To Kill a Mockingbird - and mindfulness
The Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper lee is one of the most read, and appreciated novel of its era, even up to today. For obvious reasons. Above is one of the famous quotes in the book, made by the character Judge Taylor. And the full quote is as follows.
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges.
He says those words ruling that women and children are allowed to be in the court for the hearing. But they are not allowed to disturb the proceedings in any way. It is understandable that given the context, it has more narrower meaning. And first when I read the quote, it did looks like capturing essentials of mindfulness practice. And I will show you why. I am not going in further details of the plot of the novel. However, a brief summary you may find in the internet.
Before moving on look at the following quote which I picked up from a twitter.
A book read by a thousand people is thousand books.
Did you see the similarity? Taken in isolation, this is exactly what I gathered from the above quote, people generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for. It seems no matter what is presented to our perception, it is somehow altered by our past experience. As past is always carried by us, like an information sphere, or like earth, like Atlas the Giant. Similarly, we can expand the above quote in following ways as well.
A flower seen by a thousand people is a thousand flowers
A film watched by a thousand couples is two thousand films.
A dinner taken by two people is two dinners
A song heard by a dozen people is a dozen songs
Philosophy of the quote "People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for"
Now, you can understand that if we were mindful about the fact, that our perceptions are different from one person to another, there would be less arguments, and less fights over stupid little things. At least that will do some good. However, this is not the only depth we can go to, as always wisdom doesn't let us stop there. As I see,
A flower seen by me in the morning and afternoon are two flowers
A film watched by me twice in the past are two films
A mouthful taken by me during the dinner are individual mouthfuls
A song listens by me a dozen times is a dozen different sounds hence, a dozen songs.
A thought which occurs about the past, is a new thought.
These are intuitions which are gathered and indeed helpful in our mindful practice, as always wisdom follows mindfulness vice versa. Knowing the facts help to understand the mind process. With these intuitions we can now try to answer the question, who am I? once again, an attempt to answer. Because,
I who have listened a dozen songs, are not the same I, as with each iteration of the song, my personality had changed. Each second, each half a second and each millisecond. Without ever even 'me' knowing about it.
If these paragraphs, tickles your brain, I suggest you look at following articles, to understand the process a little bit more.
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