Cultivating Friendly Relations With Discursive Thinking

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The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 06, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Cultivating Friendly Relations With Discursive Thinking

Good morning, everyone. Somehow, I feel particularly happy to sit here today—happy and content, somehow. Maybe I shouldn't be, because I don't have a talk really thought out. I'm just here. I debated whether to just take questions today; it seems like it's nice to do that periodically. But there is something that I would like to talk about. I think I'd enjoy talking about it, it just hasn't been formulated. So I might bore you as I find my way, but it's a wonderful topic for me: our thinking.

Over the years of practice, my relationship to thinking has changed. It has deepened and expanded in all kinds of interesting ways, for me at least. I would say that I have a very friendly relationship with my thinking world, which I think a lot of people can't say. I couldn't have said that when I was younger. It's friendly in there. Mostly, my thoughts are friendly thoughts, and I don't feel particularly challenged by the thoughts that I have. I kind of sometimes delight in them and appreciate them. I've also learned over the years of practice to not give a lot of authority to them, which makes it easier to have a much simpler relationship to them.

I think it's very easy to be challenged, because I've had plenty of this in my life: having thoughts that were compulsive, where there was stress involved in the very thoughts that I had. To some point become free of that is a wonderful thing. It's a possibility for all of us. Though some people have lived so long—or I certainly lived so long—in thought streams that were just taken for granted and assumed to be normal. That's just what life is sometimes.

You know this famous quote, "I think, therefore I am." It points to the fact that, at least for some of us, we identify ourselves with our thinking. It's like, "Who I am is my thinking, and so if I think it, it must be right. That must be me, or this must be the real thing." Certainly, my thinking happens to me—I take responsibility for it—but I don't identify myself with it. It's not who I am. It's just kind of like an appendage sometimes.

Maybe it's no different than when you clip off your fingernails. I don't know where you put them when they fall, but you probably don't look at them. I doubt you gather them up and get a glass locket that you carry with you so you can show people, "Look, right here over my heart!" Mostly, once they're clipped, the relationship to clipped fingernails is pretty light. I bet there's not much compulsion except figuring out the right place to throw them away.

We can have that kind of light, easy relationship with thoughts. We don't have to identify with them. Just because we think it, doesn't mean that's who we are. You don't have to define yourself by the thoughts that you have.

A big part of this for mindfulness practitioners is, in fact, to learn to be mindful of thinking. It's not easy because sometimes thinking is the filter through which we see the world, and we don't see the filter. But over time, you can slowly become more and more cognizant of how you think. Different people think in different ways. For some people, it's clearly in words and a voice in the head that speaks. For some people, they think in images a lot. For some people, there are other primary ways of knowing, processing, or understanding.

First, become aware of your way of understanding your life. Notice whether it's stressful or not. Notice if it feels heavy, dense, or contracted, or whether it feels agitated—the way that you think. Are there different circumstances in your life where thinking is more likely to be stressful, and other circumstances where it's actually kind of nice to think? Maybe some people enjoy their thoughts more when they're alone. Some people are more oppressed by their thoughts when they're alone. Some people in the shower enjoy their thoughts, because finally, that's a place to sing. Even if you can't sing, it's a place to just be. There are all kinds of different scenarios.

Understand the different contexts for how you think, and begin appreciating their differences. Once you understand that there are different ways of thinking and different qualities of thinking, you can appreciate that the way you think is somewhat optional. You might have options to think differently—maybe think without stress, without compulsivity, without getting identified with your thoughts as "this is who I am."

Also, appreciate that there are different kinds of thinking. The one that I think Buddhist practice wants to address the most is what I call discursive thinking. This is storytelling, carrying on a discourse or a conversation in the mind. Sometimes we're having conversations with other people, reviewing what we said yesterday to figure out a better reply that we didn't give. Or we're planning ahead for a conversation we're going to have: "When that person says X, I'm going to say Y, but if they say this..." We're figuring out what's the best thing to say. Sometimes they're stressful situations, like talking with a boss, a difficult conversation with a friend, or meeting one-on-one with a Buddhist teacher. For some people, they rehearse for that and plan it out.

Sometimes that's where the opinions come. We have opinions, ideas, and commentary to make about things: "Wow, look at that person. Those shoes are just not up to snuff. How could those people be wearing those shoes?"

On and on it goes. I just learned last night my son is going to a "Kendom"^[1] party. That's something I only learned about this last week. We should all go to Kendom parties! I have no idea what happens at that kind of party. I didn't know what to think, so I didn't have any commentary about it. I was just kind of like, "Wow!" [Laughter] Maybe this is an anti-patriarchy party, that would be nice. He went to the basement and my wife helped him take out all the pink clothes that he had in storage. Periodically in his life, he liked pink clothes and had forgotten he had them. Apparently, that was necessary for this party.

But the mind makes commentary and judgments: "Oh no, a young man should not wear pink, that's not quite right. Maybe it should be blue." The mind makes these stories and lives in them. Those stories can have very strong emotions connected to them—very strong fear, anger, or criticism of self and others. The discursive mind, the storytelling mind, can have a huge impact on ourselves and on others.

On ourselves, the story-making mind often repeats over and over again the same ideas and themes. As it's repeated, the emotional impact gets repeated as well. If we're constantly telling stories about how terrible we are, slowly that wears us away, and we start getting depressed, exhausted, or shrink and contract in some deep way. If we keep telling ourselves stories which are lies about how fantastic we are—delusions of grandeur—and then we start telling that to everyone else, we might believe the delusion and conceit around it. This is very stressful, at least for others, but maybe for ourselves too. The stories we tell repeatedly have a big impact on us, so we want to be careful of what we say.

Do we want to live in the storytelling mind? Our storytelling mind is a little bit of a fantasy, even if we're predicting the future or remembering the past. Some people love to remember the past, and it brings them great delight, which is wonderful and can be a very healthy part of their life. But sometimes the memories of the past are hard, and sometimes they are not accurate. Are we weighed down by them? What is the effect these stories from the discursive mind have? There's a lot of suffering and stress that comes from the discursive mind. To live in that as if that's just the way to be is unfortunate. Many people just assume that reality has been built this way, and that the way they see the world through these filters must be true.

One of the phenomenal things that can happen with meditation practice is the calming of the thinking mind. We discover that we can breathe, be alive, be happy, or just experience life without that discursive mind running. It's kind of like the hum of the refrigerator. You didn't even know it was on until it went off, and then you think, "Ah, that feels good." Not a few people cherish meditation because it's the one place where that thinking mind gets quiet enough that it's not so stressful and oppressive. It's not constantly churning. Meditation calms it down.

But for our practice of mindfulness meditation, it's not just to have a quiet mind and get that relief. It's to use that calmness as a vantage point to become wiser about how we think. We use that calmness as an orientation to look at our thinking more carefully when it begins again: "How am I thinking? What's the quality of my thinking? What are the primary themes?"

Many people only discover the regular themes of their thinking when they go into meditation retreats. For seven days, there's very little stimulus that usually keeps us distracted. You don't have the radio, TV, or computer on. Some people have multiple things on at the same time. I've seen my son tracking three monitors, and he seems to be able to do it. He's also figured out that college classes are recorded, so he doesn't go to class. He says the professors talk too slow, and his mind wanders off. Instead, he listens to the recordings on two or three times speed, and then he has to really pay attention, and he learns better. Who knows, maybe there's a whole new generation evolving into different brains. Maybe most of us are the old version, and evolution continues!

But on retreat, we don't have the normal distractions or interruptions. We spend hours at a time left with ourselves, looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves. Sometimes it's very distressing for people to finally discover what goes on in there: "I had no idea that this is what I was thinking all the time! This is terrible!" Or, "Wow, I'm better than I thought I was!" That second one happens less often than the first.

Some people discover how much they are afraid because their thoughts are themed around fear: worried about this, worried about that. Some discover how much they're trying to escape by going into fantasy. Some discover how much they're driven by sexual desire because they have fantasies galore. It goes on and on. There are themes. Discovering what drives the mind when it is left to itself is considered fantastic for insight meditation^[2].

For the purposes of insight meditation, there's absolutely no need for shame or embarrassment, even if it is occasionally embarrassing. It just is. You want to be able to see it clearly and learn not to define yourself by it. Defining ourselves by the thoughts we have is a tremendous source of suffering.

Slowly, we begin to not be so committed to our discursive mind. We're not so focused on or interested in it, and that makes a big difference. There's no switch to turn it off, but it is possible to lose interest in it. As we lose interest, it recedes into the background. It doesn't have us by the throat or by the nose. It just kind of does its thing, and we can be more present in other ways.

When we start seeing the quality and the characteristics of the discursive thoughts we're having all the time, it's possible to change what we think and change the stream of our thoughts. If the thoughts are always ones of doubt, try intentionally thinking thoughts of confidence. Think about the things in your life that you're confident about. That could be the most mundane, simple thing you can imagine. You have confidence you know how to put on your shoes. You have confidence that you know which drawer to put your silverware in. You never think about this; it's done on automatic pilot. But start thinking about what you have confidence in, even if it's small, and slowly expand it. Get a sense of what it feels like to think confident thoughts as opposed to always thinking doubtful thoughts.

If you have mean or cynical thoughts, try having kind thoughts. They don't have to be insincere ones. Maybe you have kindness for the neighbor's dog when you see it. Begin where you can, start having kind thoughts regularly, and see what that's like. When I was a new Zen^[3] student, I would have thought anything like that was artificial, like painting a saccharine picture of the world. Well, maybe it is, but it doesn't have to be. More importantly, is it the better alternative? Is it better to continue with the meanness and the doubt than it is to insert, maybe ten percent of the time, thoughts of confidence, goodwill, and kindness? How does that influence you? How does that condition you? How does that change you?

This begins shifting our relationship to discursive thought, allowing us to not put it down, but to not be identified with it. With the help of meditation, we can start discerning that there are other ways of knowing and other ways of thinking than discursive thinking. It's fantastic to start discovering that there can be a knowing of something before you think it. Maybe it's obvious to some of you, but for me, that was a great discovery. As I caught wind of it, I thought, "Wait a minute. I was focused on thinking as being what told me what was going on in life. But then I noticed that when things are quiet, there's a knowing there before I think. Why do I think I have to think? What if I'm just content with that knowing?"

It turns out we know a lot of things without thinking. When you leave here today, I bet none of you are going to try to leave through the windows. It wouldn't occur to you—well, maybe now that I told you, some of you will try! But you know that if you want to leave, you go through a door. I suspect you're not planning ahead, thinking, "Now I'm in this building. Buildings have doors. Doors are the ways to get out. Is the door big enough? Do I have the right clothes to go through the door?" You don't think about the door, but you know it's a door. That's a knowing which exists somehow in the cognitive mind that doesn't require active thinking.

It's a silly example, but there's lots and lots of that going on all the time. Driving operates a lot in this non-thinking way. We make a lot of choices as we drive because we see something and we know what it means. We might be having a conversation with a friend in the passenger seat and thinking about that, while not actively thinking, "There's a pedestrian stepping into the crosswalk, so slow down and stop." A lot of processing goes on to act, but it happens in this non-thinking world of cognition and understanding, which is a good thing.

My suspicion is that for most people, this non-thinking place where we know something tends to be wiser than most of our active thinking. A lot of our active thinking is fueled by greed, ill will, hostility, fear, anxiety, or confusion. When it's fueled by those things, it has a very different effect on us than when our knowing is not influenced by those sources. This deeper way of knowing can still be influenced by these emotions, but it is much less likely to be driven or pushed by them in the strong, compulsive way that discursive thought spins and insists on the mind.

To learn how to quiet the mind enough to discover what you know before you think it is fantastic. You can discover that you still can have thoughts, but the thoughts are not stories. Simple thoughts like, "It's a door. There's someone else in front of me, I'll step aside and let somebody else go through first." Those are thoughts, but it's not a big story of who did what to whom. The thought might be very boring, but a healthy relationship to the present moment and the people in it belongs closer to that world than to the story-making world we live by and worry about.

To be able to quiet the mind and see this other, simple way of present-moment thinking—where simple statements or recognitions in the mind have a chance to connect to a deeper knowing within—is powerful. In the teachings of the Buddha, he points out—and I concur—that as the discursive mind of desires, ill will, and fear begins to abate, the sense of being contracted, scattered, or agitated dissipates. Thoughts can now seem like they're happening in a very spacious way. There's lots of room for them. Some people feel their mind has become expanded and open. The mind starts feeling settled or calm.

This atmosphere of expansiveness creates a very different space within which this deeper knowing can occur. Then the deeper sources of knowing that come out of compassion, love, care, friendliness, and wisdom can operate. This whole approach of becoming mindful of thinking—distinguishing different kinds of thinking—is a really important process for tapping into the deeper sources of wisdom and peace that our hearts are capable of. It allows those qualities to be the motivation and atmosphere for our thinking, rather than fear, anger, or living in pain.

It's a slow process, but a worthwhile one that occurs as we practice mindfulness in all areas of our life. I hope the time will come when you will say it's a friendly place in there. You don't mind it. You and your thinking are like best friends, and you enjoy each other.

One more thing about this world of thinking. A nice experiment is to see how we tap into different cognitive and processing parts of the mind in different settings. How we come to understanding when we are left alone to think privately can be very different than if we are talking out loud. When I've felt challenged by life circumstances, I find it useful to talk out loud to myself—mostly when I'm driving. I review what's happening or describe my relationship to it out loud. When I speak out loud, it's like a whole different part of my mind or heart is engaged, compared to being only involved in discursive thinking, which feels much more limited in quality.

Other times, thinking quietly to myself while hiking in the forest changes where I am. It's a place where I feel much more peaceful, which changes how I think. If I'm exhausted, I think a lot more interestingly after I take a nap. If I've been oppressed by my thinking because I'm sleep-deprived, I realize, "Gil, you're not thinking very well. There's not much hope for you here. Take a nap." The biggest problem I have is that I wake up and don't want to get out of bed; I'm so content just looking at the ceiling. But in that contentment, my thinking has changed.

Where you think, how you think, when you think, whether you think out loud or privately, and even putting on music—do you think differently depending on the music you hear?—these are all ways of breaking the hegemony of the discursive mind. They are ways of not assuming that just because you're thinking one way, that is the nature of reality or the truth. Don't let your thinking mind have a negative influence on you. Be very careful about that. Don't give it a lot of authority.

If you want to give authority to some deep understanding and wisdom, you have to dip down below the discursive mind. The discursive mind is like static that interferes with our ability to connect with the deeper sources of knowing and courage as we live our life.

So that's my non-talk. [Laughter] I hope that was okay and that it might be relevant. It's 10:30, and we usually go to 10:45, so if some of you would like to ask questions, offer commentary, or share testimonials...

Q&A

Carla: Thank you, Gil. This was the perfect talk that I needed today. I've been struggling with these oppressive thoughts because I'm going through a very difficult situation: a rift with my best friend, and it seems like I can't bring us back together. I have these repetitive thoughts: "I should have said this," or "If only she thought that." I'm trying to peel that away. I'm telling myself, "Okay, I'm defending myself for a reason. Oh, because I'm feeling shame from the things she said to me." I've been accepting her point of view. I actually have nothing but goodwill towards her, and I could set that aside. But the feelings of loss and hurt just keep coming back. The feelings seem to be the source causing the thoughts, as opposed to the reverse which we usually talk about. It just won't resolve. Do you have any suggestions?

Gil: Sometimes our emotions are the source for how we think, and sometimes thinking is the trigger for the emotions. It's fascinating to see which direction it goes at different times. For you, it sounds like there's something deeply emotional you have to sort through, heal, or understand. I'm glad that you understand what it is, because that's probably where the work really is. Since you understand some of these feelings and see how they shift and change over time, that gives you important options for how to work with this.

One thing you might try doing for the next month or so—since this is an important relationship, you don't necessarily want to be in a hurry to solve it—is to spend every day writing a letter to your friend telling her what you want to say. Tell her about what's going on: your shame, your despair. Write it all in the letter. Do not send the letter. Let it be uncensored and uninhibited. Just write what's in your heart. For example, if you're furious, just write the fury. Then, maybe each day, burn it or throw it away. Do that for a month to really see if you can get these feelings and emotions known, expressed, and recognized. Without being well recognized and given some respect, they might not have a chance to move on to the next thing.

All emotions want to move on; that's why they're called emotions. But we tend to bottle them up, restrict them, and hold them back, and we get stuck in them. Sometimes a safe situation, like writing a letter, allows you to write it and then throw it away. You don't even have to go back and read it. Do it again the next day, and after a month of doing that, see what happens.

Speaker 2: That's really interesting. It's like getting those thoughts out, putting them on paper, and then walking away from it.

Gil: Yeah, and some people will do this and actually not just crumple them up and put them in the trash can. They do a little ritual each time. I don't know what the ritual would be, but I've known people who have buried it in a nice place, like a funeral for something that's healed for you.

Speaker 3: Hi, thank you very much. The wisdom was very insightful and very effective. A lot of times, fear, uncertainty, and doubt about a topic—perhaps health, career issues, and so forth—create a discursive thought that never ends. The end product is that it drags you down emotionally and mentally, and it goes from bad to worse. What about the role of fact-finding in trying to alleviate this fear, uncertainty, and doubt, in addition to calming down your mind?

Gil: Well, I think the first factor to be clear about is that you have fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's easy to be swept into the uncertainty, doubt, and fear, letting them push us around, guide us, and create the whole mood that we're in. The idea in mindfulness practice is sometimes to take the attention 180 degrees around and look at something directly. Maybe what needs to be seen is not the issue you have—like your health issue—but the first thing you really need to see is: "Oh, here's a lot of uncertainty, fear, and doubt."

If you see that carefully, then sometimes it's actually good to have some analysis of it. Really think about this a little bit: "I have uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Does it make sense that I say all three together in one breath? Maybe uncertainty is an ordinary, normal part of human life. In some ways, is doubt appropriate? Fear—that's appropriate sometimes. But maybe I don't have doubt; maybe I have anxiety. Can I have uncertainty without fear? Can I have doubt without fear? What would that be like?"

It might be that fear is influencing both the doubt and the uncertainty, so you have them tied together in a neat little package. As long as you have that package all neatly tied together, there's no hope for you. You have to tease it apart. Many spiritual teachers talk about the importance of being comfortable with uncertainty and insecurity. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty in this life. If you're neurotically looking for certainty all the time, that's difficult.

If there's a health issue, it's appropriate to have some fear. But then you distinguish the fear from anxiety, which has to do with fantasy and projections into the future about what's happening to you. Stop, take that 180-degree turn, and really study that. That's the first fact to look at.

Once you do the homework of doing that, of course, do research. Find out about the health condition and the situation. Try to be discerning about what you read and use good sources. There are a lot of claims, so you always want to ask, "On what basis? What's the support for their claim? Is this just an opinion?" To see the difference between an opinion and a well-supported claim is important. Critical thinking and investigative research are a healthy, appropriate part of life. If it never occurs to someone to do the research themselves, and they just want to trust the doctors but have doubts about the doctors, they just feel lost. So, all of the above.

Speaker 4: Hi Gil. The way you explained writing the letter with the discursive thoughts, would that apply to repetitive worry and thoughts of concern that are never-ending?

Gil: Yeah, I think if there's a repetitive worry that keeps coming back over and over again, it's a sign that we're not understanding the full picture of what's happening with us. You want to be able to stop, look under the hood of the car, and see what's really happening. What's driving it? What am I avoiding? What am I not seeing?

There are different ways of doing that, but one possibility is to write about it. If it can be uninhibited, almost like a stream of consciousness about the worry, we might be able to start seeing, "Oh, that's what I'm feeling! That's what's going on for me, I didn't know that."

And if that doesn't help you or reveal something after a while, don't do it. But as Carla pointed out, sometimes it's really healthy to have these things expressed, because otherwise they get bottled up inside of us and can fester. Even just talking to a friend about something, talking out loud in a car, or writing about it is like getting it off your chest. Then it can have a very different life inside of us, and things can move again.

Speaker 4: I mean, I do think about it and I do discuss it, but I thought maybe writing it is another level.

Gil: Yes, I think writing is a good thing, especially when you try to do it as uninhibited as possible. Let it be a stream of consciousness; let it just flow. Don't worry if it's true. Don't worry if you're expressing ugly emotions, or if you sound like a crazy lunatic. You're allowed to be a crazy lunatic when you're writing. The grammar doesn't have to be very good, and spelling and handwriting don't matter.

Speaker 5: I didn't think of it as journaling, but I guess that's a broad term for how I thought about it. There's a journaling technique that foregoes the intellectual mind. You just go more into what's subconscious and not easily accessible. If you journal with nothing in mind in terms of grammar and the way you're writing, and you go fast, it allows you to go a little bit deeper.

Gil: Nice. In terms of thinking and access, I find interesting things when I exercise. I love to just give freedom to my mind to think whatever it wants. It's one of the few places where it has total freedom. When I meditate, I'm busy meditating, so my thinking mind doesn't have free reign. But with exercise, it has free reign, and then I discover things about what I'm concerned about or what's going on. It's a very interesting place to kind of discover, because it's just free time to think. Otherwise, my life is doing things and thinking about talks I'm supposed to give. So I think it's a healthy thing to occasionally give your mind complete freedom in a safe environment. Exercising is what I found is nice, but it might be other times too.

Thank you. It's 10:45, so it's time to end. I'll stay here for another 10-15 minutes if some of you want to come up to the front and continue discussions. Thank you for being here.