[At a local diner S____ ] last Friday a.m. — [I] somehow was in a great perspective. Not sure I even recall it exactly, but it was mindful, but more-so. I was noticing unique things, like how the smoke from cigarette was visible for a long time as it floated around the room —
But now I do recall part of it: my feeling that words were superfluous, or something. I remember not wanting to read the paper I bought because reading would be less than mindful. God, I want to go back there for breakfast again, maybe tomorrow, though M and I are talking going to Chicago Art Museum one of these days —
Maybe the mindset was partly this: that words distract from what is right around us, right here. Just a couple moments ago, had this feeling — how language, with its nouns and verbs, its names and actions, is a shorthand. I said I saw “smoke” — well, that doesn’t really begin to describe what I perceived — my sense-data. “Smoke” is a shorthand and so is “floated” — that’s the best word I could come up with to describe what I saw it “doing.” Well, one thing, it wasn’t “doing” anything from a physical perspective. It was simply there, being acted upon by other atoms and light energy such that it moved this way and that and I observe such —
This wasn’t exactly what I was thinking, but that’s OK — it’s always new. What I write is of the moment.
I was thinking more about the slipperiness of language — “I read what I read” — but it put me in a neat place, I had a neat experience — in the moment, “Satori at the S___.”
(A few minutes later) Maybe what’s most interesting about the idea that led me to mindful state is not the idea itself but the fact that it led me to mindfulness — almost like a koan.
The idea that we each/all so much of the time live in this narrative that isn’t real — that idea led me away from the narrative and away from talking, away from words themselves, and toward paying attention to the moment, to what’s going on around me — to the “smoke” rising in the room, something I hadn’t even noticed before! There’s always more to notice! What shall I observe today?! (though don’t get unmindful in my seeking the new)
[From journal of Mon., 12 April 2004, J35, p. 125-127. First daily journal of 20 years and more of daily journaling.]
MonkeyMoonMachine 
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