Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Thinking; Dharmette: Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (4 of 5) The Suchness of Thinking

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Thinking; Harmony of Zen & Vipassana (4 of 5) Suchness of 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 April 22, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Thinking

Hello everyone, and it's good to be here. I hope that it's good to be here there where you are. It is a day for celebrating the earth, appreciating the earth, valuing it.

Today's topic for the meditation is mindfulness of thinking. I sometimes reflect on—imagine long before human beings appeared on the planet and started naming things and dividing up the lands in different ways, that there were no boundaries between countries. There were no countries with boundaries, and no states with boundaries, provinces, just no property lines. In a sense, the earth was seamless. Just one large continuity of sorts of the natural world. The divisions that we live under, boundaries and all kinds, they're the product of thinking. What happens when we see it as such? Really see with clarity that this is thinking; these are thoughts that were created, and then we live our life based on them.

Thinking. One of the important instructions I received in meditation or in life when I was living at the Zen Center's monastery, Tassajara^[1]—I don't remember who told me this or what the lineage of this particular teaching was; it might have been originally from Suzuki Roshi^[2]—was the instruction to not be bothered by your thinking.

That was really insightful. "Don't be bothered by your thinking." With that little piece of advice, with time, I learned that when I was bothered by my thinking, I was actually fueling my thinking. There's something about the reactivity of being bothered, being troubled by thinking, that itself is a kind of food for more thought, or is itself a kind of agitated thinking. Not to be bothered by thinking was, paradoxically, actually a way for the thinking to quiet down, for the fire of thinking to quiet and still.

I learned not to be at war with thinking, not to try to get rid of thinking. Thinking is a fine thing to do; it takes care of itself as long as I don't get wrapped up in it, preoccupied with it, troubled by it, or attached to it.

Sitting in meditation is a means, a way to discover—one of the places to discover—how to leave thoughts alone and not be entangled with them, or not to live in them. Sometimes I had the sense that when I get caught up in thoughts, I'm actually taking up residency in my thinking. It's kind of like the center of gravity: "I think, therefore I am." When I don't take up residency there, if I take up residency in my body or in an awareness that's maybe free of thinking, then things are so much easier and so much more pleasant and freer.

An interesting question to ask is: Who are you when you don't use thoughts to answer the question?

Who are you if you don't use thoughts to answer the question?

And what happens to you? What do you become aware of then that doesn't involve thinking, doesn't involve labels, ideas, explanations? Maybe doesn't involve the past and the future, because those come with thoughts, and ideas, and memories.

So today we'll do a little guided instruction on thinking.

One further introduction to this topic. Generally, thoughts, whether they're verbal thoughts or images that we see—visual thoughts—usually have a content to them. They're about something. They're about ourselves, about someone else, about the future, about what happened, what's going to happen, about fantasy. There's a world of "aboutness." And the more we live in thinking, the more we live in this world of aboutness as opposed to living in the world that's more here and now, more direct.

The task of mindfulness of thinking is not to get away from thinking, but to be present for thinking in ways, or in the parts of thinking, that are not the content of your thoughts. It's more like the process of thinking rather than what you're thinking. How you're thinking more than what. What the experience of thinking is like instead of why you're thinking. So I'll guide you with this.

Entering into a stable, alert meditation posture where there's adequate stability that you can now relax into this posture.

Perhaps taking a few long, slow in-breaths and out-breaths.

Relaxing on the exhale.

And then letting your breathing return to normal.

And then as you exhale, relax the muscles of your face, around your eyes, cheeks, and jaws.

As you exhale, soften your shoulders. Release the holding that might be there.

And you might also soften your belly, allowing the belly to hang forward and maybe down.

And then as you exhale, feeling the body's experience of exhaling.

Maybe a global experience of breathing, the different parts of the body that get activated with breathing in and breathing out.

And on the exhale, at the end of the exhale, maybe there also can be a relaxing, letting go, releasing that allows the exhale to continue just a little longer.

And continue doing this for a little longer. But as you relax through the exhale, see if you can let go of your thinking. Or if you can't let go of it, quiet your thinking a little bit.

Let go of your thoughts, quiet your thoughts, so there's more attention available for the experience of exhaling.

And now we'll do a shift in attention.

Shifting the attention away from the breathing, in a sense, and let the center of attention be a direct awareness of yourself thinking.

For this exercise, you're allowed to think. No need to let go of it.

But look thinking directly in the eye. Be directly aware: "This is thinking."

Kind of like you were involved in a strong, active conversation with a group of people, and then you stepped away ten feet and looked back at them. And you observe the fact that they're talking, but you're not in the conversation. So step back and allow yourself to think, but observe it.

And if thinking quiets down, disappears even, then you can begin again with your breathing until thinking returns.

But when thinking is there, become aware of: Do you think more in images or more in words?

And is your thinking localized someplace in your body or in space? Or does thinking seem to be unlocalized?

In other words, is there a place within you where the voice that thinks resides? Or a projector screen upon which the images appear? A place for that?

And if there is a location that's associated with thinking, does it have a relaxed feeling or a contracted feeling?

Is there a lot of energy, or is it very peaceful and calm?

Is there any pressure associated with thinking? Strong desire? Tension? And everything is okay.

Whatever you're experiencing as you think, the exercise is just to know it, just to be aware. Maybe silently aware.

Is there any emotion that's connected to the thinking that pervades it or fuels it?

And if so, for a few moments, hold that awareness gently, tenderly in your awareness. No need to be for it or against it, just aware of it.

Is there a tone of voice that comes along with your thinking? Or is there mood music that comes along with the images?

The mood.

And then as you're aware of your thinking, are you bothered by it?

Is there a strong pull into it, to be involved in it and swept away in it?

Is there resistance to stepping away from it or letting go of it?

And then, beyond the edges of your thinking, can you be aware of a stillness and spaciousness? Or is your whole universe filled with thinking? Or is thinking just a small little corner of the universe surrounded by space and stillness, even by silence?

Rest back in that spaciousness. Aware through the spaciousness.

Now, if you'd like, you can return to your breathing. Gently, peacefully, quietly.

A light touch with your breathing.

But if thinking predominates, then bring this light-touch awareness to look thinking right in the eye: "Thinking, I see you. There you are."

And take a few moments to feel the experience of breathing without any interest in the content of what you're thinking.

Reflections

And as we come to the end of this sitting, it might be interesting to consider how in a room crowded with people, everyone talking loudly, it's hard to really hear anyone. But if everyone gets quiet and one person speaks, it might be easy to hear that person.

If our mind is crowded with lots of conversations, and lots of thoughts and ideas, if we're giving a lot of attention, pulled into the world of our thinking, we might not be able to be present for others. To hear what they say, and hear what is deeper in them than their words.

At the end of a meditation session, when we consider how we can bring benefit to the world from our meditation, this is one of the reflections: that now, maybe I can listen more deeply to others. I can allow myself to be touched, to be moved by the living, beating heart of another person.

A form of respect and care for others, to take them in fully, or as fully as we can, because we know how to be quieter in the mind. We know not to be swept away in our thoughts.

And perhaps, if we allow ourselves to really listen deeply to others, we can also then allow ourselves to listen to ourselves deeply. Not to our thoughts, maybe, but to the seat of kindness, the place inside where there can be respect, and goodwill, compassion, and care for others, friendliness.

And even if we don't feel friendly or kind, there can be the aspiration that someday we will be friendly, we will have goodwill. The aspiration that someday we can live by these wishes.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be free of suffering.

May all beings live at peace.

May all beings be free of oppression.

May all beings be free.

And may it be that, in a loving way, we contribute to this possibility.

Dharmette: Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (4 of 5) The Suchness of Thinking

So I was introduced to Vipassana^[3] practice in Southeast Asia, first in Thailand, and then a bit in Nepal, and then in Burma quite a bit. And then I came back to the United States and began participating in the Vipassana practice that was taught here by Western teachers.

One of the differences was that the Western teachers, when they taught retreats, would have this systematic way in the first days of the retreat of laying out the instructions, much like how I've done it this week so far. They would begin the first day with mindfulness of breathing, the second day mindfulness of the body, the third day mindfulness of emotions, and the fourth day mindfulness of thinking, like today. And then maybe a little bit more days of something. At some point, the instructions were to bring all those together into a seamless whole.

It turned out that these instructions in the beginning were kind of like learning the alphabet. Once you learn the alphabet, then you can put them together into words and sentences and communicate. Say to people, write to people, "I love you," or "I apologize," or "I forgive you." All kinds of profound things we can say, we can write once we know how to put those letters together.

In Asia, though, it wasn't laid out in this kind of step-by-step way. You would go to the monastery and you were given the instructions relatively quickly, maybe 15-20 minutes. The basic idea was you sit down and you're present for whatever is the predominant experience of the moment. And if there was nothing that was particularly more predominant than the breathing, then you would focus on the breathing. That was the default, that was the anchor to the present moment that would keep you tethered to the present: to stay with the breath.

But the idea was not to hold everything else at bay. Rather, if something else arose that was predominant—meaning it was kind of compelling and it got your attention—then the instruction was actually to let go of the breath and bring your attention to this new experience. So if it was a compelling experience in the body, your knees hurt for example, or a pleasant sensation arose, then you would let go of the breathing and you would take your mindfulness awareness and offer it to be present for this new experience and just take that in. If it was an emotion, the same thing. If it's thinking, the same thing. And no matter what it was, you would just bring that attention to it.

When I was a relatively new Zen student, I had this koan^[4], this question that I was very curious about. I don't think I was perplexed exactly, but I didn't really have an answer. But maybe I didn't need an answer; it was kind of enlivening to have this question, but it felt like there was something really true here in this question. Then I asked my teacher. I said, "You know, it's easy to see how everything is different. The rug in this room is different than the wall, it's different than the ceiling, and the lamps that are here. Each of these are different things. But how are they all the same?" That was my question.

I never tried too hard to actively think about it logically, how they're all the same. I believe what was happening was that the sameness of them all was somehow associated with how I was aware of them. That I was aware of everything with a certain kind of equanimity, or openness, or respect for each thing. Each thing deserves its own respect from me.

And so in this Vipassana practice, when you know the alphabet and you put it all together, then it becomes a seamless whole. There's no part of human life, human experience, which is considered to be outside the domain of the practice. So no matter what we're experiencing, it is included. "Yes, this too is for my presence, for my mindfulness."

What I valued so much about the instructions of Vipassana was the clear instructions around doing that with things like emotions and doing it for thinking. These are things I mostly ignored when I was practicing Zen, and sometimes to my detriment, because there were all these emotions that I had that I wasn't really aware of and didn't really know to pay attention to them.

But in the seamless whole that I learned, where everything is allowed to be included, there's an element of respect that goes into this touching the experience with awareness. Really taking it in and letting it kind of register, almost as if you're allowing it to be felt in a deep way and known in a deep way as if it's a valuable thing. Everything is allowed to be there.

They have this idea in Zen which was very important for me, of the suchness of experience, the thusness of experience. Each thing in its own suchness can exist. Suchness, how I understood this, was how whatever is being experienced is experienced before the judgments, before the ideas of being for or against it. Before all what clearly can be seen as the mind's responses, reactions, and ideas about it. Just the experience in its own pristine simplicity.

So this can be done with something like thinking. Rather than having the attitude that thinking is bad, that thinking is the problem, that thinking is the reaction to things, that thinking is what doesn't allow things to be in their pristine suchness—rather than having that attitude towards thinking, it's a wonderful thing to turn the attention 180 degrees around. When thinking is really strong or predominant, to really be mindful of thinking in the pristine suchness of thinking.

Have you ever considered what a thought is? Have you ever kind of held a thought in the palm of your hand to feel its weight? Or have you ever tried to touch a thought and see, how flexible is it? How pliant is it? Can you push it and it gives, or is it hard? Or do you go right through it with your hand? Have you ever considered what color your thoughts are? Or how large they are, how small they are?

For some of us, when we have these kinds of thoughts, the whole relationship to thinking begins to shift. Because a lot of the substance of thinking has to do with our involvement with it. Our desperation, or anger, or desires, or intensity around how we think. Carrying the burden of the world on our shoulders has a lot to do with our relationship to thinking, how intensely we're involved in all these thoughts and ideas.

This question, "How much does thinking weigh?" is one of the ways for some of us to shift back out of being so glued and glommed onto thinking that we're carrying it so heavily, or it's claustrophobic in our minds because of it all, and start creating space.

A very common experience for people as they meditate, if they're able to get settled, is that the thinking mind doesn't necessarily go away, but it stops being one thought after another. Or the thoughts stop feeling so heavy, so dense, so compelling. They get lighter and lighter, thinner and thinner, softer and softer. They can be just as profound as before, but all this extra way in which we infuse them with weight, infuse them with intensity, begins to quiet down.

If we turn attention around to really look at thinking, to be present for thought just the way we'd be present for anything else, with a light touch, just seeing what it is. Part of what we're also looking at is the way that we relate to thinking. What is our involvement with thoughts? And the pristine suchness of seeing our involvement.

It's very easy to say, "Well, now it's okay, I learned I don't want to get rid of my thoughts. They're not my enemy, but I'm not supposed to be so attached to them or so involved in them. And now I'm a bad meditator." In Vipassana practice and in Zen practice, I believe there's no such thing as a bad meditator. It's just one more thing to experience in its pristine simplicity. "Oh, this is me chasing my thoughts. This is me contracting around this set of thoughts. This is me being so interested in this particular concern." Oh, this is what it is.

And then as we do Vipassana practice, we learn more and more this seamless whole, where we bring this quiet, light-touch presence to anything that is happening, anything that's compelling in the moment. With time, we get a sense that because the awareness now is inclusive, that nothing is left out, it becomes sacred, or the world becomes sacred. Because the awareness and the world are not exactly two different things. We have an awareness which has a sense that includes everything—not actively in the moment, but it's ready to include everything.

As soon as we think of awareness as something that's outside of what's acceptable, what we're not supposed to pay attention to, then my sense of this sacredness disappears. But when there's no outside and everything is included, then maybe there's no inside either. It's just this seamless whole that we're able to sit in, not being bothered by anything, but ready to respect and care for everything.

So, may it be that in these next 24 hours, it may be interesting for you to look at your relationship to thinking. And consider, is there a wiser way to relate to thinking? Is there a useful vantage point from which to experience and know that you're thinking, that suggests to you something about the sacred dimension of this world that comes through the medium of being aware?

Thank you all very much.