Most people do not understand the true nature and workings of their minds, therefore they don’t use them very effectively!
In many of today’s popularized approaches to meditation, thinking and deep reflection is often regarded as an obstacle to meditation, rather than a actual means to liberation and freedom. The following insights provides some encouragement and clarity on this subject.
Thinking and reflection do more for enlightenment than meditation.
– The Dalai Lama
“The deliberate use of reflective thought or inquiry can reveal a set of unconscious assumptions, habits, and compulsions that we have set in motion. This can be very helpful and can yield great insight. We establish a steady, open mindfulness and then ask:
‘What is it that knows this?
What is aware of this moment?
Who is it that feels pain?
Who is it that is having this fantasy?
Who is it that is wondering about supper?’
At that moment a gap opens up. Milarepa once said something along the lines of,
‘When the flow of discursive thinking is broken, the doorway to liberation opens.’
In exactly the same way, when we pose that kind of question, it is like an awl being worked into a knotted tangle of identification and loosening its strands. It breaks the habit, the pattern of discursive thinking. When we ask “who” or “what,” for a moment the thinking mind trips over its own feet. It fumbles. In that space, before it can piece together an answer or an identity, there is timeless peace and freedom. Through that peaceful space the innate quality of mind, mind-essence, appears. It’s only by frustrating our habitual judgments, the partial realities that we have unconsciously determined into existence, that we are forced to loosen our grip and to let go of our misguided way of thinking.”
- -Achan Amaro Bhikku in a brilliant book – Small Boat, Great Mountain (See link above to download this book)
The Trouble with Thinking
Edward Espe Brown
During a week-long period of intensive meditation practice, I had my first opportunity to meet with Suzuki Roshi in a formal interview. I was making every effort to practice meditation the way I thought it was supposed to be practiced. I wanted something to show for my effort. Perhaps I could attain a state of “not-thinking” or a “calm mind.” Perhaps I could attain “true realization.” These sorts of attainments would certainly be better than making a lot of money or gaining other kinds of success or fame, wouldn’t they? Well, I thought so.
The problem was I wasn’t getting anywhere. Try as I might to concentrate on my breathing, I found I was almost constantly engaged in thinking: planning, remembering, evaluating, assessing, a perpetual sorting out of how I am doing, where I am now, where I need to get to, how to get there.
So when I went to speak with Suzuki Roshi I did not have any “thing” to show for my efforts. I felt humbled and somewhat frustrated and discouraged. What would the master think of this poor excuse for a zen student? I wanted him to like me, but I didn’t see how he could. I certainly didn’t. There wasn’t much to like as far as I could tell. I entered his cabin and performed the required half-prostration bows, not directly to him, but toward the altar with its Buddha image, candle, and burning incense.
I bowed forward, kneeled, touched my head and forearms to the floor, and then raised my hands, palms upward. He corrected the way I was positioning my hands during the prostration: “When you lift your hands from the floor, hold them flat,” he explained, gesturing, “as though you were lifting the feet of the Buddha. When you cup them like that, it feels as though you are trying to grasp something and being greedy.” His voice was pleasant and matter-of-fact.
OK, I thought, I can do that. It was a relief to have something to work on, something to keep in mind, and he had shown an interest in my practice! Still I felt frustrated and not particularly comfortable in his presence.
Then I sat down on the cushion opposite him, crossed my legs, and adjusted my posture. I didn’t know what to expect, or what was expected of me, so I just sat there quietly facing him. The world turned. I don’t think he had the slightest thought about my attainment or lack thereof. He seemed contained, quiet, and alert in repose. I began to relax. Finally after a few minutes, he inquired, “How’s your meditation?”
“Not so good,” I replied.
“What’s not so good?” he asked
“I can’t stop thinking,” I lamented.
“Is there some problem with thinking?” he questioned, and right at that moment when I looked directly for the problem, I couldn’t actually find it. I felt relieved and lightened, but I wasn’t ready to admit I couldn’t find the problem. Besides, didn’t he and the other teachers keep instructing us to follow the breath rather than think?
“When you sit in zazen, you are not supposed to think,” I explained.
“It’s pretty normal to think,” he stated, “don’t you think?” His way of speaking was so innocent of attack: not contradicting, not belittling, not finding fault.
I had to admit that thinking was pretty normal, “but we’re not supposed to think, are we?”
“The nature of mind is to think,” Roshi explained. “The point of our practice is to not be caught by our thinking. If you continue to practice, your thinking will naturally change. Sometimes it will stop. Your thinking will take care of itself.”
Reassured, I continued to sit quietly, again waiting to see what would happen. The room was still and peaceful. After awhile the Roshi’s voice was there again. “What is it you want most of all?” he asked.
A word came to me instantly, but I hesitated, and stopped to think it over. Was it really the answer, really what I wanted? Was it right? Was it good enough? Nothing else came to mind, so at last I voiced it: “the Truth.”
I felt awkward saying it, uneasy admitting it, but there it was, “the Truth.” Yet the Roshi’s silence, the silence of the room swallowed it up. There was a lot of room to grow in that silence.
After a while he said, “Please continue your practice.” We bowed to each other. The interview was over.
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“Water and waves are one. Big mind and small mind are one. When you understand your mind in this way you have some security in your feeling. As your mind does not expect anything from outside, it is always filled. A mind with waves in it is not a disturbed mind, but actually an amplified one. Whatever you experience is an expression of big mind.
The activity of big mind is to amplify itself through various experiences. In one sense our experiences coming one by one are always fresh and new, but in another sense they are nothing but a continuous or repeated unfolding of the one big mind.
Dogen-zenji said, ‘Do not expect that all who practice zazen will attain enlightenment about this mind which is always with us.’ He meant if you think that Big mind is somewhere outside yourself, outside of your practice, then that is a mistake. Big mind is always with us.” -Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
”If you look for the truth outside yourself,
it gets farther and farther away.
Today, walking alone,
I meet her everywhere I step.
She is the same as me,
yet I am not her.
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.”
Tung Shan