Freedom from Thinking

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Gil Fronsdal: Freedom from Thinking. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 14, 2018. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Freedom from Thinking

So the topic of today is thinking, and I enter this topic with some care and some reverence for each of you. When we start talking about thinking and mindful thinking, it's easy for it to touch into something that is very intimate or very personal in people's lives. Sometimes thinking is just pure nonsense, but sometimes it is connected to something profound within us, deep needs we have, or it's connected to our life story and history in many ways. If we start looking at thoughts, we start touching into something deep. To look at, be aware of, and be mindful of thinking is a very important part of this whole practice. For some people, it's really key. It is one of the doors towards becoming freer, wiser, and more and more present in their lives.

The Six Monkeys Analogy

Having said that as an introduction, what I'd like to do is to tell you a little analogy that I was told this past week. I'll tell it to you the way that I was told, and then I'll change it slightly. It has to do with monkeys, as monkeys sometimes get used in great ways in stories. In Buddhism, there's the idea of the "monkey mind." The monkey mind is the idea that when monkeys swing from tree to tree, branch to branch, they will grab a branch, swing, and just as they're grabbing that branch, they're already getting ready to grab the next branch, and it just goes on and on. So, the monkey mind is our mind—just at the time we have one thought, we're already grabbing for the next one, or swinging between them.

In this analogy, there are six monkeys living in a house. One of them is sitting deep in the living room in a nice chair, and the other five are at the window looking out. One of them says, "Look, there's a nice red car driving by." The one sitting in the chair hears that and says, "I want that." Another one by the window hears music down the street and says, "Oh, there's nice music down the street." The one in the chair says, "I want that." Another one by the window smells the neighbor's septic system and says, "There's a not very pleasant smell." The one sitting in the chair doesn't smell it, but hears that report and gets all upset at that neighbor, thinking, "It's always that neighbor doing things wrong. This is the worst neighbor." And so it goes.

This analogy is supposed to be a metaphor for six different aspects of how we live in the world. We see the red car, we hear, we smell, and we taste. I didn't include taste because I don't know how these monkeys taste what's going on out there, but we taste, and we also have tactile senses. These report the experiences we're having to the mind. The mind by itself is in the dark, but because it gets those reports from the senses, it finds out what's going on. It's kind of like sitting deep in the living room in an easy chair, and then it reacts. It wants, it doesn't want, it gets upset, or it gets delighted. It starts making stories. It reviews and thinks about things. It remembers the neighbor who has the septic tank and all the different things the neighbor did that were wrong over the years. It goes through endless lists: "That's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong." It thinks about all the things it wants—not only a red car but a blue car or that pink car, and how having lots of cars would be great. It just spins its wheels.

The Parent in the House

Rather than saying monkeys, I prefer to think of them as six children. Five are by the window and report to the one who's not by the window. The one who's not by the window hears the reports and spins a whole cognitive universe of reactions and thoughts based on what it heard. The reason I like to use children is that children can grow up. Also, there is the idea that there is a parent in the house. It is initially for the parent to show up and bring some wisdom to bear on the situation, so the child can grow up.

In our minds, we think, and thinking is supported by what the sense doors provide us. As we begin this exploration of thinking, we want to look at the different kinds of thinking that we do. You might see if you recognize any of this in yourself.

Different Kinds of Thinking

On a general level, there are two kinds of thinking. Some people do both, but some people think in words, and some people think in images. One is not better than the other; it's just how different minds work. But some people haven't really recognized that this is what they do. For people who think in words, thinking takes a particular shape and operates differently in the mind than for people who think in images. To recognize what kind of thinker you are is helpful. Recognize the impact of the images you have, how they work, their emotional impact, or how you participate as a player in them. If you think in words, you can notice whose voice it is, who is thinking, and what the tone of voice is. There are a lot of things to be seen in the voice that's doing the thinking.

Either way, as we think, there are different levels of thinking. One level is the one that's most active and busy. Sometimes it's called discursive thinking. That's when we think and have conversations. Sometimes we actually have a conversation with other people, or we're seeing a vision of people having a conversation and talking to each other, or we're having commentary. Discursive thinking is discussing something in your mind. It could be commentary, reflecting on something, or planning something. You're looking at all the plans, imagining and thinking about all the things that can go wrong, why this is a bad idea, and how you can't do it. Or it could be that you're discussing what's happened in the past, reviewing the past, and going over it and over it again. It's amazing sometimes how repetitive discursive thinking can be.

Then there's a simpler layer of thinking, which is a very simple recognition of what's happening in the moment. We could have a recognition: "Oh, there's a cell phone that rang." It's very simple. Discursive thinking is where we get much more involved: "This means something. Why don't they have more policies here? Or, this is a great sound, I wonder if I can get that sound for my phone." But it can be very simple and kind of neutral: "Oh, the ring of a cell phone." Just that neutral thought is a kind of cognition. It relies on concepts that we've learned growing up. A thousand years ago, someone who heard that sound probably would have thought it was a bird and looked around for the bird. But we've learned to associate that sound with a certain technological gadget.

There's an even simpler layer of thinking, which is not cognizing or conceptualizing what it is, but just being aware: "That's a sound you're hearing. Ringing." It's that simple. The mind hears the ring and doesn't even go up to the next layer of "That's the ringing phone."

Stepping Out of Discursive Thinking

These are different layers, and most people live in the layer of discursive thinking. Wisdom begins to operate when we cannot be caught up in discursive thinking. Analyzing and contemplating are important parts of human life, but eating is also an important part of human life, and you're not expected to be eating all the time. If discursive thinking is the only vehicle by which you understand yourself and your life, it's actually quite truncated and limited.

One of the first tasks in mindfulness is to start appreciating the kinds of thinking that are operating in you. Realize there are different capacities and ways of cognizing our experience. In meditation, people can learn how rewarding and satisfying it is to cease all the discursive thinking, to stop the distracted thoughts, imaginary thoughts, thinking about the future, thinking about the past, and figuring things out. It is peaceful to settle down to just simple recognition: "There's a sound. There's a sound of a car. There's a thought. Here's an itch."

Part of the reason it feels so satisfying is that with discursive thinking, we tend to get involved energetically and emotionally, and there are reactions. The world tends to get more limited, narrow, and contracted the more tightly we're wrapped up around our discursive thoughts. As we begin to free ourselves from this strong gravitational pull into discursive thinking, the mind tends to have more space and openness. A feeling of spaciousness, ease, and peace of thought comes from being there without any hook to them. A simple thought arises, an idea arises, or a memory arises, but nothing is done with it. We don't pick it up, we don't react to it, we don't make conclusions about it. They're just there. In that simplicity, there's a lot of ease, and it's much more satisfying.

Then we can see more clearly what's actually going on. If you have a thought, "I want a red car," the next thing you know, you're at the car dealer buying a red car, and you didn't see anything in between. The discursive world and desires kind of took over. But if you sat there and saw that desire for a red car bubble up in the mind, and you recognize that there's a thought of desiring red cars in that simple layer of just recognizing what it is, there can be much more space to leave it alone and not get involved. Then the wisdom of the mind can operate, and there can be a recognition: "You know, I don't need to have a red car. I have a perfectly good car. I bet the desire for the red car had more to do with something else."

To simplify that, to be able to be in recognizing, is where the parent comes in. That's where the growing up can start happening. We can begin to signal it, name it, and see, "Well, that's what's happening now. That's what's happening now." That's a hard skill to learn because of the tremendous wave that pulls us into discursive thinking.

Rumination and Negative Bias

If you look at your mind churning away in its thoughts and concerns, you can ask yourself: How much authority are you giving your thoughts? Or how much authority are they claiming? Do they claim this is important, this is true, this is the place to be with your life energy right now? How much do you invest in your discursive thinking? Sometimes there's a sense of a promise or hope in these thoughts, and we're chasing that. How much credence do we give to the worry and fear that's part of the thinking? We really believe that fear and the worry that's there.

This is a very important issue to look at—how we relate to our discursive thoughts. Some psychologists think that one of the leading causes for things like depression, anxiety, and despair for many people has to do with the nature of their thinking. Some people use the language of "rumination." We are ruminating over and over again about something. Start putting a question mark after our rumination or thoughts, rather than being swept along by them. "What is this? Is this true? Do I need to be doing this? Is it useful to do this? Are there other perspectives?"

Psychologists associate rumination a lot with thinking about problems: "What's the problem with me? What's going on? What's the problem with what happened?" There's a negative bias that psychologists find in rumination. Many people have strong negative biases, so they're often looking at and thinking about what's wrong. "What's wrong with me? I'm a loser. I failed, or I can't really do something." When the discursive thinking is circulating and repeating over and over again with these kinds of thoughts, it's very debilitating. No wonder our whole system starts to be drained and struggles.

Our emotional life comes into play with all this. These negative thoughts are disturbing, emotionally depressing in themselves, sad, or we get angry. Then it becomes a feedback loop between the negative emotions and the negative thoughts. We think that these thoughts are true or important or necessary to have, without questioning them, without stepping back.

Mindfulness as the Parent

In mindfulness practice, the thing the parent would do—if you'll go along with my little analogy about the six children—is to be able to step out of the orbit of discursive thinking just enough to recognize, "I'm having a discursive thought. That's what's happening." You do that with enough strength and enough clarity that it's kind of like the adult part of our brain has showed up.

You find a way to make that clear recognition: "Oh, I'm having thoughts." The mind that recognizes is a mind which is not wrapped up in the thoughts. The mind is not excessively influenced by the mood that's present. "Here is depression. Here is worry. Here is thinking about the future, problem-solving about things which are important but very uncertain." We can't know how they're going to turn out or what the right thing is. So there's a strong pull to be thinking about it over and over again. But it's more rumination, it's more spinning.

What about that place where you step back? "Oh, I'm worrying. I'm problem-solving. I'm fantasizing." Some people have wonderful discursive thoughts that pull them in with the light of anticipation. I've known people whose primary joy is anticipating things that are going to happen. Actually doing them was less pleasant than anticipating doing them! When they anticipated in a fantasy way, it could all go perfectly, and they could savor the hope and the promise. Once it happens, we're busy in the middle of it, distracted, it happens fast, or it's complicated. Anticipatory delight in thinking is nice, it's not a sin, but it reinforces this place of being caught up in the discursive world.

There is another world of thinking to be in, a place where wisdom can begin to operate. The promise of discursive thinking is to solve and fix, but maybe there's another avenue, another place in the mind and the heart where solutions and responses can come. This is a place that is not caught in reactivity, where the thinking is not mixed up with fear or worry or negative bias.

It is so simple to describe but difficult to do. The simple act of mindfulness is to take a moment and recognize clearly, "At this moment, this is what's happening. At this moment, I'm sitting here in a chair or on my cushion. I feel the weight of my body against the chair. At this moment, I'm aware of the temperature of my body." That is simple. As opposed to composing a letter to the president of IMC ^[1] about how we should have the air conditioner on more. That's just warm. "Right now I'm having thoughts. I'm thinking about this talk and what Gil is saying. Or, I haven't been listening at all to what Gil is saying, I'm thinking about air conditioners."

It's that simple, yet it can be very difficult for this mind of ours to be convinced that it's valuable to be that simple. We are entangled with all the things we have to do. But when we make that simple mindfulness act to recognize what's happening, we begin to step out of the gravitational pull of discursive thoughts. There's more space in the heart and the mind for more ways to understand what's going on. We start freeing ourselves.

Skillful Redirection

Recognizing what's happening is not easy, and sometimes this simple recognition is not enough. In the Buddhist tradition, there are a number of recommendations of things to do besides just mindfulness.

One is to focus on something different that's more useful. For some people, the classic instruction in meditation is to focus on the breathing. The breathing is connected to something very profound; it's a very valuable connection to ourselves. It's not obvious when we first start, but if you get into it, the breathing opens up to a wealth of treasures inside. Trying to come back to the breath, rather than spinning out in our thoughts, is a very powerful thing to do. It takes a while, but every time you take your attention and bring it back to your breathing, some of the energy of the mind is no longer going in to feed the discursive thoughts. The amount of change is very small initially, but if you drop water into a bathtub, eventually the bathtub will be filled. Each drop is inconsequential, but if you keep coming back to your breathing slowly, it begins to decrease the amount of energy that's going into discursive thoughts.

Another thing that is skillful to pay attention to is something which is not discursive thinking but which is enjoyable and pleasant. For some people who get into focusing on the breathing, the breathing becomes pleasant, and you can use that pleasure as a place to ground the attention. Or some people find loving-kindness ^[2] meditation is good. In daily life, it might be to look around if you're in a nice setting and see if you notice any nice trees, hear birds, see nice people around, or find something enjoyable in the environment right now. This is opposed to spinning in discursive thoughts that have nothing to do with what's happening here now. Focus on something nice and pleasant.

If the discursive thoughts are really strong, the recommendation is to actually distract yourself. Some people are experts at this distraction thing, but we're not distracting ourselves to escape. We're distracting ourselves to begin to shift the inner life enough so we can start showing up here. There are skillful distractions if it's really helpful to not run away from something. Go for a run, find a friend to talk to, read a book, cook a meal, or do something for yourself that takes you out of the gravitational force of this constant rumination ^[3].

The Thinking Muscle

Meditation is like a laboratory or gym where you can learn how to work with your mind. Once you've learned how to work with it, you can start working with it outside meditation. One of the things we can learn as we sit and meditate is that when thinking is strong, we can feel what I call the "thinking muscle." The thinking muscle is that place in the body where there's tension associated with thinking. There's pressure, tightness, constriction, and forcefulness. There's a lot of energy swirling around. The stronger the thinking, the more likely you start feeling physical sensations.

You certainly see it in other people. Sometimes someone gets preoccupied and is thinking really hard, and you see their forehead is furrowed, their jaws are grinding, or their shoulders are going up. You can feel the tension. The advantage of meditation is that sometimes you can feel what is not visible to other people. For some people, it's not uncommon to have the tension and pressure be in the head, behind the forehead, around the eyes, or in different places. The advantage of feeling the thinking muscle is that it might be possible to relax the tension associated with thinking.

If you have a tube of toothpaste and you squeeze it for a long time, the toothpaste comes out and comes out. You have to stop squeezing it! If we have this physical and emotional tension associated with thinking, the thoughts just keep coming and coming. You can let go of your thinking momentarily, but if the tension is there, you'll think again. Part of mindfulness is not only being aware that we're thinking, but being aware of what's happening physically and emotionally as we think, and also understanding the relationship we have with our thinking.

It has never occurred to many people that they have a relationship with their thinking. Some people are so embedded in their thinking, so involved with it, that it's like they are their thinking. It's kind of like thinking is the way we think about things, and there's no need to think about thinking. Unless you have problems with your eyes, ordinarily, as we go around our world, we're not so cognizant of the eyes doing the looking, even though we are using them. In the same way, we don't really look at our thinking or question it.

The relationship is subtle. What's the attitude I have toward my thinking? The attitude can be one of despair and depression: "Oh, once more I'm thinking this thing." The attitude can be one of hope: "If I just think enough, there's got to be a solution." There could be one of strong identification. A lot of thoughts have to do with "me, myself, and mine." It's all about me; I'm the main character of my thoughts. So there's a lot of investment of "I."

Thinking is a rich world, and the way to begin having a different relationship to discursive thoughts—the way to bring the parent into the room, or let this thinking become more mature—is to start doing the very simple act of recognizing, "I'm thinking." Maybe you need to say it again: "I know I am thinking. Yep, I am thinking. No question about it." As opposed to saying "I'm thinking" and then running off in thought again. Step back: "This is a thought. This is the mind thinking. Here's a mind caught up in discursive thought." The idea is to do it often enough and clear enough that at some point you're standing a little bit away from the thoughts. You're observing it from a relaxed, mature place in the mind.

You all have a mature adult in your mind that you don't use often enough! If you can step back and clearly recognize what's happening from a place of non-reactivity and balance, simply saying, "This is what's happening," then the mature part of you will begin to grow and have a chance to show up. There will be an adult in the room.

Putting the Thoughts Down

I'll end with a famous, often-repeated story from the Chinese Buddhist tradition, but I think it's good to be reminded of it.

Two monks were traveling on a journey across the countryside from one monastery to another. Halfway through the day, they came to a river crossing, and there was a woman who couldn't quite make it across the river. One of the monks wanted to help, so he picked her up, carried her across, and put her down on the other side.

The two monks continued to the monastery. As they came to the monastery gate for the evening, the second monk finally blurted out, "How could you have done that? You know that as Buddhist monks we are not allowed to ever physically touch a woman. How could you have picked her up and carried her across the river? You've broken the rules! How could you?"

And the first monk said, "You know, I put the woman down back at the river. Why are you still carrying her?"

Maybe you don't have to carry as much as you do. Maybe you can put some of the stuff down long enough that you can see it from a different perspective. One of the results for me from doing this mindfulness practice in relationship to my thinking is that nowadays I feel my thinking is my friend. I have a very friendly relationship with my thoughts. We get along pretty well, and generally, I'm in charge and not my thoughts.

May you be friendly with your thoughts, and may they become your friends as well.