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Guided Meditation: Naturalist of Thoughts

Hello and welcome to our last meditation on the sense spheres. This is it.

The word dharma^[1] is sometimes equated with the English word nature. To see the dharma is to see nature, to see what is natural in this world of ours. Meditation makes us a little bit of a naturalist, where we are looking and understanding what the nature of this life is like, especially the nature of ourselves and our mind.

The naturalist has the ability to see what's happening without disturbing what's happening, without interfering with it. Without holding onto the branches of the stream as we go down in the canoe, we can just flow along with the natural flow.

One of the most natural things for human beings is to have thoughts. It's possible to just know that there's a thought that appears. There is a kind of marvel with the arising of an individual thought sometimes, because it just seems to appear out of nowhere. I just sit quietly, and a new thought arises.

In this exercise on the six senses, there are thoughts, and then there's the reception of that thought in the mind. The mind knows that there's a thought. And then there's the fetter, the entanglement, the knot. There's a way we get involved in that thought.

One of the ways we see that is when a thought becomes thinking. A thought is a relatively brief phrase, sentence, or image that we have, and then we get involved in it. We pick it up, we respond to it, we add to it, and then pretty soon we're lost in a whole train of thoughts. It might take a long time before we come out of it and know that we're even present.

It's possible just to sit quietly and be aware of the thought when it arises, and then, distinct from that, know how we get involved in it. Know the pull into it, the reaction to it, the horror to it, the judgments of it—all the secondary things that go on that involve some kind of being caught in it.

But if we are able to be a naturalist of thoughts, it can be very relaxing. If we don't assign meaning to a thought, or value to a thought, or if we don't define ourselves by the thought. You know, "I'm having this kind of thought, therefore I'm a wonderful person," or "I'm having this kind of thought, and I'm a terrible person." It's just a thought. This idea of just a thought, just thinking.

This is one of the places where I think it's valuable to add the word just in the label, in the recognition of thinking. Just a thought. It's just thinking.

Just like a map is not the location that the map represents, a thought is not the thing that it usually represents. It's just a thought. Settle back and be able to just see the arising of thoughts, and then see if we lean into them, pull away from them, or get caught in them. That's seeing the knot, the entanglement.

So, assuming a dignified meditation posture. Part of the value of being careful with your posture is that the more you can be embodied in your posture, the less energy there is to pour into thinking. The more you can really be careful and embodied in your posture, the more that's a grounding here in the present moment. It's like an anchor that keeps you from drifting off.

Lower your gaze about 45 degrees. Relax the focus of your eyes so you're not looking at anything in particular. And then gently close your eyes.

Settle in. Relax with your body. Gently, calmly, take some deeper breaths, fuller breaths. As you exhale, relax. Settle in.

Let your breathing return to normal.

It's really invaluable to relax when you meditate. To have an upright posture or a clear, intentional posture, and then to relax within that posture.

You might relax the muscles of your face as you exhale. As you get more and more familiar with your face this way, you might become more and more aware of the subtle emotions, the subtle muscles that can be relaxed, softened, released. Over time there's more and more awareness of muscles maybe you never even knew you had.

On the exhale, relaxing the shoulders.

Going to the belly. On the exhale, softening the belly.

On the exhale, release the weight of your body into whatever is supporting it: the cushion, the chair.

And then some global way of relaxing the whole body. If you're bracing yourself against life, soften as you exhale.

Then relaxing the thinking mind on the exhale. Softening tension, pressure, or contraction associated with thinking. Calming any agitation associated with thinking.

Take a few moments here to be aware of thoughts arising. Turn your attention, allow yourself to think, and know the thoughts that arise. You don't necessarily have to know the content of the thoughts, but just the event of thinking.

As you do so, are you involved in your thinking? Or can you just observe them from a distance? Observing them as natural phenomena. No need to judge or define yourself by your thoughts. The thoughts just arise, appear, and sooner or later they disappear.

Are you involved in your thinking? What does that involvement feel like? Like a glue? Like a strong gravitational pull? Strong interest? Worrying about something?

And then settling in with your breathing, but attentive to the arising of thoughts and any entanglement with thinking.

The alternative to entanglement is to simply observe it as a naturalist. It's nature for the mind to produce thoughts. There's no need for you to get involved in your thoughts. Come back to your breathing. Breathe with it all.

It can be a relief to leave thinking alone. Leave thoughts that come and go, leave them alone. Not bothered by them, not favoring them, not concerned. They're just thoughts.

As we come to the end of this sitting, one of the powers that comes with observing thoughts is to know which to put down, let go of, and which to get involved in. As we begin to come out of meditation, the thoughts that are nice to have and to participate with a little bit are thoughts of goodwill, kindness, friendliness.

Perhaps there are people in your life, or people you know, that you could have a few moments here of thinking caring or generous thoughts about them. With a light feeling, not a duty or heavy, just lightly positive good feelings and thoughts about them.

This is not just letting your stream of thinking be random and without any agency on your part. From time to time it's nice to choose what you think about. Think about goodwill and friendliness to yourself, to others.

In this way, may we keep close by, as we go through the day, the friendliness, the goodwill, the care that comes from the wishes: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (56) Sense Doors: Thoughts

Okay, so this weekend we're talking about the Buddha's instructions for how to practice with the sense doors. It is to be aware of each door and the object that that sense door takes in. For eyes, it's sight objects. For hearing, it's sounds. For the tongue, it's taste. For the nose, it's smells. For the body, it's tactile experiences. And for the mind, it's thinking.

The word for mind here is mano^[2], which maybe is closely associated with the thinking part of the mind. And so, if it kind of goes along with the other senses, the mind produces thoughts and that is somehow registered or known by the mano, by this part of the mind that recognizes there's thinking.

And then on top of that, in addition to that, there's a kind of mindful knowing. It's not just kind of vaguely or somewhat aware that there's thoughts going on, but this knowing of mindfulness is a clear, definitive, "Oh, this is thinking, this is just thinking." You don't necessarily just say those words to yourself, but there's a way in which we step back or turn around and look thinking directly in the eye and say, "I see you thinking. This is thinking." And observe it.

I think this idea of being a naturalist of thinking conveys the idea that the thinking is a natural phenomenon, and we are observing it, but not necessarily defining ourselves or identifying ourselves with the thoughts. This is a fascinating and wonderful thing: to allow a thought to arise but to not place ourselves in the thought.

Some people live in their thoughts. Their whole identity, or their feeling or sense of eminence—"I am, I exist"—has somehow taken up residency in the middle of thinking. So it's inconceivable to think about not thinking, because, "Who would I be if I wasn't thinking?" Some people feel lost if they're not kind of living in their thoughts. But we don't have to live in our thoughts. We don't have to take residency in our thoughts. We can have thought just be a phenomenon that arises.

It's no different than going outside for a walk, and a leaf blows off a tree and blows down next to you. You don't take the tree as you. You don't define the leaf as you. You don't define yourself by the leaf. You don't necessarily get involved with wanting to take the leaf home, deciding that you're a great leaf selector, and needing to let everyone know what a great capacity you have for selecting leaves from the sidewalk. You don't get involved. The leaf just falls, and maybe it's a nice part of the day, it just falls.

In the same way, thoughts can have the same relationship, where we take up residency not in the thinking, the thoughts, but in the awareness of them, the knowing of them. Now, it's a little bit tricky because knowing of them could be seen as a thought itself. But we're talking about maybe different levels of thinking, different kinds of thinking. This very simple thought that knows, "Oh, that's thinking, that's just a thought," is also a natural phenomenon. But that's a natural phenomenon that supports this freedom, supports this disentanglement.

This whole thing about the sense doors is quite fascinating. The more and more we are able to be present at the point of sense contact and recognize the knot, the entanglement, the bias, the leaning into or pulling back, we start seeing our bias. Our prejudices, our desires, the influences we bring on top of it. We are seldom innocent observers. We often have preferences—wanting and not wanting—and it can be very, very subtle.

I told this story before, but when I was a teenager, I went to Morocco. I don't know how it is now, but when I was there, the men wore djellabas^[3], these gowns with vertical stripes. As I was walking around after some time being in Morocco, I had this funny feeling that my mind was lighter, clearer. There was a little different feeling in my mind. As I tried to understand what was going on, I came to the conclusion that in the United States, I pegged people. I didn't just see people; I had a judgment about people because I recognized something about them. "That was a jock," or "That was some kind of businessman," or "That was this or that." I had little judgments about them. Maybe the judgments were not exactly conscious, but they were there. In Morocco, where all these men were wearing djellabas, I had no context to understand anything about them—about their professions, what they did, their politics, all kinds of things. And so my mind was lighter from not making any extra judgments.

So to not live in ordinary thinking, but to live in awareness, the awareness in which this arises, and then be able to see the entanglement and the knot. A big part of the knots, the entanglements we have, is in fact thinking. If I see something, I don't necessarily automatically get entangled to that. I do have a thought about it, and it's a thought that I get caught in. That's somehow the knot around the thing I'm seeing.

And so, to be able to settle back and observe thinking. To be aware of thinking, to be quiet enough, still enough, open enough, present enough to see the birth of a thought. To see a thought appear—there it is. And it's just a thought. And then, are you entangled with it? Do you chase it? Do you then have a follow-up thought, and a follow-up thought? Or do you just allow the thought to just be there, like a single leaf that's falling from the sky? Just a thought.

That kind of freedom that it gives—of seeing and not being involved in thoughts—gives us a freedom to then choose what we think. There are things to think about. One of the things to think about is goodwill, kindness, friendliness, support for others, to appreciate people. I think it's all too easy for people to have a negativity bias for all kinds of reasons and be predisposed to seeing what's wrong and what's not right. But if we can choose what we're thinking about, maybe we can choose appropriate ways to really appreciate people, see their beauty and their wonderfulness, and choose to think about how to support people and be friendly to people.

Maybe that seems like a lot of work and extra to do, a little artificial to do that, but it might be better than the alternative. If you're watching your mind carefully, choose the best alternative for the mind and don't choose the option that is for your detriment: thinking critical thoughts, judgmental thoughts, harsh thoughts, unkind thoughts. It's not really healthy.

So, thinking, thoughts, mano. This level of practice—talking about this week, we are tuning into the knots. We can also start seeing the conditions for how we get knotted. The desires that arise, the aversions that are there, the frustrations, the stresses we're living under—they're the conditions for us to be more likely to get knotted up. Knowing those conditions, then we can maybe adjust those conditions so it's easier to know how to let go of the knots. We don't necessarily have to let go of the thought, but we let go of being involved in it and caught in it.

This is a wonderful thing, to let go of knots. To dissolve the knots, to untie the knots in the mind. One of the reasons that's wonderful is that knots take up a lot of space in the mind, a lot of energy, a lot of bandwidth. When that bandwidth is not preoccupied with the knots, there's then much more room, open space for the factors of awakening^[4], for some natural phenomena that are really some of the great treasures that are within us. Those are the seven factors of awakening.

That's the next exercise for the Satipaṭṭhāna^[5] text. It goes from the six sense bases to the seven factors of awakening. And then we make a transition now to looking at what leads to liberation, to freedom. Once we get the hang of the aspects that keep us from being free—the hindrances, the aggregates that we talked about last week, and now the fetters, the knots—we know what those are. Those are the things that keep us from being free.

As we release them and free ourselves from them, then this new energy, these new possibility states can come, ones that are onward leading towards freedom. This is one of the great rewards for doing mindfulness practice, when we get to the point in practice where we start flowing in these beautiful seven factors of awakening: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. So that'll be the topic for two weeks.

Next week Matthew Brensilver^[6] will be here, and I'm doing the 7:00 AM teachings while I'm away. And then the following week I'll be back. I won't be here at IMC, but I'll be back on YouTube, and we'll do the seven factors of awakening. Thank you.