, crap movies, news, cat videos, funny ads and  social media when these are not part of your passion, you lose the opportunity to saturate your mind with the stuff that really matters to you and consequently the opportunity to generate the ideas and actions you might otherwise produce.

In that case, the ideas that have gone into your mind are going to inevitably affect what comes out of your mind. Garbage in, garbage out.

But then is it possible to altogether avoid garbage? Is all garbage bad? Perhaps the key is to keep the level of garbage you put in your mind low enough so that it doesn't affect the outcome. Learning to say No would be critical then.

I don't know the boundaries to this kind of obsession, whether there are any or where they are drawn. Would be worth it to find out.

Minimalism meets Zen

I used to get annoyed, even feel somewhat cheated, on reading Leo Babauta's posts. Actually, when I first discovered his blog I liked his writing and ideas a lot. Then, over a period of time, the repetitive ideas started jarring. I mean how often can you keep writing the same stuff day after day...focus, zen, minimalism, veganism, going against a culture of materialistic consumerism..

Strangely however, now I've started relying on that repetition of ideas. The blog posts are becoming a kind of anchor, something to remind me of what worked. It brings my straying mind back to what I need to focus on. If you look at it that way, this is kind of an episodic prolonged meditation!

The Simplify post worked for me this way. There are no new ideas in it. But it provides a reminder and a summary of many similarly themed ideas he has written about in the past. Briefly,

1) Block off some disconnected time
2) Start eliminating commitments. (eliminating is the key word, not doing. Things can be done or gotten rid of by saying no.)
3) Start purging possessions. (Glad to say I've been doing this more and more frequently)
4) Ban shopping for 30 days
5) Wash your bowl. (check)
6) Schedule time for what's important. (Am dismal here)
7) Eat some plants (check)
8) Drink green tea. I've found it's taste horrible. But then I got it from a tea-coffee making machine. Maybe I could try out making some at home.)

Ego-running and selfless running

Around the middle of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes a pilgrimage he attempted in India. He set out for Mt. Kailas, the source of Ganga and the mythological abode of Shankar. He was in the company of a holy man and his followers.

But despite having the physical strength and intellectual motivation, he gave up after the third day and the pilgrimage went on without him.

Thinking about the reason for his failure, he makes a distinction between ego-climbing and selfless climbing.

He acknowledges that he was doing the whole thing for himself, to broaden his experience. He was using the mountain and the pilgrimage for his own purposes. In other words his view and experience of the pilgrimage was ego-centric. Ego-climbing.

The others however, saw the mountain as bigger (in metaphorical terms) than them. Their submission to its holiness made climbing an act of devotion for them. Unreal as it sounds, this gave them the strength to endure more than he could, even though he was the physically stronger one. They were not climbing for themselves but devoting their steps to something bigger than them. Selfless climbing, in one sense.

I've realized gradually that endurance activities- running, for me - are as much if not more about the mindset as about physical strength. This anecdote and the distinction between ego-and selfless running gives a good structure for developing a mindset when running. While it may be hard to think about a trail or a running path in a city as holy, it would be helpful to try selfless running by being more present and mindful of the process of running. He has described it more eloquently. A few extracts (I re-read the passage substituting running for climbing):

"To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He's here but he's not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here". What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant."

I wonder though if this can be put into practice when you are running in a group or with a partner.

Day 3 of meditation habit

Is meditation really useful and if so, to what extent? Does it have to be useful?

I don't know the answer to either of these. There is evidence in the form of enhanced brain activity in some brain areas on MRIs, and lowered cortisol levels among meditation practitioners. But how that helps one in everyday life, I do not know.

Then there's the debate about what exactly constitutes meditation and what doesn't. People propose chanting names, breathing slowly, mindfulness, walking in small steps to and fro or in a circle, lying down, maintaining absolute silence and many other ways. I think there is no need to search for that one true way. Like belief or the lack of it in religion, everyone can find what works for them.

I decided to take up meditation to get help with my progressively shortening attention span. Lack of focus, anxiety, inability to concentrate for long periods of time are all interconnected and it's hard to pinpoint which comes first. (I'll write about focus in a separate post. It's a fascinating topic.) Does being unable to work on something for long create anxiety and worry or does the existing anxiety lead one to keep shifting to easier, more passive activities that do not help in any way with one's goals? Both may be true. What does help in either scenario is being able to think clearly, seeing things from a 'higher' vantage point, gaining insight into what exactly is going on in your mind. And based on countless anecdotes, it seems meditation helps with that. Also, I've never come across anybody saying meditation ruined my life. So there.

As with other habits, I've had trouble creating one for meditation. It's the usual story. Start out with enthusiasm, do it for a few days, then slowly slack off until the guilt overcomes me a few months later and I start again, only to repeat the cycle.

So this time, I'm following this gentleman's advice based on Leo Babauta's words:

'One habit at a time, five minutes at first.'

Why am I listening to him? Well, his experience matches closely with mine as far as running and creating habits is concerned. And he uses the example of that movie - Limitless , something I've done myself to explain why I started running when talking to friends! That's enough for me to relate to him for now.

So today was day 3 of my attempt at creating a meditation habit. I'm doing a simple version of  meditation - breathing slowly, noticing each breath, letting the body relax gradually while sitting up straight. The amazing part is noticing the thoughts that keep popping up. Somewhere there's an analogy made of the mind being like a monkey, jumping continuously from one thought to another. That analogy feels very apt when I noticed how one thought led to another rapidly. I'm trying not to suppress any thoughts, just mentally tagging them into some category and letting them go, drawing myself back to how I'm breathing, feeling my chest expand and contract. Doing this for only five minutes seems like a good idea. It stops meditation from becoming another chore and liable to be procrastinated upon. Luckily I haven't felt any drag or 'when is this getting over?' feeling yet. I actually feel a bit disappointed that the five minutes get over so soon. That's a good sign.