Establishing Mindfulness: Thought

Anyone who meditates for a while can begin appreciating how strong the pull or the pressure is to be thinking at times. And sometimes it is almost impossible to let go of the thoughts because they are so intense. And that's a time when it's particularly interesting to study the nature of thought; the feeling, the texture of our attachment to what we are thinking.

Transcript

So in these weeks together we've been working towards strengthening our mindfulness.

In some ways establishing and re-establishing and starting over and beginning again our mindfulness practice.

And as mindfulness gets stronger in the breath,

In the body,

In the emotional realm,

In the thought realm what happens as it gets stronger and stronger is it works to set us free from what we're actually aware of,

What we're mindful of.

Like maybe you found in your body you have strong sensations,

Pain in the body.

And the habit pattern is to react to that.

We're kind of against it.

We clench around it.

We're pushing it away.

We have all these feelings around the pain,

Anger or self-pity or despair.

All these things are going on.

All these strong reactions.

We begin to see how connected we are to the reactions or entangled.

And just by paying attention to the ways in which we're against it or clenching or pushing away,

We just start to simply become aware of it.

This begins to free us from the the knot.

As mindfulness gets stronger,

The mindfulness itself,

What we're aware of,

Begins to stand separately,

Independent from what we're aware of.

Just aware.

There's this beautiful analogy that my teacher uses of a lotus flower that grows out of muddy water.

And as it blooms,

It's untouched by the mud.

So we too have this beautiful,

White,

Sparkling,

Clean lotus rooted in the mud,

Untouched by the mud.

And this,

As we establish mindfulness and the areas that we've been exploring,

The breath,

The body,

Emotions,

This week thought,

And next week kind of an untraditional focus,

Which will be speech.

As awareness gets stronger and stronger,

It has this experience of being lifted out,

Being free from the mud.

The mud is the place where we're attached and we're identified,

The place where we cling.

So this week,

We've been exploring the idea of freedom in relationship to our thinking.

To appreciate the possibility of thinking without grasping to our thoughts,

Without clinging to our thoughts as true or right or to be followed.

Many of us cling to the ideas and the concepts that are really entangled with our thinking.

And what's so fascinating is that many times what we are clinging to,

Like people are clinging to something,

They're actually not clinging to a thing at all.

They're clinging to their thoughts about those things.

So if I'm thinking about something mundane,

Like I made a brie and apple sandwich on a French baguette for my lunch.

And it's such a wonderful lunch,

It reminds me of my time in France and I can't wait to have this beautiful sandwich.

And I actually feel like I need to go and check the refrigerator to make sure that no one is going to eat that sandwich that I've made for myself.

So there's this attachment to the sandwich.

But the sandwich is somewhere else.

What I'm clinging to are my thoughts about the sandwich that I'm thinking about.

I'm attached to the perceived pleasure that it will bring me.

I'm attached to the delightful experiencing of having a lunch that has all these wonderful historical memories associated with it.

It's the thoughts and the ideas and the fantasies and the projections and the plans and the anticipation.

That's what I'm clinging to.

So as we establish mindfulness,

We're also bringing mindfulness to this world of our thinking.

And seeing the ways in which we cling to our thinking.

Oops,

I just had to move my bench and the bench collapsed so let me readjust myself here so that the sun is out of my eyes.

So there are certain meditators,

Maybe this is you,

Who have adverse relationships to thinking.

You don't like your thoughts.

You don't want your thoughts.

And there are also certain schools of meditation where thoughts are considered a distraction.

Something that needs to be shut down,

Quieting them down,

Like not having any thoughts.

In our popular culture I think that there is a misunderstanding that the aim of meditation is to have a silent mind with no thought.

Like this is how popular culture kind of sees the meditation practice.

But what we're doing here,

The aim around thoughts in the insight practice is to be aware of them.

That's it.

To include them in awareness and in that inclusion,

With time,

Learn to be free of them.

Not reacting to them.

I think anyone who meditates for a while can begin to appreciate how strong the pull or the pressure to be thinking at all times is.

At times it's almost impossible to let go of thought because it's so intense.

And in times like that it's particularly helpful and interesting to sort of study the nature of thought.

The feeling of what it's like in the body when we're ruminating.

And kind of the texture of our attachment to what we're thinking about.

It's a great area of investigation.

And what is a thought really,

You know?

We know what it's like to be lost in thought.

In our meditation practice we bring ourselves back from thought.

Coming back to the body and the breath again and again and again.

And then when we do this,

When we try to recall what we were thinking about,

We can't do it.

Thinking is really just a little bit more than nothing.

It's like an energy wisp in the mind.

That's what our thinking is.

It's energy.

It comes and goes.

And really thinking is so insubstantial.

But when we are not aware of our thinking,

Thoughts have such a tremendous power in our lives.

They're like these little dictators in our mind.

You know?

Do this.

Don't do that.

They're running the show.

They're running our lives.

Our thinking is running our lives.

It's powerful to start to see this.

So even just dropping in the question,

What is a thought?

Like not the content.

Don't get swept into the content or the story.

What is a thought?

Oh,

It's energy.

It's energy in the mind.

Not much there.

And when we see this repeatedly,

It begins to free us from being so dominated by this mental activity.

This rumination.

Joseph Goldstein,

One of the teachers who brought insight meditation to the United States,

Used to say that the thought of your mother is not your mother.

We forget this.

We get so entangled in our perception of that person,

Our memories,

Our stories,

Completely forgetting that the thought of whomever or whatever is not that thing.

It's just a thought.

So pay attention,

Paying attention to the compulsion to think,

The pressure to think,

And how your body activates.

When in particular with rumination,

The Pali word for rumination is great.

It's called Papancha.

Papancha.

It's a great Pali word.

I really like it.

That ruminating mind.

So when we start to pay attention to the compulsiveness of thinking,

We pay attention to the sensations and the muscles in our body,

Like what's alive,

What's contracting,

What's tight or hot or energized,

What's happening emotionally with the thought,

And how strong are those emotions.

You know,

And the emotions,

They get fed by the thought.

The thought is almost fueling an emotional response,

And it can be really uncomfortable when we are ruminating in the mind.

We don't want to feel the emotion,

So then we react to the thought.

We let the inner dictators run the show.

So this is this is our practice,

To really pay attention to all that,

And then eventually finding your way to seeing like,

Oh okay,

What's the attachment here?

What am I holding on to?

What am I grasping?

And so we start looking at,

What is this attachment to this thought that's going on and on in my mind?

What is this clinging?

We're not really asked to let go of the thoughts.

We're asked in practice to let go of the clinging to thoughts.

There's freedom when the thoughts have space.

They have room to just sort of float around,

And they become thinner when we're not clinging them.

They become lighter when we're not attaching to them,

And then they kind of vanish.

And as I said on Tuesday,

To be able to engage in thoughts is,

You know,

A rich and valuable part of being a human being on this planet.

But not to believe every thought.

You know,

To also know how to think things out and reflect on things in a deep way,

And not act on the first initial opinion we have.

To have enough discernment to say,

I don't have to be involved in that.

And putting it down and coming back to the body,

Coming back to the breath,

I don't have to be involved with that.

Oh,

Look at that.

So thank you for your consideration and your attention.

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