The Mind Tires Easily..

Making my daily walk out of the canyon yesterday, the great obviousness of its macrocosmic lessons dawned on me as I contemplated my existence yet again.

Riding. It always comes back to riding.

Riding has become my martial art. Truly. Within the phenomenon of this acrobatic endeavor lies the secrets of the lessons of life and potentially of existence, it seems.

More strategy as well as psychology concerning mountain biking/racing has revealed itself during my short time so far in my new office of employment, than in four years of riding and racing.

Such as:

A tired body is an exhausted mind.

The body follows the mind. Outside of actual physical breakdown, what seems to really tire is actually the mind itself.

Imagine five equally (physiologically) fit athletes on a 50-mile epic event (in this example we will call genetics all equal, which includes breakdown).

As the event progresses and each drives to out-race the other, their bodies break down accordingly and all tire.

But it seems that the condition of fatigue is bit premature in most cases. In the end the victor is he who the masters their mind, for it is the mind that commands where desire is concerned.

As the body goes through constant demands to perform, it is taken to its physical cap. Naturally there is a mechanism in the mind, likely in the older part of the brain, that normally governs how much - including how long - such demands will be tolerated, all based on the laws of self-preservation.

The mind interprets this as pain.

Thinking about all this as I raced up the high steps of the Kaibab Trail
I had to ask: Then what is pain?

Once I had thought that pain was another experience, as in something to be experienced.
But now it seems that it is actually just a label, for the only thing tangible is the sensation itself.

While hiking, I decided to observe the ever intensifying feeling of the legs filling with lead, simply as it was. It was reduced to the sensations of the individual muscles at work. So what seemed to be the legs working to an unsustainable limit was actually just the muscles working hard. That's it. Context and relationship were changed.

This so-called pain is really just a sensation, be it an intensely gross one, given a label.

When the phenomenon in question is reduced to what it really is, a mere sensation, then the question must then be reconfigured:

I feel tired...but what is tired? The body? Or is it the mind?

And what then does the mind tire of?

It grows weary of the constant bombardment of these sensations that are fueled by a greater drive.

Denied its desire to end its suffering, the mind creates a powerful aversion to the continuity of the physical act.

And because we identify our source of consciousness within the mind we perceive the body's supposed tiring as actual ruling reality.

The sensations themselves and their interpretations by the mind are two separate occurrences.

I seek the state of No-mind.