Music on the brain

If Miley Cyrus is part of your experience-- I'd say you have extraordinary challenges.

For serious-- any challenge seems better met by looking for the "space" it inhabits. We get fixated on the challenging object, and therefore stuck. Ngak'chang Rinpoche talks about teaching meditation to a group that had to contend with a road-resurfacing machine going back and forth outside the building all day. They were instructed to "find the presence of awareness" in the coming and going of the noise... He said it was one of the most successful of his early classes.

Brazilian taxi cabs always have ancient American pop tunes on the radio. Stuff I know from high school or college. It's either dreadful or nostalgic, depending. Chicago, the band that would not die.

I was once on a ten-week Mahasi retreat in Burma where there was a cute green frog that lived on the stairs I walked up and down every time I went to meals. I had this song stuck in my head on and off literally for weeks (it's a great song, but still you can imagine this was maddening at times):



And then I was once on a metta retreat and every time he gave instructions the teacher (Bhante Sujato) was like, 'open your heart...' and I consequently had Madonna's "Open Your Heart" stuck in my head the whole time. I told him at the end and he was like, sardonically, Rowan couldn't you have better taste in earworms on my retreats? pffft that's a great song. But my teacher'd been an indie rock musician before ordaining so ya know 80s synth pop wasn't really his thing...

But seriously, I don't really think it's an issue - just one of those things that happens, another object to be aware of and the reactions to it also objects to be aware of.

Yes I have always had this too - luckily I don't listen to the radio any more and only listen to what I choose as my tastes are very different to top 40 (or whatever its called these days). I have however almost stopped listening to iPod such as when travelling, when waiting - all those idle times when I normally would 'plug-in'. It seemed to be counter to being in the 'now' and prompted by boredom, need for stimulation, aversion to the present moment by trying to distract and pass time. So now on the bus or at airports or on planes or walks I watch and try to just be aware and watch how my mind deals with all thats going on - aversion, pleasure, mind states, thoughts etc.

I do listen to music whilst at the computer sometimes - I love music and consciously do it to listen and appreciate it - but even doing that I find it echoed around in my mind after the fact. Now its much less, but when it happens, it serves as a signal to me switch to awareness again - its great because there is no question as to whether I should get involved in it (like other thoughts on other things) - its clear - 'oh thats music so my mind is wandering'.

It does raise (possibly useful) questions about why the mind does that - the nature of where and what thoughts are - if I can see evidence in thoughts produced, correlating to music I listened to a day before (for example). So its a bit disturbing to realise that when walking around the mind just parrots sounds/music it heard earlier for no particular reason - makes you wonder about all the other thoughts going through at any time

This should definitively banish the Miley Cyrus.

…..and talking of songs going around and around

….but sadly.

Best thread ever. Well, it's up there.

Great thread! I'll post some Appalachian Jhana music, just to add something to the mix.
What I'm trying to do is notice the reaction to the tunes--irritation, amusement, etc. It's also interesting that some of them come from out of nowhere and others have to do with sequential events--someone has mentioned the tune or you've heard it on the radio or what have you and it's in your head, barely noticed maybe...

Nice!

I'll assume you know about Bela Fleck & Edgar Meyer's Music for Two, right?

I've had earworms at times before and mostly try to laugh at them or realize they arise and pass like everything else even though they might overtake a particular sit.

A related phenomenon happens to me on occasion. Sometimes very late in a sit, a song will come to mind that I haven't heard in years. Sometimes the title of the song or a lyric will seem to have some sort of relevance to the particular sit or events in my life. One time, last month I think, after a fruition-like experience, there was a real feeling of stillness and a hymn that I hadn't heard in twenty years or more came to mind. The lyrics were "Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life." It was so moving it almost brought me to tears even though I haven't participated in any organized religion since probably about the last time I heard the song.

Kirk wrote: ... Sometimes the title of the song or a lyric will seem to have some sort of relevance to the particular sit or events in my life. One time, last month I think, after a fruition-like experience, there was a real feeling of stillness and a hymn that I hadn't heard in twenty years or more came to mind. The lyrics were "Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life." It was so moving it almost brought me to tears even though I haven't participated in any organized religion since probably about the last time I heard the song.

That kind of thing happens to me, too. I remember a really onerous period where I felt utterly bereft and abandoned by my Holy Guardian Angel, who was the focus of my devotional practice at that time. I heard a line from a song by Lady Gaga, which is about Paparazzi, apparently, but seemed in a moment to express the same agonized longing to be loved and to pursue something deeply desired. I bet a country music song about heartbreak would have done the trick too, but that's not what they play on the radio here.

Very cool. If you haven't seen "Throw Down Your Heart," the doc about Fleck's encounters with traditional music in Africa, it's definitely worth watching...

Still get them, but am not bothered by them like I was when they were getting in the way of my precious meditation. Earworms aren't a problem because I don't strive to have a hyper-focused quiet mind.

I like to sing along to great Jazz solos in the car to learn them until I can sing along—it's a good way to pick up the language. A few days ago I noticed that once the solos are internalized enough, I can still be distracted and have wandering thoughts while singing them. Complex stuff. I might change the question to "who is singing?"

By the way, "continuous, or at least on-demand, awareness" is begging to be turned around and investigated.

I recall getting them in the past, as I recall joking with friends "Oh, you won't believe what song is stuck in my head!!" and things like that. But I don't ever remember it being a bad thing, just funny, something we'd joke about. I don't specifically recall having one any time recently, though I often sing during the day, either some song I'm studying for choir, or some part of a song I heard earlier, usually church stuff. I don't play music on the radio/computer/etc very much unless I specifically feel like listening to a particular piece or artist. I used to always listen to music while out walking for exercise, but don't usually do that anymore. So perhaps there's less of a data dump of music in my head to spill out into earworms.

I also don't recall my spiritual/meditation practice ever being about not having thoughts, specifically. There were certainly times when thoughts of various kinds would be distracting, but I don't recall the point of practice being to try to silence the mind. The mind has become very, very silent, but that seems to me a sort of side-effect and I never tried to make it happen as a goal or focus of practice. Ditto with the "continuous awareness" (or at least what I assume you mean by that) - it just sort of crept in (for me that happened a good while after waking up, btw).

nadav wrote: Earworms aren't a problem because I don't strive to have a hyper-focused quiet mind.

Aha!

my experience is it's only bad to the extent there is unpleasantness in my body that I can't focus on it in a way where I am successfully objectifying it

Hey Tom, I'll trade you that Miley Cyrus earworm for my neighbor blasting a mellow Brazilian version of "Do They Know It's Christmas" at full blast at 10am.

My other neighbor used to be notable for his fancy sound system, which makes the earth shake even at low volume. He watched (in rotation) movies in which hundreds of beings were painfully slaughtered (you can hear the difference between slaughter by sword and slaughter by ray gun, btw); and porn. I prayed for him to get involved in some activities with real human beings (a job? a girlfriend? shopping? tennis?), and he lately seems to be rarely home, and when I do hear the television it is usually a news or sports program played at low volume.

I prefer the neighbor downstairs who blasts interesting jazz. All three give me a good excuse to howl out my voice practice at full volume though, so I can't complain too much. (Unlike in New York, which has a hotline you can call to complain about any small noise you don't like, here the unwritten rule is you never ask anyone to be quiet, even if it is 3am. I can't believe we used to complain to our upstairs neighbor in New York that we could hear footsteps when they walked around their apartment. Seems horridly petty in hindsight. Or maybe in comparison!)

Chris Marti wrote: Yeah.

My experience is that there are two kinds of "quiet mind." The kind that is truly quiet, without many discursive thoughts, no ear worms, and so on. I believe we all get this temporarily at times during our practice, and sometimes, but rarely, it becomes a default mind state. I'm thinking here of someone like Gary Weber, who makes the claim that he has very few discursive thoughts.

The other kind is a mind that is quiet because mind objects objects arise and pass freely, without friction (clinging or aversion). There are still discursive thoughts but they are not experienced as "I/me/mine" and so they float through like clouds passing against the blue sky background of awareness. This kind of quiet mind is more common, and more often becomes the default mind state for experienced meditators.

Yes! This is an important distinction. The cloud metaphor is really apt for the latter, in my experience.