This song talks about how you are at the mercy of your untrained mind. It is working all the time and you are listening to everything it tells you without questioning it for a moment. You have given it complete freedom and have made no effort to train it. The fundamental mistake you're making is that you don't view the mind as being separate from yourself. From this one misjudgement, all your problems arise.
You must view the mind as separate. You don't realise that it is as a sense door, constantly reacting to stimulation, just like you do with the eyes and the ears. Worse—you give its messages priority over all your other senses.
Background worry
Going on
All are always craving
With urges
Or aversions
For different things
Different versions
All just worry
Buddhism teaches that there are only two types of thoughts: Craving or aversions. This starts as an infant, grabbing or pushing away. Everything is a mild version of love or hate. We have pleasant sensations on the body, we react with craving, craving. We have unpleasant sensations on the body, we react with aversion.
Take some time every day
To turn your attention that way
And bring some peace back to your life
If it's impossibly hard
Then you'll see that you're scarred
From all of the stress
You've built up
By coming back to the present moment and switching to another sense door, you can still the mind, by not paying attention to it. If you can't do this—even for a moment—then you have let your mind become the master, not the other way around. PRACTICE: Close your eyes and listen to all the different sounds around you. Concentrate on the most distant ones.
Background worry
In my mind
Mental radiation
Where to go
What to eat
Who to call
Who to meet
Background worry
Awake or asleep, your mind is continually working to process new or old stimuli. When we pay attention to its babblings we make ourselves unhappy. With the constant need to satisfy our mind. But the mind can never be satisfied. More stimulation only means greater craving. You'll never put a fire out by throwing wood on it.
Background worry
Holding on
The teacher is Anicca
In the future
Or the past
Even now
Nothing lasts
Only worry
Impermanence is one of the essential doctrines of Buddhist teaching. The Pali word for impermanence is Anicca, which means the opposite of "Nicca" -permanence. Everything—whether mental or material—are in a continuous change of condition, subject to decline and destruction. All physical and mental events are not metaphysically real, that they are not constant or permanent. They arise and pass away.
All my ideas
Were just cravings I fear
Before I thought they were wonderful things
Now I see them in light
I have a heavy hindsight
For all of the tension they bring
Background worry
I realised this for myself on a Vipassana course. 10 days in silent meditation. And when I was experiencing nice sensations on the body—such as when I was walking around after an hour of pain on the meditation cushion—I'd get fantastic ideas for things I was going to do when I got out. For example, I once saw a microlight aircraft flying overhead and spent hours afterwards thinking about it—despite my best efforts not to. But it taught me a lesson and now I realise that all my ideas are just things that I want to have.
Just desire
Wanting something different
In my way
At my speed
Disappointment
Misery
Background worry x4
In actual fact, there is only one type of thought: desire. Cravings and aversion are just desire for change. "I want this thing I had in the past or want this thing that someone else has. I'm not satisfied with the current situation. I want things to change." The paradox is that in truth, nothing is permanent. Change is continuously happening. You couldn't even stop it if you tried. It's just that the change is too slow for us to notice. Look at a photo of yourself from last year, or 5 years ago, you look very different. The grass is slightly longer every day. We want the change to happen at a speed we can see and in a direction we desire... a direction we have stimulated ourselves to desire.