Sunday, March 9, 2014

Meditation and infinity

In everyday purposeful use of the mind, a thought is sometimes interrupted by another thought. In order to remain fast to its purpose, the mind must have a kind of stack, where it records its position in one thought as it is interrupted by another. In normal, algorithmic use of the mind, I must limit the depth of the stack in order to avoid losing my place.

In meditation, however, every thought is interrupted by an observation of the thought. And in this case there is no intention of returning to the original thought. In the meditative state I don’t need or want the functionality of my algorithmic mind, so there is really no reason to avoid a stack overflow. In fact, in terms of my customary algorithmic use of my mind, meditation might be described as a deliberate cultivation of stack overflow. As each thought is interrupted by observation of the thought, the stack becomes longer and longer, deeper and deeper. Each subroutine “Observe this.” is interrupted by another “Observe this.”

In the meditative state my mind feels like it is reeling off into infinity. As the stack grows, I worry that I can’t recover my place in my train of thought. And yet, as soon as I open my eyes, there I am, back in the finite world just as before. I can meet the world’s demands for competent pedestrian reason just as well as before. Of course the feeling of moving toward the infinite is illusory. The mind has a finite number of neurons. But in comparison to the limits I place on the depth of the stack in ordinary consciousness, the meditative state seems to traverse a vast span of emptiness.

For me, algorithmic use of the mind is something like a categorical imperative. It feels immoral, or at least irresponsible, to deliberately produce a stack overflow. But why? Just as I can recover from running “100 GOSUB 100” by hitting the reset button on my computer, I can open my eyes any time and return to the pedestrian algorithmic way of using my mind.

When I was a teenager, I found it interesting to see what my TRS-80 Color Computer would do when I used it in ways it wasn’t intended to be used. It was particularly fun to overflow the stack in the less thoroughly policed world of assembly language, where the stack would transgress its boundaries and overwrite video memory, producing colored patterns on the screen.

There is something very political in using the mind in ways it wasn’t intended to be used. When a leader tells me that God intends me to use my mind and body a certain way, I can be sure what he really means is that he intends me to use my mind and body a certain way. Turning my attention inward, and deciding for myself how I will use my mind, even for a moment, is an act of insurrection.

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