Mind Watching: Field Notes from Wilderness Solitude-Day 11

50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...

by Tyler Volk

Day 11 Where is the Tree?

Today, along a trail, I saw acorns scattered across the ground. Where is their parent tree? I looked up to find it.

Our thoughts are like acorns, dropped from trees that are usually unconscious. To search for the parent trees is one facet of thinking about thinking.

Some trees in our mind are easy to find. For example, I recently made a commitment to speak at a conference this coming November, to celebrate the hundred year mark of the birth of Gregory Bateson, a famous anthropologist and systems thinker, who died in 1980. Still months away, aspects of that upcoming event periodically enter my mind: deciding where to stay, emails I need to write in preparation, thinking about the expense of the airline tickets, a bit of regret I even said “Yes,” because I intend to prepare a lot of new work for the event. Overall, I do much want to attend. As evidence, I did commit to it, “voluntarily.” I put that in scare-quotes, because I’m wrestling with how personal decisions get made.

From thoughts about logistics to feelings of regret and then affirmations of commitment—all these feelings or evaluations about a decision are like acorns are dropped from the overall need to prepare myself for the conference, the parent tree in this case.

So a cluster of related thoughts (or sub-goals) can be generated from a larger goal. What is the goal in thinking about thinking?

Is the goal the absence of thoughts that we don’t want, or better thoughts, or more creative thoughts? All of the above? Might we seek the ability to turn the inner dialogue on and off at will, and likewise for inner music and imagery? Should we cultivate a variety of thoughts: pointy thoughts, round thoughts, yellow thoughts, red thoughts? I’ll bet Dr. Seuss had the answer somewhere in his books.

Do we all share common trees? The renowned historian of religion, Karen Armstrong, has written that Buddha’s system for release from the suffering caused by the process of desire was not invented. Instead, Buddha claimed to have discovered it: “I have seen an ancient path, an ancient Road, trodden by Buddhas of a bygone age.” In this view, enlightened people would be a family, a set, whose members share a universal shape, like families of acorns or water droplets. To reach this universal goal, we would all follow the same ancient path. Our acorns in this state would be born from some inner tree common to all people, and thus we would postulate a common depth in the people’s dynamics of desire for reaching such a supposedly exalted state.

We can question the metaphors of ancient paths and common trees and treat them not as proven truths but as hypotheses to at least play with in our minds. Consider the spiritual pundits you might see through various media. In my experience, many of them go on the assumption that there is a universal path. Sometimes you hear the metaphor that there are many ways to climb the mountain, but when you get to the top it is the same pinnacle for everybody. Not too bad! We might want to accept this metaphor of altitude, or reject it. But in either case, until proven (how?) one way or the other, it is probably best to treat it as hypothetical. I will play with it, if only to get out of my comfort zone. After all, we are often tempted to take on a viewpoint because it happens to be comforting.

This analysis is further complicated by the fact that we take on society’s goals, meaning some of which are “out there.” During this process, the goals become trees in our minds that produce the acorns of subgoals. The influences can be subtle. Real trees shape themselves to particular environments of soil, water, and life. They have what is called, in the language of genetics, variable phenotypes. For example, a tree grown in the open is more spherical than a tree grown in competition with others for light. Humans, in the ways their intellects and capabilities grow, are also shaped naturally by their social environment during the development of one’s goals. In the modern world, for example, we need money to live, so therefore money becomes something that occupies the mind, and thus we shape ourselves into caring about money.

Finally, goals, considered so far as trees, themselves could have grown from acorns that earlier fell from still deeper trees of the mind, which we might think of as motivations. Many motivations are biological, related to reproductive advantage. Look at the acorns of thoughts in daily life and wonder—are they from any trees you know consciously, meaning you can identify, such as I can with the various thoughts about the conference I’m not committed to? Or do they drop from goals that are linked to deeper motivations that for the most part operate unconsciously, given to us by the process of mind-body evolution?

All these ruminations on various nested sets of acorns and types of inner trees might derive from a primal, deepest psychological tree. Is that the Self? No matter how scattered, seemingly random, derived from conscious goals, or socially or biologically proscribed, all thoughts derive from my cognitive system, the great tree I’m considering here, which apparently cannot easily be pictured. I can’t see it. Perhaps prince Arjuna, in the Bhagavad-Gita, saw it when his charioteer revealed himself to be the tremendous, towering, generator-of-all-beings, Lord Vishnu. Vishnu as the deep tree of one’s Self: that’s one possible interpretation. The total psyche is certainly as awesome generative system.

Reference & Note

Karen Armstrong (1994) A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Ballantine Books. -- page 32 -- Armstrong references the quote by Buddha, but the interpretation that it means discovery and not invention is hers. I cherish times I’ve spent reading a number of her books.

© 2024 by Tyler Volk