I had gone to a Zen Center to learn meditation. The idea of sitting down everyday for a time in peace and stillness appealed to me. How hard could it be? I could be contemplative at times. I could sit by myself quite happily watching the sun go down. Especially if I had someone with me to share it with.

We were led into a small room and told to take off our shoes and sit on meditation cushions. Our instructor told us we were to close our eyes and breathe slowly and purposefully in and out. We should try to clear out minds of any thoughts. If a rogue thought did enter our mind we should acknowledge it but not attach ourselves to it.

As our Buddhist teacher explained. We should think;

“Oh, there’s a thought scudding across the blue sky of my mind like a little cloud. I’ll watch it go by now.”

I could immediately relate. (“Oh here’s this jerk come to talk to me but he’s not my type. I’ll just nod and pretend to listen.)”

Our Buddhist teacher explained that we should breathe slowly in and out. We should count 1 on the first exhalation; 2 on the second exhalation etc. until we reached 10. If we were distracted by a thought we had to immediately go back to number 1 and start over.

I can absolutely do this!

One. So far so good.

Two.

“Hey, check me out. I’m meditating!”

One. Two.

“Thank God I made it past two. Otherwise I’d be a complete spazz.”

Doh!

One.

“I wonder if anyone else has gotten past two yet.”

One.

Etc. etc.

When I opened my eyes it was to a new and horrible reality. I think I actually said, “Do I do this ALL THE TIME!!” and the wise Buddhist nun smiled and nodded.

This was years ago but I’ve been keeping an eye on this since. Kind of like when you’re aware of your breathing because maybe you had a slight heart irregularity and then you can’t go to sleep because you’re so aware of your breathing. You wonder how come you never noticed it before. You hear your heart in everything. You are hyper-aware of your breathing. What if you stop!!

What if, by thinking so much about your breathing, you actually forget to do it? How do you get yourself started again?

I call this my intra-cranial conversation. Reminds me of a phrase our “intelligence” experts use when bumping us up to a Code Orange. They hear snippets of intelligence in the “chatter” of Al Queda operatives across countries. Now what they really need is access to the Al Queda intra-cranial chatter. That would tell ‘em something. But, of course, it’s not only off-limits to us but it’s also off-limits to them because it’s never talked about.

Which is why it’s The Last Taboo.

Every body does this. Presidents; homeless person. (Once you accept that all politicians do this you won’t be able to vote for anybody ever again. I mean never). It’s like seeing somebody you need to hold in a position of respect with their pants off. We know that children do this because they are unself-conscious enough to verbalize their intra-cranial chatter as they play. They talk to themselves and give tea-parties for imaginary friends.

We consider it charming.

Now there are many kinds of intra-cranial chatter. There’s the informational task-oriented ;

“Hmm, I wonder if I should put more lemon in the dressing.”

“Is this where I made a left last time I came here.”

Sort of a harmless sub-verbal acknowledgment of a thought process.

Then there is the judgmental. The most damaging.

“You moron, how could you say something so stupid”. “Exactly how big does my ass look in this”.

There is the editorializing which seems to have no function whatsoever.

“Hey, what a great sunset”.

“Look at that”. “They can’t be real, they’re too perky”.

“There oughta be a permit for spandex”.

A very bad voice-over to a truly boring docudrama.

There is the firing on all neurons stream of consciousness.

“I can’t believe I’m thinking this but..” .

I always thought the great attraction of Robin Williams was that he outed his own personal intra-cranial chatter. It felt familiar because that’s how we all actually think for crying out loud. We just never knew anybody else did.

And then there are endless sub-sets of second-guessing; l’esprit de l’escalier; constructed scenarios which showcase our superhero powers; Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It’s the great equalizer.

Remember that scene in the Woody Allen film where as a punishment the guy is locked in a pit with an insurance agent?

That’s your brain on Reality. There’s no escape. You can’t get away. All day every day. It’s draining to generate to; listen to and to argue with.

That’s why people find meditation so calming. The Buddhist nun claims she could tell that we were having a difficult time of it because of the energy in the room. Well sure, brainwaves are electrical, so thoughts must have some kind of electrical component and if she was still and hyper-sensitive why couldn’t she tell? It must have felt to her like she was standing to close to a transformer on the freeway.

I have often wondered if our intra-cranial chit chat is the equivalent of a white noise which masks external stimulation and cuts off the flow of material to the brain. Seeing as the brain isn’t really required for most of this nonsense. Maybe it’s like going on Energy Saver mode so that we have enough brainpower left to respond to the important stuff.

So, anyway, I was walking along the beach when the realization hit me that I could make my life easier in one fell swoop.

How, you ask?

Just shut up. Just stem the flow of garbage. It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to generate all this garbage but it must take an awful lot of energy to process it and listen to it . So don’t. Just stop it.

But here’s the truly frightening thing about it. You can’t shut up. No sir. Try it.

One. Two.

“Is this the end of the article. That was a load of hooey. I could’ve done better……

Zen Master Yasutani, in his “Eight Beliefs in Buddhism”, said that a person commits suicide because he cannot live in the way in which he would like. At first glance, this seems a little cold-blooded; such a selfish explanation for a devastating act which can hurt so many people.

But when we think about it, we realize that it is true.

When someone is in such suffering, despair, pain or anger that they decide not to continue living, they are not accepting their life just as it is is at this moment.

They want something other than what they ended up with. They also are not accepting the possibility of change, either in their circumstances or in their own responses.

I think Yasutani could have extended his observations to addiction.

Notwithstanding physiological and biochemical changes which can eventually occur in the body, each addiction begins with one wilful act.

It is usually an act which we choose because it takes us away from life as it is just right now.

If we feel empty and unsatisfied we may try to fill the hole with shopping or gambling or eating. If we experience ourselves as not smart enough, funny enough, interesting enough – or just plain not enough – we may try to change the way we are through drugs or alcohol.

A central Buddhist teaching is that we cause much of our suffering because we try to form permanent attachments to things which are, by their nature, impermanent.

If we are lonely or in despair we attach to this feeling as if it will always be the nature of our lives. What we could do, instead, is to look at the situation, accept it for the way it is just now and take action to change things.

At the minimum, if we can’t see a way out from our unhappiness, we can look for other possibilities to change our own response.

The 12 step Serenity prayer illustrates this duality of controllability and non-controllability beautifully:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the Courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It’s the last part that’s a little tricky for some.

An addicted mind can have difficulty in determining what’s within it’s control and what is not.

In fact, the only thing that any one of us can control is our behavior. We cannot control our thoughts, our moods, our feelings or the thoughts, moods and feelings of others.

We can, however, control what we say and what we do.

This is where our power lies.

There is a practice in Zen Buddhism known as zazen. It’s commonly misconstrued as a meditation but in fact it isn’t. True, if you came upon someone practicing zazen you’d either think they were meditating or they had a fondness for non-prescription medication.

Whereas meditation is about achieving some kind of a relaxed state and withdrawing temporarily from the world – zazen is about staying in the world. Zazen practitioners face a wall, keep their eyes open and basically just sit still and perfectly attentive for periods of time.

The trick is to stay in the world but not of the world. Hence the open eyes. An attempt is made to still the chattering ego mind – that internal, infernal conversation which goes on inside your head all day, every day!

A famous zen teacher, Taezan Maezumi said that when sitting zazen we should “let the myriad of things settle.” How often have you wanted to do that? And what constitutes your particular myriad of things – work; laundry; kid’s soccer games; your “relationship” ;bills; mortgage re-fi’s; PTA meetings; dentists visits; oil changes etc. etc. Sometimes there seems to be no end to the “stuff” we all have to deal with on a daily basis.

If you work in a corporate environment where you are continually interacting with others you also have your myriad of office things – politics; project deadlines; sales and/or strategy meetings; pay raises; performance evaluations; mergers; diversity trainings etc. There’s always a demand on your time, energy and patience.

When you practice zazen you let your original, or unconscious, mind out for a breath of fresh air. So often it’s suffocated by the sheer weight of demands our busy minds place on it. So, when you sit quietly by yourself and allow your mind to be clear and open you are whole and unconditioned. Gradually, your breath slow,; your eyelids soften, your jaw releases it’s tension ). Bet you didn’t know that your jaw was tight much of the time, did you?

Your thoughts still pop in from time to time. But you watch them come and go like clouds scudding across a clear blue sky.

Someone once said to me – anyone can knock on your door anytime but you don’t have to always invite them in for coffee. Try to think of your urgent, insistent thoughts as pesky visitors knocking on your door at the most inopportune time – like just when you’d like a little time to yourself.

When you let your thoughts settle and you clear your mind during the heat of a workday it’s like taking a siesta, going for a cool walk around the block and connecting with life outside of your workplace or having a neck massage.

It takes you out of the place where you normally live all day every day – between your ears – and connects you to things bigger and infinitely less comprehensible than your everyday problems.

Consider letting the myriad of things settle for even a few minutes today.

Let your conditioned mind drift like a blossom drifting gently from a tree in Spring. You can always pick it up later. But right now you’re just going to watch it fall.