Thoughts on Thinking

Knowing what to do with your wandering thoughts is perhaps the greatest challenge for meditators.

By Edward Espe Brown

At my first formal interview with Suzuki Roshi, I didn't know what to say. Perhaps I really could not think of what to say, or nothing I was thinking was worth saying. I was young and sincere, and I wanted to make a good impression. After a couple of minutes of sitting quietly facing each other, I began to relax and Suzuki took the initiative.

"How's your meditation?"

"Not so good," I replied.

"What's not so good?"

"I'm thinking a lot."

"And what's the problem with thinking?" he asked.

That stumped me. When I looked directly for the problem with thinking, I couldn't find it. My fallback position was to tell him the do's and don'ts of meditation.

"You're not supposed to think in meditation," I said. "You're supposed to quiet your mind."

"Thinking is pretty normal, don't you think?"

I had to agree with the Roshi, who then explained that the problem with thinking was not thinking per se, but thinking that was stuck.

When people tell me meditation is "difficult," what they really mean is that quieting their minds or stopping their thinking is what's difficult. And just as I was as a new student, they are extremely reluctant to examine the issue more carefully. It's not so simple. And when it is not simple, the simplest approach is to stick to the rules.

I've known people who have seriously devoted themselves to "not-thinking," and when I ask them if they called to let their friends know that they would be late, they say, "No, I didn't think of that." This is not a new phenomenon. An old Chinese Zen Master once said, "Some of you are taking me literally when I say, 'Don't think,' and you are making your minds like a rock. This is a cause of insentiency and an obstruction to the Way. When I say not to think, I mean that if you have a thought, think nothing of it."

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