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Mind like a radio

BunksBunks Australia Veteran

A thought popped into my mind this morning while doing placement meditation on the breath.

Our mind is like a radio. We are constantly tuned into one station or another. We just keep switching stations.

This is particularly noticeable during meditation.

We want to stay on Breath FM but someone keeps changing the station! Finally we realise and switch back.

KundoShoshindantepwlobsterHamsakaRowan1980Rodrigocrystal_bethBuddhadragonJamieG

Comments

  • Nice analogy, very enlightening!
    Earthninjacrystal_beth
  • @dantepw said:
    Nice analogy, very enlightening!

    Indeed.
    It is a strange radio, we have turned it off. The on-off switch is not working. The volume control too seems to slide up and down . . .

    However we can never get rid of this radio. We are the radio . . .

    silverdantepw
  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran
    edited March 2015

    @lobster said:
    However we can never get rid of this radio. We are the radio . . .

    dantepwanataman
  • BunksBunks Australia Veteran

    @lobster said:
    However we can never get rid of this radio. We are the radio . . .

    What station are you @lobster?

    I'd like to think I'm easy listening.........definitely not love songs and dedications!

  • HamsakaHamsaka goosewhisperer Polishing the 'just so' Veteran

    This isn't just an imaginative idea @Bunks. If you type 'brain as a radio' into your google search bar, you're gonna get all kinds of interesting stuff INCLUDING research on how brains have 'tuning knobs'. Well, rat brains anyway :D .

    I used to have dreams of sitting in a room that was high up, like a top floor or up on a scaffolding and I was 'receiving'. All I remember is this incredibly deep comfort and 'om-ness' from those dreams, not what I was supposed to be receiving. I had these dreams twenty something years ago and at the time was writing them all down because I was fascinated with Carl Jung and dreams and what they meant.

    I have a bad case of ADHD, always have, and when I was young and it was much worse, it seemed just like I'd tune in and the dial would slip and I'd lose the frequency. If I was utterly fascinated NOTHING could budge that knob. Meditation is just like NOT being fascinated, isn't it LOL.

    lobsterBunks
  • If our minds are like a radio we can always turn to KWOB. Wisdom of the Buddha.

    dantepw
  • Mine has a broken tuning that it jump one station to another.

    lobsterdantepw
  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

    Mine's normally on Radio I AM and I can only get those damn talkback stations.....

    HamsakasilverEarthninja
  • @Bunks said:
    What station are you @lobster?

    I'd like to think I'm easy listening.........definitely not love songs and dedications!

    Be Be See
    Radio
    One, Two, Three and Four

    Probably one of the comedy channels . . . easy listening is a good answer B)

    Bunkshow
  • HamsakaHamsaka goosewhisperer Polishing the 'just so' Veteran

    @Shoshin said:
    Mine's normally on Radio I AM and I can only get those damn talkback stations.....

    I hadn't thought of it before . . . but my mind is like a popular radio talk show with the lines full and a lot of technical difficulties.

    Shoshin
  • If a tree falls down in a forest it would’t make any sound without an observer. I mean, waves are converted to sounds in observers mind (brain). The air is full of radio waves that need ”an observation machine”, i.e. a radio receiver to be heard (I’m sorry for my clumsy English…) Even fundamental particles are waves until they are observed. Einstein said: ”I like to think that the Moon is there even if I am not looking at it.”

    Perhaps this all has something to do with Buddhism…

    Earthninja
  • ... yes it has something to do with Buddhism, since Dalai Lama is very interested in quantum physics ;)

    Earthninja
  • RodrigoRodrigo São Paulo, Brazil Veteran

    Who is listening to the radio?

    ShoshinEarthninja
  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

    No one that I'm "aware" of...

  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran

    We are the radio. A head full of static?

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator

    Some of us are the radio, and some of us are the knobs.... ;)

    lobsterBunks
  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran

    "Knob" always make me giggle....

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator

    You've heard of 'Pause for thought' ....that was brought to you by "Gap for a giggle".... ;)

    silver
  • On the other hand... Perhaps being as receivers and observers we are living in a world of illusion, like a radio or TV programme :) , which is not meaningless and useless at all. The true nature of reality collapses when we are trying to observe it.

  • NamadaNamada Veteran
    edited March 2015

    What channel do you listen to?
    and do you belive everything what is said?
    I only tell my self, its all just uncertain. And try to change channel
    to something calmer.

    But today it went all wrong

  • This middle aged crank listens mainly to gloomy, doomy gothic channels where they say it's cool to be depressed and anxious. Trying to listen to some spiritual channels too, but they are not so easy to understand ("pöljä" = "stupid").

  • anatamananataman Who needs a title? Where am I? Veteran

    @Pöljä said:
    If a tree falls down in a forest it would’t make any sound without an observer. I mean, waves are converted to sounds in observers mind (brain). The air is full of radio waves that need ”an observation machine”, i.e. a radio receiver to be heard (I’m sorry for my clumsy English…) Even fundamental particles are waves until they are observed. Einstein said: ”I like to think that the Moon is there even if I am not looking at it.”

    Perhaps this all has something to do with Buddhism…

    You are confusing various philosophies here @Pöljä, and the first mistake is that you are (mis)taking these ideas as being real, or even 'really real'...

    No idea can correspond to the true nature of this ungraspable beingthingamijiggywotsit that you are trying to grasp... As it is the source of its own ideas,... now get that little sweetspot and you get everything, and let it be what it is, it will come back to you - but if you can't let it go you may start doubting the sweetspot exists, then the sweet goes to pot with a slithery middle, and the words mesmerise you again!

    Or to put it in secular terms, what you sayin' man, that makes no sense?

    ...\lol/...

    I'm just pushing my own buttons again...

    As are you...

    Shoshin
  • DavidDavid A human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First Nations Veteran
    edited March 2015
    Mine seems like a writer of an improv sit-com.

    As much as I want control, all I can do is watch it all unfold and hope for as many laughs as possible.
    ShoshinlobsterDairyLama
  • Good answer @ourself.

    We iz radio where all the knobs and switches have fallen off including the off switch.

    It ain't funny :scream:

    OH LORD BUDDHA FM
    HELP US
    END THIS STATION

  • howhow Veteran Veteran

    @Bunks
    Hhhmmmmm....

    If the mind is the radio, then perhaps all of our other senses are just the radio waves it receives.
    A worldly life would be the choosing or rejecting of one song over another to give the radio it's sense of omnipotence,
    whereas
    a spiritual life might be not choosing or rejecting some songs over others to allow the radio to simply be a radio.

  • DairyLamaDairyLama Veteran Veteran

    @ourself said:> Mine seems like a writer of an improv sit-com.> As much as I want control, all I can do is watch it all unfold and hope for as many laughs as possible.

    Yes, it is like that sometimes. You really do need a sense of humour. ;)

  • @anataman said:You are confusing various philosophies here @Pöljä, and the first mistake is that you are (mis)taking these ideas as being real, or even 'really real'... No idea can correspond to the true nature of this ungraspable beingthingamijiggywotsit that you are trying to grasp... As it is the source of its own ideas,... now get that little sweetspot and you get everything, and let it be what it is, it will come back to you - but if you can't let it go you may start doubting the sweetspot exists, then the sweet goes to pot with a slithery middle, and the words mesmerise you again! Or to put it in secular terms, what you sayin' man, that makes no sense? ...\lol/...

    Ok, understood. I didn't even know that was I writing about philosophies. For instance, the following sentence has nothing to do with philosophies but science:

    "If a tree falls down in a forest it would’t make any sound without an observer".

    A sound is a sensory perception, not a hypothetical philosophic question.

    I keep my mouth shut now on.

  • ShoshinShoshin No one in particular Nowhere Special Veteran

    @Pöljä said:
    I keep my mouth shut now on.

    Science was once known as "Natural Philosophy"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy

  • I retract... It's so difficult to discuss with people with a different language (religion, philosophy). You face it everywhere in the social media. As I have stated - I'm not a real Buddhist. I have a protestant raising with tiny, tiny roots in Judaism.

    I've been about 30 years a vegetarian, I've been about 30 years active in nature conservation, I appreciate the humanism of Christianity, I appreciate the morals of Buddhism, I appreciate science. Yes, I may be an opportunist building my worldview.

    Better drop the lady hanging on my back...

  • @Bunks said:
    Our mind is like a radio. We are constantly tuned into one station or another. We just keep switching stations.

    Hello forum.

    In regards to trees and switching stations.
    A while ago – one morning - in my leafy neighborhood, I heard a distant sound of a chainsaw being started and each time the motor revved it had a lingering other-dimensional OM echo to it which shifted me into a peaceful, serene and rather deep dreamlike meditation-station.

    What an utterly strange omen or premonition. If that was what it was(?)
    I did not know what to think or make of it.

    A month later an absolutely huge mango tree between my place and the neighbors house was cut down.
    Of course the whole neighborhood heard the chainsaw all day and the branches of that old tree coming down - but beyond that - was the expanding into vastness of eternity OM-sound (“heard” a month earlier) the death song of that Mango Tree?

    That Mango Tree had already started to rot at it’s core - so it was time - but it had housed so many animals and birds and I feel it was a sentient being as well - deserving much Honor.

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