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Mindfulness of Thinking (5 of 5) The Joy of Not Clinging to Thoughts

This is the fifth of the five talks on mindfulness of thinking. To end this series, we will explore the idea of freedom in relationship to thinking, or, to use another language for it, to begin to appreciate the possibility of thinking without clinging. This is possible, and in fact, it's a very important part of the path of Buddhism.

There are times it seems that the primary clinging that people have is to thinking—to the ideas and concepts that are part of thinking. This is fascinating. Many times when people are clinging to something, they're actually not clinging to the thing; they're clinging to their thoughts about those things. For example, if I'm thinking about something I really want, something I'm attached to having for lunch later today—say I made an almond butter sandwich, and I like almond butter. Maybe I'm sitting here clinging, thinking, "I can't wait. There's lunch. I want lunch. I want to go make sure no one takes my lunch from the refrigerator." I am really attached to my sandwich. But the sandwich is somewhere else. What I'm clinging to are my thoughts about the sandwich. I'm attached to the pleasure I think it will bring, the nourishment I think I might get, the delightful experience of having lunch and eating. It's the thoughts, ideas, fantasies, projections, plans, and anticipatory thoughts—that is what I'm clinging to. The subject of those thoughts is the sandwich, but I'm only clinging to the thoughts. The only thing that exists right now is thoughts.

It's really fascinating sometimes to pay attention to this and to realize you're clinging to some idea of something you thought was real, and it turns out it's not there at all. Maybe I forgot what I made. Maybe yesterday I had an almond butter sandwich and I thought I probably made it today, so I'm clinging to this almond butter sandwich that I think is real and sitting in the refrigerator. But it turns out that what I actually have is leftover dinner for lunch today, and I forgot. I was clinging to something that didn't exist. Then it's really clear that the clinging was only to thinking and thoughts.

We cling to stories, we cling to opinions, we cling to past memories, we cling to our plans. There's a drive, a push, an attitude of importance, a strong fascination, a pressure and glue that keeps us bound to our thoughts. It can be very intense. I think anyone who meditates for a while can begin appreciating how strong the pull, the pressure, or the drive is to be thinking at times. Sometimes it's almost impossible to let go of the thoughts because the clinging is so intense.

That's a time when it's particularly interesting to study this nature, the feeling, the texture of clinging. When your thoughts are going a mile a minute and just out of control, when you just can't stop the compulsion to think, the pressure to think, you can begin sensing and feeling into what that's like. Not the content of the thoughts, but what that drive is like. How is your body activated? What sensations and muscles in your body are alive? You may be contracted, tight, hot, or energized. What's happening emotionally, and how strong are those emotions that seem to be feeding and fueling that thought? By paying attention to all that, eventually, you find your way to seeing, "Oh, there's something here that the Buddhists call clinging or attachment." There's a holding on, a grasping. Maybe it even comes with a little sense of desperation at times, or insistence, entitlement, or horror. There is a kind of negative attachment—being repelled, being troubled, and trying to push away. Oddly enough, our aversion to thinking is sometimes the very place where the attachment lies, and it keeps the thinking going. The more we don't like it, the more we're actually feeding it.

So we start looking at this attachment, this clinging. As meditation gets quieter and quieter, and the mind starts thinking in a quieter way, and just a few thoughts might arise, you might start discovering that there's something more than just the ideas or the content of the thinking. There's also a little bit of push or pressure, something going on. When meditation is really calm and peaceful, it's fascinating to watch when there are very few thoughts—maybe gaps in thinking—and you can sometimes feel the initial little bit of pressure or activation that indicates a thought is about to happen. If you're really mindful and you can really see that little activation, sometimes it just dissolves right there, and you'll never know what you were going to think.

This is a fascinating thing. There's an underlying, almost subconscious or unconscious beginning of thought before they come into consciousness. So who is responsible for what you think, if it's coming from your unconscious? You didn't choose it; your conscious self didn't choose what you thought. There's something deeper always going on with thinking; it kind of begins offstage, in a sense. By feeling into the experience—into the emotions, the sensations, the impulse, and the drive, the push, the pressure that might be there—we begin dropping down into the deeper sources of where thinking begins. Maybe we can't get to some primary source in the unconscious, but we get to this place where we can feel it and sense what's really deeper than the content.

This is probably one of the important aspects of really following the path of liberation. As meditation deepens, we don't want to be so involved in the content or caught in it. We're really looking to let the mind become quiet and clear enough to begin seeing the deeper operating system, the deeper things operating. One of the deeper things is clinging, grasping, this pressure, drivenness, craving—a drive to do something, want something, or push something away. It's very, very simple, but simple doesn't mean that it's unimportant. It's really at the heart of much of what makes the mind and our psychology tick and work. It is what Buddhists call craving and clinging, and one of the primary clingings is attachment to ideas, stories, and thoughts.

So we're not really asked, in the end, to let go of the thoughts; we're asked in practice to let go of the clinging to the thoughts. When there's no clinging or compulsion to think, and we give the thoughts their freedom, there's this delightful freedom where the thoughts just have space, have room. They float, they become thinner, they become lighter, and they kind of vanish. I find it delightful to let go of the clinging to thoughts. There's a spontaneous sense of delight, something that sometimes borders on amusement, in bringing mindfulness to thinking and letting go of the clinging to thoughts.

The compulsion to think, for me, I associate it with a narrowing of attention, a narrowing contraction, an involvement with something. When I can let go of the clinging that creates that narrowness, the narrowness goes away, and there's a sense of openness, spaciousness, or expansiveness. There's something with that movement from narrow contraction to spaciousness that I just find delightful, a little bit amusing, and a happy thing to do.

And then to discover how to think, how to allow the mind to think freely, not to be troubled by thoughts. We can become friends of our thinking; we can have a friendly relationship to thoughts and let them move through lightly, easily, and creatively. Thinking is an important part of human life. We want to be able to do it creatively, intelligently, and wisely. To look at thoughts carefully, to be able to relate to thoughts wisely, not believe every thought, but also know how to think things out and reflect on things in deep ways without acting on the first initial opinion we have.

There's a rich world of thinking that becomes possible when we've lightened up our relationship to our thoughts. When we hold our thoughts lightly and are spacious around them in a certain kind of way—forgiving and accepting of them (not necessarily accepting of the content of the thought, but just letting the whole process be there freely, letting it operate and move through us)—then we have much more freedom around our thoughts. Our wisdom can help us decide: "No, I don't have to be involved in that," or "Oh, that's a good thought; I think I'll continue that," or "Maybe it'd be good to think about something else today. Maybe it'd be nice for me to think about something useful and helpful for the world."

Rather than just floating passively on the winds of the mind, the winds of thought, whatever the mind is thinking, with freedom, with less and less clinging to thoughts, we actually become more and more the guide, the supporters, the wise tenders, the shepherds of our thoughts.

May it be that through this meditation practice over time, you discover the great joy of non-clinging—the great joy of not clinging to thoughts, and the way that that allows your thinking to become wise. May you be a wise thinker who develops a friendly relationship with your thinking, and your thinking with you. Thank you so much for listening and being part of this. I look forward to coming back again on Monday.