The Vajra Parrot Squawks!

A wise person once said, ‘reality has no background noise.’

We might like to think we're living in the present moment, doing our daily thing, but, more often than not, we’re merely humming along to a theme tune running round in our head, manipulated constantly by an ongoing flow of images, sensations and their associations, which swirl and eddy delightfully or horribly (depending on their content) across the landscape of our mind.

In other words, we are subject to an incessant mental commentary which separates us from now. Like a devoted viewer of some ghastly TV sitcom, we laugh along with the canned laughter and are happy; at other times we get dewy-eyed when we hear the sounds of the violin and piano in some soppy love scene and think we're sad. Even though we started out as viewers, we become active participants in the process as played out on the screen.

While we are absorbed in this ever-changing flow of background activity we miss something incredibly precious - the present moment. The sounds of the birds singing outside is lost to us; the wind caresses our skin, but we don't feel it; we glug down cup after cup of tea but don't taste it. Instead, we satisfy or torture ourselves with the mental commentary and, without realising it, swap the real for the illusory.

The happiness and peacefulness of simply being present and aware, even for a moment is its own reward, and once tasted the more appealing it becomes. The more we familiarise ourselves with present moment reality the less the background noise intrudes into our daily activities, making us freer, clearer and more spontaneous. We can be conscious of the flow of thought, the commentary/soundtrack, whatever you want to call it, without buying into it; we can watch the show, but not let ourselves become emotionally entangled in the canned laughter or the schmaltzy music that drones on relentlessly.

This is the aim of meditation. Not some mystical, mental escapism but its opposite: a grounding in the now, a recognition of the nature of phenomena and, by extension, the recognition of the nature of one's own mind. The sad thing is that so many would-be Buddhists, like myself, are not more familiar with it, and just sit in front of the TV, allowing ourselves to get sucked in.