 556: The Brain, Within its Groove, an audioscape | The Brain, within its Groove |
What has Emily D got to do with the Red-Spotted Monkey?
If Emily D had been a Zen roshi, this poem would be her koan about the ever-permanent and un-derailable nature of the mind. The spirit of the poem with it's koan-like statements is a red-spotted monkey that jumps about from one branch of thought to another to purposefully mess with the mind's ability to focus on oneness. Initially the poem confounds. Just as the mind is its own untameable horse, or in this case an iron one on its groove of tracks, so does this poem present a train (of thought) apparently moving ahead "even" and "true" toward its pre-arranged destination. If only meditating (or reading Dickinson poems) was so easy. To hold to 'trueness', or steady mind in the contemplative sense, to stay the course as a single choice or constant is the hardest thing in the world. That is what the greatest thinkers of humanity have attempted to do -- to live in the presence of a single thought because singularity is a train tunnel that opens to multiplicity and unity. Although she is not specifically talking about meditative discipline her poem is mapping the same territory. So to discuss both may illuminate the poem.
Little Brain. Big Brain
The unskilled mind is so perversely its own master and not one-track in its workings. It may be all-powerful, a machine of machines. The trouble comes when trying to control it, to tame ir. I think that is why the metaphors introduced in the first stanza are mixed and only tangentially relate a 'story' or continuous investigation of an idea. This consciously mirrors the mind's inability to focus power and current toward one end. ED/the poem is jumping about on purpose like the red-spotted monkey to subvert the reader's expectations. The limited brain is a temporary victim of its own shut eyes, it's stuck-in-a-grooveness. The machinery of thinking can be a disorderly chaotic set of fly wheels and cogs of competing hopes and desires, memories and evaluations, fears and flippant shopping-list interruptions. The small brain is forever subject to the splintering and swerving away from the main track, the central groove of One Idea, direction.
The Net of Indra
Yes at the highest point, the big brain sits supremely atop all manifestations of nature such as floods, earthquakes, bush fires, oil spills, eco-pestilences and wars. Just as the universe may have emerged from one a single creative wham bam big bang of thought so does this poem look to the ultimate nature of individual mind power and its link with a shared cosmological consciousness all minds from human to stone may be plugged into. In the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies the concept of Indra's Net proposes that each mind is its own star of glistening pearls strung together and reflecting the same interpenetrated reality, or as Alan Watts has written:
Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.[1]
Replace image for 'brain' meaning a nodal point of consciousness. Each brain reflects a holographic truth to each other mind, implying a linked web of unified brainpower that manifests the universes (yep there are countless) emerging out of Sunyata, the big Nothing. Is it then not obvious how unskilled our minds are trying to direct that immensity from our limited seats in the train of thinking? Emily is not consciously expressing an Eastern philosophical paradigm here. However she is intuitively on the same wavelength, and thus wants the reader to consider the whole 'thinking process' from a vast perspective, to take on new views of oneself in the universe. The poem is an invitation to play with the monkey.
Simian Brain
This naughty chap comes from the lexicon of guides or gurus who teach the art of meditation. "Whatever you do, don't think of a red-spotted monkey!" Of course this is the equivalent of letting a mongoose loose in a snake pit. Or to speak in machine-age metaphors - to throw a spanner in the works. And once you have visualised the simian, black, blue, purple or red-spotted you have been 'koanised' That idea dominates. Introducing the agent of chaos challenges us to focus more vigorously. That is what ED does in the second stanza. She unleashes the fury of the flood that cuts its own groove through the mountains, diverts down a self-created turnpike of least resistance and also wipes away humanity's turning water mills that attempt to harness and control. Why does she do this? To moan about the limited nature of brain/mind/life? No I think she is pointing to the final reality after the flood, Biblical or otherwise. When the acid rain settles, when the water finds its new course the cyclical begins again commenced with a thought 'begin again' from the universally present mind. That brain survives us.
In the end, the poem is a koan, a mind-cracker. The red, black or blue-spotted monkey is just a visual representation of the unskilled, primate mind. Pick your own metaphor. This is a classical one from meditation philosophy to describe the nature of distraction. If you don't like the idea of a spotted monkey, a gorgeous man or woman will do just as well. Who can not be diverted for the short term the needs of the body? And without the spotted simian's intervention would we become aware of the interplay between order and chaos? If ED was not pointing to a deeper aspect of Mind there would be no purpose to suggest cataclysmic acts of nature like landscape-gouging floods, and the ending of human systems of progress and wealth that are nothing more than cyclical events and small beer in the life of the universal brain.
Buddha Brain
It is that awareness that leads to humility before the immense mindfulness that gives rise to the Net of Indra and in so doing enables us to learn how to let universal mind power charge through us and run the show. It is the cool call of surrender that means the death of the ego only Buddhas have learned to heed. They say we are all Buddha material and can wear the string of universal star-pearls around the neck. By acknowledging the rarity of channelled cosmic brain power, the challenge is to identify with a much broader view of reality, rather than be programmed with received doctrines. Even the idea of 'the Net of Indra' means nothing if there is no take up, no experiential application to a life. Temporary chaos throws up a challenge to see the deeper reality beyond temporary grooves we may be stuck in. Or if read on a psychological level, the same applies. People crack up and either have the ability to recover to a state of order, or they remain part of the wreckage until such time as their undying consciousness can take a new form. I guess this comes to the difference between the pessimist and the optimist seeing the glass as half empty or half full. I think ED is an optimist and the poem expresses that for me.
The ED who inhabits the field of her poem acts as the subversive 'splinter'. I am grateful to Karren Aliener and Dave Poplar who came up with the 'Splinter-Spinster' nexus. She/the poem throws a spanner in our works. She herself is the koan, the naughty, red-spotted monkey (for want of a better ridiculous trope) pointing us down the right track.
[1] "Alan Watts Podcast – Following the Middle Way #3. alanwattspodcast.com (Podcast). 2008-08-31.
If Emily D had been a Zen roshi, this poem would be her koan about the ever-permanent and un-derailable nature of the mind. The spirit of the poem with it's koan-like statements is a red-spotted monkey that jumps about from one branch of thought to another to purposefully mess with the mind's ability to focus on oneness. Initially the poem confounds. Just as the mind is its own untameable horse, or in this case an iron one on its groove of tracks, so does this poem present a train (of thought) apparently moving ahead "even" and "true" toward its pre-arranged destination. If only meditating (or reading Dickinson poems) was so easy. To hold to 'trueness', or steady mind in the contemplative sense, to stay the course as a single choice or constant is the hardest thing in the world. That is what the greatest thinkers of humanity have attempted to do -- to live in the presence of a single thought because singularity is a train tunnel that opens to multiplicity and unity. Although she is not specifically talking about meditative discipline her poem is mapping the same territory. So to discuss both may illuminate the poem.
Little Brain. Big Brain
The unskilled mind is so perversely its own master and not one-track in its workings. It may be all-powerful, a machine of machines. The trouble comes when trying to control it, to tame ir. I think that is why the metaphors introduced in the first stanza are mixed and only tangentially relate a 'story' or continuous investigation of an idea. This consciously mirrors the mind's inability to focus power and current toward one end. ED/the poem is jumping about on purpose like the red-spotted monkey to subvert the reader's expectations. The limited brain is a temporary victim of its own shut eyes, it's stuck-in-a-grooveness. The machinery of thinking can be a disorderly chaotic set of fly wheels and cogs of competing hopes and desires, memories and evaluations, fears and flippant shopping-list interruptions. The small brain is forever subject to the splintering and swerving away from the main track, the central groove of One Idea, direction.
The Net of Indra
Yes at the highest point, the big brain sits supremely atop all manifestations of nature such as floods, earthquakes, bush fires, oil spills, eco-pestilences and wars. Just as the universe may have emerged from one a single creative wham bam big bang of thought so does this poem look to the ultimate nature of individual mind power and its link with a shared cosmological consciousness all minds from human to stone may be plugged into. In the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies the concept of Indra's Net proposes that each mind is its own star of glistening pearls strung together and reflecting the same interpenetrated reality, or as Alan Watts has written:
Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.[1]
Replace image for 'brain' meaning a nodal point of consciousness. Each brain reflects a holographic truth to each other mind, implying a linked web of unified brainpower that manifests the universes (yep there are countless) emerging out of Sunyata, the big Nothing. Is it then not obvious how unskilled our minds are trying to direct that immensity from our limited seats in the train of thinking? Emily is not consciously expressing an Eastern philosophical paradigm here. However she is intuitively on the same wavelength, and thus wants the reader to consider the whole 'thinking process' from a vast perspective, to take on new views of oneself in the universe. The poem is an invitation to play with the monkey.
Simian Brain
This naughty chap comes from the lexicon of guides or gurus who teach the art of meditation. "Whatever you do, don't think of a red-spotted monkey!" Of course this is the equivalent of letting a mongoose loose in a snake pit. Or to speak in machine-age metaphors - to throw a spanner in the works. And once you have visualised the simian, black, blue, purple or red-spotted you have been 'koanised' That idea dominates. Introducing the agent of chaos challenges us to focus more vigorously. That is what ED does in the second stanza. She unleashes the fury of the flood that cuts its own groove through the mountains, diverts down a self-created turnpike of least resistance and also wipes away humanity's turning water mills that attempt to harness and control. Why does she do this? To moan about the limited nature of brain/mind/life? No I think she is pointing to the final reality after the flood, Biblical or otherwise. When the acid rain settles, when the water finds its new course the cyclical begins again commenced with a thought 'begin again' from the universally present mind. That brain survives us.
In the end, the poem is a koan, a mind-cracker. The red, black or blue-spotted monkey is just a visual representation of the unskilled, primate mind. Pick your own metaphor. This is a classical one from meditation philosophy to describe the nature of distraction. If you don't like the idea of a spotted monkey, a gorgeous man or woman will do just as well. Who can not be diverted for the short term the needs of the body? And without the spotted simian's intervention would we become aware of the interplay between order and chaos? If ED was not pointing to a deeper aspect of Mind there would be no purpose to suggest cataclysmic acts of nature like landscape-gouging floods, and the ending of human systems of progress and wealth that are nothing more than cyclical events and small beer in the life of the universal brain.
Buddha Brain
It is that awareness that leads to humility before the immense mindfulness that gives rise to the Net of Indra and in so doing enables us to learn how to let universal mind power charge through us and run the show. It is the cool call of surrender that means the death of the ego only Buddhas have learned to heed. They say we are all Buddha material and can wear the string of universal star-pearls around the neck. By acknowledging the rarity of channelled cosmic brain power, the challenge is to identify with a much broader view of reality, rather than be programmed with received doctrines. Even the idea of 'the Net of Indra' means nothing if there is no take up, no experiential application to a life. Temporary chaos throws up a challenge to see the deeper reality beyond temporary grooves we may be stuck in. Or if read on a psychological level, the same applies. People crack up and either have the ability to recover to a state of order, or they remain part of the wreckage until such time as their undying consciousness can take a new form. I guess this comes to the difference between the pessimist and the optimist seeing the glass as half empty or half full. I think ED is an optimist and the poem expresses that for me.
The ED who inhabits the field of her poem acts as the subversive 'splinter'. I am grateful to Karren Aliener and Dave Poplar who came up with the 'Splinter-Spinster' nexus. She/the poem throws a spanner in our works. She herself is the koan, the naughty, red-spotted monkey (for want of a better ridiculous trope) pointing us down the right track.
[1] "Alan Watts Podcast – Following the Middle Way #3. alanwattspodcast.com (Podcast). 2008-08-31.
Indra's Net as depicted in the Flower Garland Sutra
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