Birth of Discursive Thought
May 7, 2007
When a thought comes up during practice, what inspires it?
I know that passion and agression seem to be two causes. “This meditation is so peaceful” and “that lwanmower is so loud, I can’t practice with this going on”. I also notice my mind wandering into the future and into the past. These thoughts may be linked to hope and regret, but I’m not sure that is always the case. I was hoping we could have a discussion.
I experienced this a lot this past weekend during a retreat at the local Shambhala Center.
My knee-jerk, non-text-quoting, thought on the subject:
I think our thoughts are inspired by the forms and concepts we attach to the phenomena around us. Until that point, these phenomena are just noticed, but do not necessarily generate thought…until we put some concept to them about whether they are negative, positive, or neutral. Unfortunately this only takes less than a fraction of a second so we miss that opportunity to notice that brief moment where we can just experience it without judgement. Using your lawnmower example: Your thought about the lawnmower may have been more neutral if you were having a ‘good’ meditation session. During times when we are having difficulty focusing, that same lawn mower noise is seen as a hindrance to our sitting.
Same event (lawnmower noise), slightly different context (how the sitting is going), completely different thought.
BTW – my comment about ‘non-text-quoting’ was not meant to be a commentary on quoting text to support one’s thoughts. I just am not good at doing that myself so I was basically admitting that I do not have any textual support for what I am saying (just experiential). I would quote if I could.
Sorry if it seemed to knock those who do quote texts.
I continued to consider this activity of the mind this morning. I slept well and my mind was pretty settled. The birds were wild this morning, waves and waves of the songs of hundreds of birds blasting through the shrine room window. My mind settled. You know I have also been thinking about the heart sutra lately, and I thought about how my conceptual mind is made up of nonconceptual mind parts. I realized in that moment that the only mind that I could find was the birdsong, the cold air on my skin, and the smell of incense. Somehow seeing phenomena in this way somehow made more space around my experience and my mind wasn’t grasping at thoughts in the same way that it normally would. Maybe defining the causes of discursive thought is good for working out issues conceptually, but maybe using Shamata to create space in our mind moves us through these obstacles without so many words. Really, Shamata keeps going and going and going….
Could the birth of a thought be form, the first skanda? The subject object relationship? How many thoughts don’t include the subject object relationship? Does this perspective give us a little hint about how cultivating true compassion short circuts the ego process?
Thoughts are as real as the birds and lawnmowers. They exist as a result of karma and our practice is to simply be present.
This is the foundation of bodhichitta it naturally arises when we let go of any intention to be successful.