Andy's Mind

I was on a train to Warsaw yesterday evening and I went to the bar to eat something. There was not much to choose from on the train buffet’s menu, so I ordered a chicken fillet and sat waiting for it to be prepared. The train wobbled and jumped as it moved ahead, as fast as old carriages and tracks allowed. Since it was already dark there was not much to see out of the window so I looked around the carriage. There was an artificial, 40-something blonde sitting by the next table, her back on me, reading fashion magazines. There was a bespectacled, sweeter wearing man with grayish hair, eating a soup two tables away. He looked English to my eye, but such appearances are misleading.

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I had two totally unrelated realizations yesterday. One concerning file sharing and another space. Two subjects as far appart as you can imagine.

First came from visiting a web site that monitors the activity of peer-to-peer sharing networks, or p2ps. It’s called Slyck and it also shows how many users are there on a given day. The numbers from those stats intrigued me, because I was a bit surprised by how small they are. So I did some estimating.

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I came up with a simple idea for timing my meditation. At the beginning I used a stick of incense, but I had to look at it to check whether it is burnt out already or not and I found that distracting. I prefer the way it is done in the zendo, with a bell being struck at the beginning and end of each session. However, at home I don’t have anyone to do this for me and it would be impractical even if I had.

Then I heard of meditation clocks like this one, which I think are a great idea but are not available here and I would like to see and hear it personally before buying. But, I thought, I could use my computer for this, if only I had an appropriate program and upon searching the web I found some. But they were either old or not free or not for my operating system, but I realized I already have the program I need – the mp3 player.

So, I downloaded a recording of a zendo bell, processed it some and created an mp3 with the sound of a bell being struck once and another with the sound of the bell being struck three times. I also generated three mp3 files with just silence – 5, 10 and 15 minutes of it. Now by arranging them in a playlist I can have as long a meditation as I wish. And it works very well for me.

I use my laptop to play it, as the desktop is too noisy. I think I could eliminate the noise altogether if I had a portable mp3 player connected to a pair of speakers. In fact even with headphones it could act effectively as a portable meditation clock.

I decided to share this, maybe you would find it useful too. You can download the set of mp3 files and a sample playlist by clicking here (it’s 7 megs approx). It’s also available in BitTorrent, click here for the torrent file.

My mind is like a spotlight. It can focus on a dream, feeding images with its light. It can focus on a plan, bringing up connections and dependencies. It can focus on my sore butt. It can focus on a sound, shining in fireworks of branched thoughts. But it is so difficult to turn into a calm lamp, shining peacefully in all directions, not concentrated into a beam, not focused on anything in particular. And it’s even harder for the mind to shine onto itself.

My mind is like a piece of clay. It’s so flexible and adaptable. It changes so much with every year, month, week as I learn new things, picking them up like flowers while walking the path. It changes so much with everything I forget. There seems to be no limit to the shapes and sizes it can take.

And yet, it’s always afraid of the next step, next change of shape. Why?