non-dualistic mindfulness | portfoliolongo

“Impermanent record,” occurred to me as a vague notion. When I mentioned it to Annyth, she suggested that I do a cartoon, and the notion remained a velleity until now.

The title of this post can be attributed to the late Dr. Owen Dukelow, Professor of Philosophy at Washington and Jefferson College. As an undergrad in the mid to late 1970s I took a couple of his classes. I also worked in the college library all four years, and Professor Dukelow would show up now and then and place a stack of his newsletters/bulletins on the front desk for people to take away and read for free. The informal series was entitled, Pardon Me, My Mind Was Wandering. I remember finding his short essays amusing, but I wasn’t mature enough to recognize the themes of equanimity and impermanence. I do now, at least to some extent.

Back when I was in high school in the early 1970s I bought a book on meditation for some unknown reason. In bed that night I started skimming the book, reading a few pages here and there. I randomly found an exercise instructing me to pay attention to sights and sounds. So I put down the book and looked out the screened window at a street light on a telephone pole located about halfway between my window and the small, fence-making factory just beyond the alley, the row of houses, and the railroad tracks behind our house. For a brief moment my very own view shed and sound shed seemed unfamiliar to me. I noticed the constant factory noise, which I had learned how to ignore long before. Guests and visitors would ask us how we put up with that noise, and we’d say, what noise? I heard it that night. Then there was the street light. I noticed that from my bed I could see the light, and if i relaxed my eyes, I could see the mesh of the screen against a blurry but bright backdrop. I remember alternating between either seeing the street light or seeing the screen mesh, but I couldn’t see them both clearly at the same time; except for that one fleeting moment in which I either saw them both at the same time or imagined seeing them both at the same time. By this time I was coming to, returning to my regularly scheduled programs. I closed the book thinking to myself, well that went nowhere. I set the book aside along with the others on different subjects that I had left unfinished. Funny, isn’t it? I think I was momentarily meditating from the inside out and outside in, and I didn’t even know it; but, how come I remember it? I think I accidentally bumped into now then.