Enjoy Uncertainty - Shuffle Zen

Zen Buddhism teaches that there is no self, just a mental construct that makes us believe that there is a separate and isolated me.

Often we use music to enforce our mood. When we are sad, we look for sad music. When we are love-sick a song about heart-break sounds like it is about us! When we are happy, we look for upbeat music. Of course, sometimes we go the other way around. We are sad and look to listen to something upbeat to break us out of the mood.

I think the iPod Shuffle is cool, because it is great to observe our reaction to random emotion as chosen by the iPod Shuffle - well, unless you put only sad songs on the player, but then you are missing the point...

The smallest events can shove us into a certain mood. Somebody drives too fast or too slow, somebody has a "stupid" bumpersticker on their car, somebody cuts in line at the grocery store... you get the idea. Just turn on the iPod Shuffle and let it pick a song for you. Yeah, it is random. Almost as random as you getting upset over the driver in front of you, when you could have looked up and seen an amazing cloud, or to the right where a little boy is hugging his mom. posted by ottmar on January 12, 2005 08:51 AM | in