White Noise and Coffee Shop Dharma

'White noise'. Now there's an odd term. Technically it's defined as a sound that is an amalgam of all audible frequencies, at the same level of intensity. More commonly, we use the term 'white noise' to refer to a generalized, relatively quiet noise that is a sort of fusion or combination of everything we can hear going on in the background.

A typical urban coffee shop is a good place to experience white noise, especially if the shop is crowded. The sounds of all activity combined with human voices creates a kind of dull drone that (provided the shop is free of screaming babies or giggling teenagers) is more or less muted -- or perhaps more accurately, an animated muted, as everyone there is caffeinated.

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, and I also write a lot. That means that I write in coffee shops a lot (a dazzling display of logic). I currently have two computers: a 2007 Acer Aspire desktop, and a 2008 Compaq laptop. (Well, make that three: I also have a 2007 Blackberry Curve, which is essentially a mini-computer). A computer that is two or three years old is already becoming dated, but I'm content with my machines and hope to get another two or three years out of them.

I write more on the laptop because that's what I take to the coffee shops. This city (Vancouver) has many of them (Starbucks, birthed in Seattle, first expanded to Vancouver). Now we also have Blenz, Waves, JJ Bean, Bean Around the World, The Grind, Saltspring, Cedar Cottage, Solly's, and many more (those listed are the ones I go to; I daily pass by others that I don't).

I write in coffee shops because, paradoxically, there is less distraction there. Gurdjieff wrote most of his 1,000 page long Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson in the Cafe de la Paix, in Paris, during the late 1920s. This I can easily understand (although I find it harder to understand how he did it with just pencil and cheap notebooks). I can understand it because the white noise of a coffee shop is in some ways perfect for writing, being loud enough to prevent the mind from wandering, but not so loud that concentration is impaired.

White noise is an interesting metaphor for the activity of the mind. The mind is always generating thoughts, the amalgam of which can be imagined as a sort of white noise. In order to be aware of such white noise, however, requires a witness that is distinct. There is the noise of the coffee shop, and the one who is aware of it. There is the movement of the mind, and the one who is aware of that.

Awareness arises in contrast and context, but is itself indivisible. (How do you truly divide awareness? I can make the effort to be simultaneously aware of both self and what I am perceiving, but that is only a mental trick, really. Awareness itself is not a 'thing' and therefore cannot be treated as a thing that can be divided, multiplied, combined, etc.).

The silent mind is considered a virtue in some spiritual teachings, but in fact a 'silent mind' is something of an impossibility. Silence exists, but mind is energy, activity, movement -- 'white noise'. What, then, is silence? And what is awareness?

These are the essential questions, the ones to be keyed in on in self-inquiry. We look into these questions not with the intention of explaining them -- although this can be attempted -- but more with the intention of entering into them. To gaze upon awareness itself, upon silence itself, is to begin to see into the nature of pure presence, and into the pristine clarity of awareness. The deeper we look, all activity that arises in the mind -- thought, awareness, silence, energy -- is ultimately seen and understood to be the same. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Thoughts arise from the void, from emptiness, from silence. And within a thought, is found both energy and silence.