Working with Thought in Meditation

As meditators, it can be tempting to see the thinking mind as an enemy, but we can instead discover a wise and skillful relationship with it. This talk presents possible ways of working with the wide range of manifestations of thought: from papanca (proliferation) and obsession to creative, reflective and helpful thinking, to seeing the empty nature of all thought.

Yesterday, Christina spoke about the third foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of mind states, of heart states, mind and heart. And I want to, in a way, fill out this third foundation of mindfulness today, and speak about working with thought in meditation. So thought -- it would be, it is, I think, very easy for us as meditators, or it would be easy for a meditator, to somehow find oneself in a relationship to meditation where the practice has become, the meditation has become, about getting rid of thought. Now, that could be a conscious effort, or it could be something that's kind of going on a bit more subliminally. We're actually trying to, the practice is somehow getting rid of thought. Somehow, thought has become almost a little bit demonized.

And so, meditation is not about getting rid of thought -- at least this kind of meditation, insight meditation, is not about getting rid of thought. The situation's not helped, really, because there are a lot of texts -- most of them from the Mahāyāna tradition -- translated, I think, with a mistranslation, saying something like, "All you need to do is get rid of thought." And that is not helping matters, that kind of mistranslation. Sometimes a practitioner would make that a goal: "Getting rid of thought is my goal." And oftentimes, because of the texts, and because it's understandable, we have a situation where it's like, "Just getting rid of thought, if I can reach the end of thought, that will be awakening, enlightenment, etc." I really feel that's a mistranslation.

The Buddha talked about states of samādhi, of the mind calming, collecting, unifying deeper and deeper. He talks about eight states -- I'm not going to go into this today -- jhānas. The second one, at the second state, there's the ending of thought. If there are six more after that, how could it possibly be that the second one is the goal of practice?

But it is possible that we find ourselves somehow, even if we're not thinking in those terms, in a way trying to get rid of thought in practice. When we also look at thought, it can seem it can be such a problem in our life -- thought, and the way we're sort of bullied by thought and the thinking mind. And yet, we also see, as human beings, if we just open up and look at human history, our capacity as human beings for so much creativity, such amazing outpouring of creativity and manifestation of creativity, of beauty; our capacity to reflect. These are partly functions of thought, and they're a part of our humanity. So just to want to get rid of thought would be, in a way, trying to, in a sense, amputate some of our humanity.

It's complicated, this business of thought and our relationship with thinking. It's rich. It's complicated. It's wide. As practitioners, what might we aspire to in this area? What might we aspire to in relationship to thought? We could sum it up under three headings, three categories:

(1) The first is, rather than getting rid of thought, to be free with thought. There's a big difference there. To be free in relationship to thought, that we don't feel harassed by thought, harangued by thought. That we're not, also, deluded by thought, misled by the thinking mind, confused by the thinking mind. That's one very real aspiration that we can move towards.

(2) The second one -- I'll weave these into the talk -- the second one: is it possible for us to discern between different types of thinking, and actually be a bit choosy here? And discern, and then be able to let go of certain unhelpful types of thinking. Because it's very clear when we look at our experience that there are some types of thinking that are just not helpful. And can we discern what they are? And are we able to develop the ability to let that kind of thinking go? Second aspiration.

(3) The third one: can we, as human beings, develop the ability to think well, to really think well? To think, to be able to think, to ponder, to reflect clearly, deeply, boldly. How easy it is in our life for the mind to become tired or just conditioned by how we've been educated or what's presented to us through the media, other people's opinions, peer pressure, etc. Can we become, can we develop the capacity to be bold thinkers, courageous thinkers, energetic thinkers?

So all those three, I feel, are very real aspirations for us as human beings and as practitioners. The Buddha talked about a turning point in his practice, a real turning point, he said, before his awakening, when he was practising. It occurred to him: what if I, in my practice, if I keep dividing thinking, the thoughts that occur, if I keep dividing them into two camps?^[1] One camp, I can see, one type of thinking, I can see it leads to my suffering and the suffering of others. And he says that kind of thinking, not only does it lead to my suffering and others', it obstructs understanding. It clouds understanding. He says it promotes vexation; it just makes me agitated. And it doesn't lead to nibbāna, doesn't lead to awakening.

And there's another kind of thinking that does not lead to my suffering or the suffering of others, does not obstruct understanding, does not promote vexation, and actually leads to nibbāna, is conducive to nibbāna. He went into it further, and he said what I notice is that thoughts imbued with greed -- actually, sense desire -- thoughts imbued with greed and sense desire, thoughts imbued with ill-will, and thoughts imbued with harmfulness, those kind of thoughts are leading to suffering and not to nibbāna, whereas thoughts of renunciation, non-greed, non-ill-will, thoughts of harmlessness, these thoughts do not bring suffering for me or others, and they are conducive, they lead to nibbāna.

So I keep dividing my thoughts. I'll keep dividing my thoughts. There's a strategy in practice that he took up at that point, and he stuck with it. He said, "And from that moment on, I just decided I would abandon, destroy, and dispel the thoughts, the kind of thoughts that lead to suffering." He talks a lot in warrior-like images, and oftentimes that doesn't sit that well with our modern psychology, but that was his language. So he strove, he tried to abandon those kind of thoughts, just get rid of thoughts that are not helpful, just drop them. But then, even in terms of the positive thinking, he noted that though I could think about this kind of stuff all day, it would be tiring. So you have to exercise some moderation there.

What this really boils down to is a way of looking at our thinking. Usually we're just embroiled in it or we, as I said at the start, we want to reject the whole package of thinking in meditation. Rather, it's a way of looking, and just seeing: certain kinds of thinking, certain trains of thought around aversion or greed or boredom or whatever it is, that kind of thinking -- as my teacher said, one of my teachers said, "You can be sure it doesn't lead to nibbāna. You know that for sure. It's not leading you to nibbāna. It's not leading you where you want to go."

So the Buddha's image is quite warrior-like, as I said, but in a way, you can think of this as a kind of weeding process. It's like just taking out the weeds in the garden and nurturing the other stuff -- either nurturing the positive thoughts, or just learning, in time, to abstain. That becomes more possible, and I'll come back to that later in the talk.

So in terms of cultivating the positive kind of thinking, for example, some of you will be doing the loving-kindness practice, the mettā practice. That is thinking, "May you be well, may you be happy," whatever your phrases are, "May I." That's a kind of thinking that is non-ill-will, non-greed, non-harming. So actually developing that as a line of thinking, as a kind of thinking.

Then, as I said earlier, there's also this amazing capacity we have as human beings for reflecting, for pondering, and for creative thinking. How do I know the difference between thinking about, reflecting on something in a helpful way, creative thinking, and just thinking in a way that's just spinning with something and not helpful? It's a very important question. One way is that if I'm actually reflecting on something in a helpful way, I can choose to turn it off -- [snaps fingers], like that. I can choose to be in it, to be out of it, to engage in it, or not to engage in it. If I don't have that choice, in a way, I am being thought, rather than I am thinking. This capacity for choice in any moment is an indicator of whether we're actually reflecting on something in a helpful way or whether we're just embroiled in something.

The second way of telling the difference is, sometimes we find ourself, I feel like I'm thinking about this problem, and I'm thinking about it, I'm really thinking about it, but there's somehow, in that thinking about it -- this is a little more slippery -- there's somehow not a clear commitment in our heart, a deep, firm commitment in our heart, to actually think through this situation, this problem, this issue, think through it, to reach a conclusion, and then to act on that conclusion, to actually make a commitment to make a difference. And so, because it's not moving in a trajectory forward into the future, it's just spinning, because that commitment to act, to make a difference, isn't there firmly, isn't rooted in the heart.

Now, to do that, to be able to reflect well, it -- what to say? -- calmness really helps. It really helps if there's some calmness, and to develop calmness over one's lifetime really aids our capacity to think well. I really feel that this ability to think well is as important a part of practice, our ability to reflect, as our ability to give bare attention to anything. They're equally important, I would say, in terms of freedom. One of my teachers was very fond of this story he'd read -- I think it was in a newspaper -- of an interview with an old man. I can't remember why he was being interviewed, this old man; he was famous for something. I'm not sure. And he was reflecting on his childhood, and he said when he went to school, and he got home from school every day, his mother would ask him, instead of asking him, "What did you learn in school today?", would actually ask him, "What questions did you ask in school today?" [laughs] It's, I think, brilliant. He said in this way his mother taught him to think and to ask questions and to probe, and not to just kind of be unalive in that respect. So this capacity to ask questions, use the thinking mind and ask probing, difficult, piercing questions -- very important for us as human beings, and certainly as practitioners.

The Buddha is a little bit, for the most part, murky and mysterious when he describes his awakening. There's a sort of standard description, but it's a little bit vague, to be honest. He doesn't really explain clearly what went on. But there is one passage where he goes into it in much more detail. And he describes his meditative process leading up to awakening. What it was was a series of questions. He starts, "What's my big problem? My big problem in life is death. My big problem is that I'm going to die. All this is going to die. It's all going to die, and it feels completely pointless. I'm going to start there. Why is there death? What is it that causes death, that brings death?" And he traces it back. He gets an answer, but he doesn't stop there, and he asks another question. He traces it back, and he comes to craving, and he says, "Okay, craving. Now, what is it that brings craving into being?" And he goes back until he comes to "a mind moment." There is a mind moment of consciousness, and he asks, "What brings a mind moment of consciousness into being?" It's traced all the way back, through this questioning process. Actually, answering that question, the radical answer to that question was what brought him awakening.^[2]

So we can be tempted as practitioners to throw out conceptuality, almost like right away. But to really beware of throwing it out too early. The Buddha's path is a path of using concepts. And in a way, a bit like a snake eating its own tail, they're concepts that lead beyond conceptuality. This snake eats its own tail, and it's all gone. If we throw them out too early, we're just left with our default concepts: "I'm here, you're there, listening to a talk. It's Sunday morning. Blabbity-blah." I may explore that whole realm of conceptuality and going beyond concepts later in the retreat, but I don't have time to go into it this morning.

There is this capacity we have as human beings, ability to develop this capacity to think clearly, deeply, to reflect, question, to think creatively. But there are other types of thinking, of course. Sometimes on retreat we find ourselves engaged in what you could call kind of 'entertainment thinking.' It's stuff that's not particularly important, but the mind just amuses itself by going off on a particular train. If you're into football, it could be trying to solve the England midfield problem with Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard or whatever it is, or, you know, rearranging the décor in the lounge at Gaia House or something, some entertainment. This is probably part of being human, exacerbated by the silence and the fact that there's no TV, etc., here. Part of being human to a certain extent.

But sometimes it's worth, again, just probing a little bit under the surface: is it that this is going on, this kind of entertainment thinking, because there's fear of boredom? We're afraid of being bored. So boredom, for many people in our culture, is a very charged emotion or mind state, something that we really don't want to go too near. There's a multi-billion dollar industry around preventing boredom. Just to notice: is there a fear of boredom? Is there, perhaps, even deeper, what's propping up this entertainment thinking, is it a fear of a kind of mini-death? If I'm not thinking all the time, who will I be? Who will I be when I'm not thinking? All the self-views and all this is kind of propped up by thinking, held in place by thinking. If I let go of that, who will I be? Will I be? So just to see sometimes when that's going on: what might be behind it or underneath it, kind of supporting it?

Sometimes we find ourselves in entertainment thinking. Sometimes we find ourselves in something much more difficult. The mind is caught in a kind of vortex of obsessive thinking. Very, very painful for the mind to be rattling around in that. I want to go into this a little bit. Very helpful, when that's the case -- there's a lot of energy already spinning in the circuits of thought, the thought energy is already looping around, it's got a lot of energy in it -- using that energy, rather than trying to just quash that energy, actually using the energy and just using the mettā practice, for instance. As I said, it's actually a kind of thinking, but it's a helpful thinking. There's already energy in the thought. Just put it in a positive, helpful direction.

Again -- I think I said this in the other talk on the hindrances -- very, very helpful, very, very skilful to just keep returning. Just keep returning, if you're using the breath, and trusting that. That skill develops over time. Over time, we learn to put down even really thick thought just by the strength of coming back. Another option when there's obsessive thinking is sweeping the attention through the body and paying attention to the body sensations. Many of you will be familiar with this practice. Sweeping the attention up and down, paying attention to the body sensations. Why? Because sometimes when there's obsessive thinking, it's as if the attention has kind of got stuck in one place. It's just moving -- almost not moving -- narrowly around a small, little circuit. We're actually having the attention itself not be stuck by physically moving it. Can be very helpful, allowing it to be more fluid.

This retreat is a silent retreat. In our life, obviously, we're not silent, and we find ourselves engaged in talking. In a way, talking is like a kind of thinking with sounds. It's thinking out loud. Sometimes we find ourselves obsessing about something -- a relationship has ended, or a relationship difficulty, a situation, whatever. The mind is obsessing. And we notice: we talk about it. And again, is the way we're talking about it helpful or not? Because it can be extremely helpful, a beautiful thing for human beings to share that talking and that listening, and actually help the situation unfold, to ease a situation. But there's a way, also, that we just repeat where we are, and we go round and round, and we repeat it to anyone who's willing to listen, or at least polite enough not to tell us to shut up. [laughs] And we'll just say it. And there's something about the actual talking that's repeating it. It's just going round and round. And there's a way that talking, similarly with thinking, can solidify a problem. Rather than helping, it's solidifying. It's making it more concrete and more stuck. It's giving it energy and concreteness. So "Is the talking helpful?", similarly to "Is the thinking helpful?"

Obsessive thinking is one type of what the Buddha calls papañca. Many of you will know this word. Is it a word that some of you are familiar with, papañca? Have you heard this? Yeah? It's actually a very rich word, papañca. There's a lot to it. Many of you already know what it means. With obsessive thinking, or some forms of papañca, the mind just circles round and round something, in a very tight circle, and it's just trapped in that circle. Other types of papañca, it's almost like something gets triggered, and the mind just flies off on some kind of trajectory, and it just goes, and then from this thing to this thing to this thing. It's just gone, gone like "Bye-bye!"

It usually gets translated as "proliferation." There's a proliferation of thinking around something. But it's a very rich word, so there are some other translations which could be helpful. It's "complication." It's that, through the thinking, there's a kind of complicating of something. "Exaggeration." To *papañc-*ize is to exaggerate something. Also "to reify," "to solidify," "to make something concrete," "to make it seem real." This thing, this problem, this issue, this interaction, this situation seems so real. The papañca reifies it. "To proliferate," as I said. The root in Sanskrit means something to do with spreading out. This situation, this instance, this interaction, this moment of consciousness has somehow spread out through the thinking, proliferated through the thinking, diffused. It also, in its root, means "to make manifold," but I'll leave that aspect of it for now.

What happens when there's papañca? Two things, and they're kind of opposite. The mind singles something out. It individualizes something. Something gets picked out of the whole totality of flow of experience. Something gets singled on, yanked out, pulled out from that, individualized, and then generalized. So there's a singling out, and then a generalization.

For example, we're walking down the corridor, or you're in the hall, and someone looks at you, or they don't look at you, and that moment of sense contact in the visual field, and it's like, "Why did they look at me like that? Maybe they think I'm da-da-da. Maybe I am da-da-da." And then the whole thing, "And my mother, and da-da-da-da-da." And the whole thing blossoms, it balloons out from this moment of sense contact.

Or Sharon Salzberg has this story she tells about, many years ago, she was teaching a retreat with Joseph Goldstein, and a yogi came up to Joseph and said, "I've got this tightness in my chest, and it's because" -- it was actually something to do with his mother; I can't remember what it was. "Something to do with my mother treating me a certain way, and then I can't breathe," and this whole thing. And Joseph said, "You mean you have a tightness in your chest?" And he said, "No, yes, and my mother, and da-da-da." And Joseph said, "You mean you have a tightness in your chest?" And Sharon was just watching this go back and forth, and the tendency in that moment for the yogi was to proliferate, to proliferate what was actually a simple sense contact of tightness in the chest in this instance.

Or recently, Christina and I were teaching a retreat in Holland, and there was a man on the retreat, middle-aged, with a shaved head, and I think some tattoos -- a big guy, tall and quite well-built. First few days, he was quite restless. He would come into sittings a little bit late, and was a little bit agitated, and would often hurry out of the hall at the end of the sittings. Quite interestingly, a number of people on the retreat got into this whole story that he was, you know, some kind of serial killer, and was going to kill everyone on the retreat, and go and get a gun and shoot people. Really building up this whole story, and then started talking to each other in the silent retreat about this situation, building it up between them about it! [laughs] And of course, the guy was just going through some stuff, actually, and just had a good cry, and that was the end of it. But what the mind does with some sense contact, through one of the senses, and then papañc-izes, blossoms it out into something.

Now, this process, when it starts, it can seem very innocent, very innocuous: "It's just an association I'm making with something. It's just a filling out of something. But what happens is it's like playing with fire. It so easily gets out of control. That's, in a way, a definition of papañca: it's spinning out of control, it's spun out of control, and soon we feel tormented by it. I know everyone knows this, because it's part of being human. I know everyone knows this. We're tormented by this papañca. We're tormented by the thinking mind and the way it's spun off and caused so much anguish for us.

The Buddha actually uses the word, we're then "assailed" by this papañca, we're attacked by it, swimming in it -- not even swimming; sinking in it. "Assailed" is the word he uses.^[3] He says, "What one proliferates conceptually" -- in other words, what one begins to papañc-ize -- "due to that, concepts characterized by the tendency to proliferation" -- it's a little hard English, meaning the kind of concepts that spin out from papañca, those kind of concepts, characterized by papañca, then "assail him or her with regard to the six sense objects," with regard to what we then see, smell, taste, touch, hear, and think or imagine. "With regard to the six sense objects" could be in the past, could be about the future, could be in the present. So everything that the mind touches, then, we seem assailed by this thing. Everything is reminding us of that.

So there's a story -- I don't know where it's from exactly -- of a magician in India, an ancient magician in India. He came across some bones, bones of a tiger. "Abracadabra" to the bones, resurrected this tiger out of the bones, and then the tiger ate the magician. [laughter] Papañca is a bit like that. We start with these concepts; by themselves, they seem innocuous. We get embroiled in them. We get attached to them. We invest them with energy, and then they assail us, they devour us.

Sometimes with papañca, at the beginning of it, or even in the middle of it, it feels like, "It's okay. I'm just off on this little thing." And then we're in the suffering. In hindsight, we look back and think, "Oh, what on earth did I get into there? What happened? What crazy thing did I get into?" It's obvious that it's suffering in hindsight.

I want to go a bit more into some possible strategies for working with this, because it's important. Can we see in our meditation, in our practice, in our sitting, in our walking, can we see a process? It takes some calmness to see this, but I think it's possible to see. A thought -- there is a thought, or even there's a sense impression and then a thought. But there's a thought or a sense impression. And then, quickly, in response to that, there is a vedanā. Now, Catherine talked about this a couple of days ago. There is a vedanā, a sense felt of it being pleasant or unpleasant or in between. So there's a sense impression, a thought, and then a moment of feeling -- let's say unpleasant, for an example.

Then, in relationship to that felt unpleasantness, and we feel it in the body, that felt unpleasantness, there is aversion: I don't like. I want to get rid of. Now, we might not be conscious of this, but it is going on. It's operating and it's spinning a wheel that then has massive implications. There's unpleasantness, and then there's aversion: I want to get rid of, don't like, reject, without consideration. And then, because there's aversion of this feeling in the body of unpleasantness, we actually tend to go into a kind of thinking mode of trying to get rid of it. And again, this can be actually unconscious. We go into planning or worrying or papañcizing. We're spun off, through the aversion, through the reacting with aversion, into thinking in a way that's actually trying to get us away from the unpleasantness, but it's spinning us round like wheels spinning in mud and then just sinking deeper.

So, sense impression, thoughts; unpleasantness, pleasantness, or whatever; reaction (aversion or craving); and then going into a kind of thinking that fuels the whole process -- papañcizing. Is it possible to see that? We really need to see that. It's much easier to see when the mind is calm, and we can see this. But then, is it possible to cut it? Is it possible that that chain just doesn't reach its sort of grizzly fruition? Yes, it is. It is possible. It's actually possible in a few places to cut it. The easiest place to cut it, though, is at the vedanā -- in the example, where it's unpleasant. There's a thought triggered. We think, "Oh, he's an idiot" or whatever, or "He's like this," or "I'm like this," or "My life is like this," and that unpleasantness. Staying at that vedanā, and not letting it spin off into the kind of unhelpful thinking. It's easiest to cut it there.

Here's a really, really important point: sometimes, with this kind of teaching, it's easy to hear that and think, "Okay, then I need to catch that moment when it first happens. I walk down the corridor, someone looks at me, there's a moment of unpleasantness or pleasantness or whatever. And then, da-da-da, I need to catch it at that point, and I need to be razor sharp. If I've missed that moment, I just have to sit through the misery and the soup of it." It's not the case. This is not really a linear in time thing. It's not linear in time. This is so important, because otherwise it's just going to feel completely impossible to be that microscopic. Sometimes you can catch it, but generally it will have felt like we missed the moment. It's not linear in time. It's rather the case that this *vedanā-*tone, this unpleasantness or pleasantness, is always available to us as a stratum of experience that we can tune into and stay tuned into. Even if I'm already feeling completely crazy with something, I'm already ugh, and it's spinning and it's mad, in that moment, I can find in my experience the vedanā-tone, and I can tune into that, and I can just relax the aversion coming out of it. I can stay with the vedanā. It's not necessary that one catches the initial moment. It will be too difficult then.

Sometimes, if there's obsessive thinking, what we usually find is we go in and out of that. It's impossible to sustain the energy of obsessive thinking non-stop. It's too tiring. We would probably pass out or something. What generally happens is that there are periods of it. When there's calm, if there's been a lot of obsessive thinking, periods of obsessive thinking about something in particular, when there's calmness, a stretch of calmness, really helpful sometimes to deliberately invite the obsessive thinking and invite what it was that one was obsessing about, and just drop it into the calmer waters. It may be that in the calmness, in the spaciousness of mind there, you can actually begin to see: what is it that's hooking the mind here? Because something is hooking. Something is hooking us when there's [obsessive thinking]. Something is hooking us to be dragged round and round. How is that hooking happening? It's actually clearer to see in the calmness. So deliberately dropping it in. If it feels like you drop it in and then you're just right back in the soup, do something else -- you know, mettā, or come back to the breath or whatever. There's no virtue in staying in the middle of the soup and feeling completely lost in it on that level.

Sometimes we find ourself obsessing about or in relationship to a choice that we have in life or choices that we have, in a life situation or a relationship or whatever it is, living situation, whatever, anything, job. And the mind goes this way and that way: "Should I do this? Should I do that?" And almost like a pinball ball, just ricocheting all over the place, unable to really think through it or find any peace there. What's hooking in that scenario? What's hooking us? Sometimes we're hooked -- we have some choices, and we're hooked because we believe at some level that it makes a difference if I do this or if I do that. Now, of course, sometimes it does make a big difference whether I do this or whether I do that. But a lot of the choices that we get so upset about, it actually doesn't make too much difference, and it's just that we've believed, we're believing that it makes a big difference whether this, whether A or B.

Sometimes it's really worth -- and again, the calmness can help -- sometimes it's really worth asking what's quite a deep question, really: what am I believing? And particularly, what am I believing in relationship to my needs? And again, particularly in relationship to my needs for happiness, what I think I need to be happy. There's a whole cellar full of hidden assumptions there about needs and about what I need to be happy. Oftentimes they have a lot of power in our life. They drive a lot of what we do and the choices we make, but they're not so explored or even conscious. So really to ask this question. Have a look what's in there in terms of what's driving me, the hidden assumptions, and question whether they're true. Sometimes we believe a thought, and sometimes we believe not only the thought but the assumptions that are hidden underneath the thought.

Sometimes we find ourself obsessing about something, and what is spinning the obsession, sometimes it's a belief -- a belief that something makes a difference, or believing some assumptions. Other times, it's that there's an emotion underneath. We're spinning on a mental level, but underneath that and supporting the mental agitation and the mental spinning is an emotion, or some emotions, emotional life. There are emotions underneath. Really important -- all the energy is caught up in the head; can we go to the body, over and over, go to the body, and find the manifestation of that emotion in the body, and be with that in the body?

Often, something happens in an interaction or a situation, and we feel injured. We feel injured by what a person did or said, or didn't do or didn't say. And we feel hurt. Out of that feeling of hurt and injury, it's almost like we're not quite with that -- we're above it, spinning in the thought. And really, really helpful just to check in with the body: what's there emotionally? Oftentimes it's much more quiet and vulnerable feelings, and they need being with. They need opening to, connecting with, holding, holding tenderly, with acceptance, with attention, those feelings. And the mind goes off into the thinking, and just bring it back into the body, into the emotion. And if we can hold that emotion, give it some space in the body, it might be that with that holding, we are then able to re-view the episode or the situation, to look at it again with that perspective, with more of a heart perspective.

There's a sutta in the discourses, and Sakka, the king of the gods, comes to the Buddha.^[4] He's trying to trace suffering, and he goes, asks all these questions. He says, "Where does it come from? People arguing and all this stuff." He comes back to this thing about papañca. And he says, "Okay, how does one practise for the right cessation of papañca? Someone who's ended this process of papañca, what have they done in their practice?" Note that word, "right cessation" of papañca. In other words, there's the implication that there's a wrong cessation. To have a lobotomy would be a wrong cessation of papañca. To go into some kind of stupor or drugs or even certain kinds of meditation where we're just blanking everything out, that's wrong cessation of papañca.

So he asked this question. For me, it's a really striking thing. It's a really odd moment at first in the sutta. He asked this question, "How do you practise for the right cessation, the right ending of papañca?" The next line, the Buddha answers him, and he says, "Joy is of two sorts." You think, "What? He's just jumped to something completely different." He says, "Joy is of two sorts. There's a kind of joy that builds, that encourages, that nourishes skilful qualities of the heart, skilful qualities of the mind and the being. It brings with it an openness of heart. It brings with it love. It brings with it brightness and awareness and curiosity and aliveness. And it quietens the more unhelpful qualities of the mind. And that kind of joy is to be pursued. And there's a kind of joy that does the opposite. It clouds the mind, it closes the heart, it shuts us off or up against others or above others, etc. That kind of joy is not to be pursued."

He keeps going. He says, "Grief is of two sorts." Remember, he's answering this question about papañca, and you think, "Why is he going into this?" "Grief is of two sorts." Again, what? "A kind of grief in life that opens the heart, brightens the mind, takes us deeper, connects us with others, and a kind of grief that does the opposite." And again, "One is to be pursued, and one is not to be pursued." And he says equanimity, again, is of two sorts -- same distinction: to be pursued and not to be pursued. In each case, he says -- for instance, with the joy or the grief or the equanimity -- "of this helpful kind of joy, grief, or equanimity, there is a kind that is with thinking and there is a kind that is without thinking. They're both helpful, but the kind with thinking is more refined." This is a very odd passage. He says, "That's the way to end papañca." And he leaves it at that.

There's a lot to that passage. We could actually spend a whole talk just on that one passage. There's a lot to it. It's very rich. But just to draw it out in connection with what I've already said: if there is grief, if I am struggling with a difficult emotion -- sadness, grief, even grief in the broad sense, hurt, anger even -- is this sadness helpful? Is it the kind of grief that's helpful? Is it leading to an opening of the heart, a connection with others? Is it bringing compassion? Is it bringing clarity? Is it bringing beautiful qualities or not? And is the way that I am with it, is the way that I'm being with this grief, this difficulty, this sadness, this whatever it is, is the way that I am with it opening the heart, deepening the consciousness, bringing mindfulness, connecting with others, etc.? This is a really, really delicate question. We may tend to assume all grief is good, and it's just good to be with grief. Very delicate question.

For example, if we take anger, it's a bit clearer with anger. There's a way of being with anger, it's just boiling on its surface, and I'm with that, and it's just spinning. Or I'm with the papañca of it, and I'm just lost in the story of it. It's more helpful to be with the -- oftentimes anger has other emotions underneath it: hurt, sadness, injury, as I said. And being with them, holding them in a way that's actually helpful, something's coming out of that grief in that respect.

[checks time] Yikes. I'm going to leave something for another talk on conceptuality, but it has something to do with the root of papañca, and that has its roots in this notion of self and the way we define ourself. So out of that comes the way we conceive of and see reality. But I'll leave that for a talk probably later in the retreat.

Just to say, in terms of strategies, working with difficult thinking: slowly, slowly, gradually, over time in our practice, we are able to cultivate, or we do cultivate a sense of well-being. This is something that happens anyway, and something I think we should really be interested in. It's like, how can I, as a human being, as a practitioner, deepen this reservoir of well-being? It's so crucial, because the deeper that reservoir of happiness, of peace, of joy, of love, the deeper that is, the more established that is for me in my life, the more thought and thinking and the whole world of papañca loses its allure. It loses its compulsion. We're just not so magnetically attracted and pulled into it. I have enough here. I don't need to go into that thing. This is a very gradual process, and it doesn't really happen in a linear way, but it's, I think, so crucial as part of the path, as something we're interested in developing. Not to put too many of our eggs of hope, hoping for freedom, just in paying attention, just in witnessing our difficulty. We need to cultivate.

So putting in the effort for samādhi, for loving-kindness, for all those other beautiful qualities -- generosity, etc. -- really, really helps, because they bring well-being. And with that, they bring a real clarity -- "This is helpful. This is not helpful," in terms of thinking -- and an ability, slowly, to let go of what's not helpful.

Okay. So I spent a long time talking about the difficult and obsessive and papañca, etc. Oftentimes -- and we're already a week into the retreat -- we find ourselves where that kind of stuff is actually, periods of time where it's really not what's happening. The thought isn't even that thick. It's just there is some thought, but it's really not the main thing that's going on. It's important to be able to learn to work with thought when it's easier. I want to just, last part of the talk, talk about that.

We learn to swim in the shallow end of the swimming pool, and there's something about learning, taking advantage of the times when the thought isn't so thick and so obsessive and so problematic, and learning to see, to understand something about thought there, and learning to work with it when it's a bit more spacious, a bit more easy. If we're grounded in the body, the body acting as a real anchor, mindfulness of the body from which to look at thought -- really, really helpful. There's a reason why mindfulness of the body is the first foundation. There's an anchoring in the body. From that place, we can look at thought.

And in looking at thought, we can begin to actually pick out the different kinds of thought, to notice the different kinds of thought. So we might notice a planning thought. There's a thought of planning. Or remembering: "Ah, memory." Or judging, or worry, or daydream, or anticipation -- whatever. And it's good to notice what kind of thought it is. Some people are really helped by labelling the kind of thought. So, "Planning, planning. Remembering, remembering." Some people find that very, very helpful, to create a sense of spaciousness and non-attachment in relationship to the thought. Other people don't find that helpful at all, so just go with what's helpful.

But I will say something else about the labelling. When practice gets quite quiet, one might notice, if the mindfulness is quite refined, that it's sometimes possible to notice a thought before it's really even fully formed. It's almost like a bit of an amorphous kind of cloud, and we're not even sure -- it's just sort of there at the edges of consciousness; we're not even sure what it's about. And somehow, the labelling of it actually gives it its reality. It gives it its solidity. It makes it concrete. If finishes it off. So sometimes the labelling is drawing a thought out, where we don't need to draw a thought out, if the mind is very quiet. Nothing we put into the heart and the mind is without effect. Nothing is without effect. A labelling has an effect. It can kind of crystallize the thought.

To notice the kind of thoughts, and maybe work with labelling. To notice: is this a pleasant thought or an unpleasant thought? "I'm a failure. I'm a failure at meditation." That's not a pleasant thought. Or even, "He's an idiot," or "He's a slob," or whatever -- that's also not a pleasant thought. To notice this. A thought of mettā is a pleasant thought. And when there's more space, to really begin to get this sense of: is this kind of thinking helpful or not helpful? It can be easier to look at those kind of questions.

And beginning to notice the relationship we have with a thought or a train of thought or these thoughts. We notice that we push some away, and we grab on to others. We can feel that process in the body. That's a beautiful thing about this kind of practice -- we can actually feel it in the body, the way we react to a thought. When the mindfulness is refined enough and it's established enough, a thought comes, and you actually feel it in the body as a tug, as a rejection, as a grasping or something. Even to follow a thought -- it's not that the thought itself was particularly pleasant or unpleasant, but we're just caught on it, and we're following a train of thought. When the mindfulness is quite still, you feel that as a kind of unpleasant strain in the body. It's very subtle. No one would say it's big, tragic dukkha. But it's something that's felt as dukkha. You see: "Ah, this just following a thought is actually dukkha."

And through this, through all this, we begin to move -- this is a very important transition -- begin to move into being, in a way, more interested in the process of thinking than the content, more interested in the process than the content. This is quite an important sort of movement or step. So it can be really, really helpful to, in this respect, looking at thought, work with a very spacious awareness, and really establish, really open the awareness up quite spaciously. Sound can really help. So again, the birds are not here when you want them as an example, but opening the awareness to listening. Because sounds come from all different distances and directions, that can help create a sense of space or open a sense of space in the awareness. Then just being open to listening, and the awareness receiving listening.

If the mindfulness is established, if there's calmness and there's listening, begin to have this sense of thoughts being just like sounds, in terms of the way they arise and pass. Tuning into this aspect, this way of seeing thought: they arise and they pass, they appear and they disappear. A thought just comes and it goes, like a bird tweeting. Just comes and it goes. They're ephemeral. A thought is ephemeral. It's also, as we begin, if you can work in this more spacious way, you begin to get the sense: a thought is very insubstantial. It's almost not there. It's like you can almost put your hand through it. There's nothing there. Ephemeral and insubstantial.

Begin to also notice: thoughts are unpredictable. They're unwilled. They just pop into that space and then disappear unwilled. They're unpredictable. It begins to attune us to this other factor, that thought is, we say, "Not me, not mine." It's just happening. It's just appearing in the space and disappearing by itself. They just appear and they disappear, unwilled. Thought is not me, not mine. We tend to have a thought, and if it's a bad thought or an ugly thought, we blame ourselves for that, or we judge ourselves for that. We begin to get this sense, when thoughts are less thick, "It's just a thought. It's not me, not mine."

So an analogy would be the sky, or even the sky at night, and, for instance, a shooting star just appearing in the sky. It comes out of nowhere, and it's very dramatic-looking, and then it just disappears back into the night sky -- the space of awareness, very similar, and to begin seeing thought that way. Thought has as much significance as a bird tweeting, from this point of view, or the wind in the trees. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a sound, arising, disappearing. It's just a thought, appearing, disappearing.

This mode of practising, of establishing a very spacious awareness, opening up to a very spacious awareness, and letting that spaciousness just accommodate everything, letting everything arise and pass in that space, very, very beautiful way of practising. Very helpful way of practising. It's not ultimately true to say awareness is vast space. Although a lot of people say that, it's actually not ultimately true. But it's an extremely helpful way of practising, extremely helpful if we can begin to get that sense in practice. So think about the space in this room -- this room has a nice, big space in it. Anything can happen. People cry in this room. People get angry. People have insights. People have joy. People make sounds. Everything happens. A rhinoceros could come in this room and do a little dance and da-da-da. A big monster could come in this room and be really ugly. It doesn't matter. From the point of view of the space, the space is just the space. It's totally unaffected. The space of awareness is similar. It's unaffected. It's unperturbed. It's unmoved by what happens in the space in terms of thought. It doesn't make any difference to the space of awareness.

We begin getting this sense, working in this way, we can begin really, at a very deep level, undermining the authority of thought. In our lives as human beings, thought, thinking, has such authority, such clout and power, that actually we have given it. We begin to see: thought has no authority, no power, other than what I give it. It has no power outside of what I give it. I begin to undermine that, to take that away. And you see: a thought is really just a thought. It's just a thought. It's just a bird tweeting. It's just the wind in the trees. It's just a thought. And we can be free with thought, free in relationship to thought, really, really free in relationship to thought. That's not a fantasy. It's not a fantasy for us as practitioners. It's a very, very real possibility. We can move towards that. Very real possibility, that freedom.