This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Intro to Mindfulness Meditation - Thinking with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Intro to Mindfulness - Thinking - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 22, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Intro to Mindfulness - Thinking

Pre-Talk Q&A

Gil Fronsdal: People are still coming, and we could use this kind of informally. If any of you have any questions that you want to ask about the practice, about practicing with emotions from last week, or anything about the meditation, or anything on your minds or hearts about this.

It's all pretty straightforward, easy to do: sit down, close your eyes, and boom, you're like in bliss and happiness and don't have any questions. [Laughter]

Student: I seem to have, when I sit down, once I get through a few minutes of mental churning, pretty consistent feelings. I think I described a little bit about this last week—just kind of like an underlying anxiety. Not huge, but there. And I also have a desire for it not to be there.

Gil: Sure, sure.

Student: So I'm just wondering how to hold those things.

Gil: Well, that's the good question, because "hold it" means you're not necessarily trying to change it, fix it, or go along with the desire and then try to blast the anxiety out of existence. Just the fact that you have that desire or that wish to hold it, that's fantastic. Even to have that wish is the beginning of some different relationship to it, right? So we're kind of looking for a different relationship, and that's partly what the mindfulness does. It shifts our relationship to our desires, to our emotions, to our aversions. Part of the shift is, as you said, we hold it rather than go along with it. We hold it rather than get involved with it. So, can you answer your own question now that you asked it?

Student: Well, yeah, I'm just not really satisfied with the answer though.

Gil: Why don't you say how you would answer it by yourself?

Student: That both the anxiety and then also the kind of layer below it, which is the desire for it to be different, are things that I can hold mindfully. Just as a physical sensation or the breath would be, just to notice it and to be with it.

Gil: Great. And do you have any sense of why that answer is dissatisfying for you?

Student: Because you're still in the desire to get rid of it a little bit.

Gil: Yeah, totally. So you're not quite holding it; you're a little bit also being it.

Student: I'm in it as well.

Gil: Uh-huh. And so there's a few things you can do to support this. One is we have this technique called mental noting that's sometimes used in this practice, and that's a more emphatic way of knowing what's happening. Many times we just know it non-verbally and we're just present with something, but sometimes a fuller acknowledgment of something really makes a difference. In some cultures, you wouldn't tell people your birth name because it had some kind of power over you. There is power in naming things. Sometimes just naming... someone names, "Everyone's angry," and everybody says, "Oh yeah, someone named it, finally. Now we understand why it's so difficult." So the naming of something can be quite useful. It also helps create a little bit of distance from it. If you're still in that desire to change it, but you name it, "Oh, there's that desire to change it," then you're a little bit stepping back, and then it's a little easier to hold it.

The next thing you can do is RAFTing¹. You recognize it (that's the naming), you allow it (which is the holding), and then you feel it physically. For both of those, the anxiety—where is that in your body? If you can find the location where it's centered, then it's easier to hold it like this. If it's just amorphous, it's kind of like, "What am I doing here?" And the desire as well. If the desire is strong, there's probably some tension, pressure, or contraction somewhere—maybe in the mind, or in the heart, or something behind that desire. The stronger the desire is, the more likely you'll find a physical corollary. And then again, "Okay, there it is physically, now I can connect to it."

So anyway, is that enough for now? Is it a little bit more satisfying?

Student: Yes, good. But please forgive me if I need to be forgiven that I turned it back on you...

Gil: Because that's what we do in this practice. We're supposed to learn to find our own way with it. And you kind of did, and then I was able to just kind of offer you some more.

Student: The RAFTing is similar to RAIN², which is another very similar process which I know about, and I'm working on it sort of in another way with my therapist. But it's hard for me. She's always trying to explain it to me, and we're doing it in her office. I seem to be able to get in touch with what it's about when I'm with her in her office and she's talking me through it a little. But at home, or when I'm in like an upset situation, I have a harder time understanding all four steps. Like, what does "feel" mean physically? What does it mean to feel my anxiety? I know it happens here, but there's also so much churning in my head.

Gil: It's possible you're not ready to do the RAFT. You have another step to do first, and that is: if you just opened up really wide to get the bird's-eye view of what's happening to you, what would you see? What would you know? It doesn't have to be exact. It could be very general. There are times in my practice where the most general thing I can say, because I couldn't figure out what's going on, would be "chaos." What would the bird's-eye view provide you? Because something's going on that you're going to therapy about, so what's the bird's-eye view of that experience for you?

Student: I mean, I don't know how else to say it except for an anxiety feeling.

Gil: Great. So that's your way of connecting, knowing what it is. Maybe that's enough. How could recognizing it as anxiety be a significant step in itself?

Student: Well, sort of noting it like you were just explaining.

Gil: What else? How would it be significant to just stay there and just continue, "Anxiety. This is anxiety," and just kind of stay with it in that simple, general bird's-eye view? How could that be helpful for you?

Student: Well, I hope it can be helpful in like not bringing it back up to my head again.

Gil: Great. Because there's something about recognizing it that way that takes you out of your head.

Student: Yeah.

Gil: Fantastic. And so where's the other place besides your head where the anxiety is for you?

Student: Just like in my stomach.

Gil: Fantastic. So then I would recognize being in the stomach more and kind of take refuge there and enjoy that a little bit. Recognizing you have anxiety, you can do. And that recognition gets you out of your head and puts you somehow in your belly, which is nice. So if the anxiety is still there a little bit, then if you continue that same process, just recognize that anxiety, what happens next?

Student: Well, when I've done it and it's worked, I feel calmer. I mean, I feel less in my head and more just with my body.

Gil: Fantastic. So it's possible that the complicated thing of RAFT puts you in your head too much. Like, "Where am I now?" and remembering it all. That's not what its purpose is; it's easy to do. So maybe you're not ready to use it yet. You already have plenty going for you. The fact that you know how to just recognize that anxiety gets you out of your head, puts you in your body a little bit, and you get calmer. Then if there are still some remnants of anxiety, do that whole process over again. You have your own process, which is quite significant. Keep it simple and don't make it a project.

Student: That's really helpful because I do think I analyze it. Great, thank you.

Introduction to Mindfulness of Thinking

Gil: Okay, so welcome back. We'll start with the meditation, and the idea is today we're going to do mindfulness of thinking. I just want to say that for many people, thinking is one of the biggest obstacles to meditation because rather than meditating, we're thinking. And some people confuse thinking for mindfulness if you're thinking about what's happening. This is not thinking about what's happening in the moment; it's a very different process of just being present and seeing without analysis, or stories, or thinking about it in some way.

Thinking is the most common thing that takes people away from the present moment, which is where we want to be for mindfulness. Because of that, it's very easy to be frustrated, to be critical about it, to be upset, and some people come to the conclusion, "I can't meditate because I'm drifting off so much." I was trying the first evening we met to present this practice as a way you can't do it wrong. All you're asked to do is to recognize what is happening, not needing to have it be different. Like for you, just recognizing anxiety is almost enough; it's quite powerful just noticing, "Oh, this is what's happening." And if what's happening is your mind is thinking a lot, that's the thing to recognize. It's that simple: "Oh, this is a thinking mind."

You could go a little bit further and calculate how much the California electrical grid could be powered by your thinking, but the idea is to keep it simple. "Oh, thinking, thinking." It might only last for a second or two that you came into the present moment to recognize your thinking, but that is very different than just kind of barreling along uninterruptedly in the train of thoughts.

What we're doing is—if you use the analogy of trains for thinking—you drive your car, you stop waiting at the train tracks for the train cars to go by, and the next thing you know, you're on the train cars. You have to wait till the next stop, get off, go back to look for your car. But then there's another train and you get on again. Some people stay on the car, some people try to get off but they just go to the next car. Every time you step off is actually quite significant. Consider, for however old you are, how many uninterrupted moments of not thinking have you had so far in your lifetime? Two, three, four? You've had a few probably. Mostly your thinking just barrels ahead and goes on and on and on, changes subjects, and does different things. It's uninterrupted.

So what's been going on for a whole lifetime is the habit of thinking, and that habit is well-honed, well-developed. What's remarkable is how quickly that can begin to change. You're not going to get to see the effects just once, twice, ten times, a hundred times that you step away from thinking, but stepping away is actually quite a powerful event for the mind. It begins changing something in the mind radically, that you're no longer always moving along in the same track. Even if all you can do for a moment is say, "Oh, that's thinking," and you step away, it gets a little bit quiet, and then you start again—appreciate you did it. You succeeded, that was great! And now you wait for the next chance to do it, and then you do it again.

As we become more familiar with thinking, thinking itself becomes an object of mindfulness. It's just as valid as something to be mindful of as the breathing, as the body, as emotions. It's actually very important to develop a mindfulness of thinking. Mindfulness of thinking is kind of like having an overview of it, or stepping back and turning around and looking at it from a distance. We can start understanding something about the nature of our thinking that's invisible to us if we're just living in our thoughts all the time.

There was a philosopher who said, "I think, therefore I am," and for some people, their whole identity is intimately tied to their thinking. They would feel like they didn't exist if they didn't think. Part of that reason is thinking is one way we tell stories about who we are. We have conversations that put us into our identity and who we think we should be. Sometimes that's built up so strongly that if we don't have the thoughts to tell us the stories, it's like we don't exist. It can be frightening for some people. But you're not going to die just because your thinking mind goes quiet for a while. It's like having a hybrid car: you come to a stop and, oh, the engine turned off. Isn't that nice? You know it's going to turn on as soon as you hit the gas again. Or the hum in the refrigerator stopped—ah, that was good. That can happen with the thinking mind in different ways.

The first thing is just to be aware that you're thinking, and to appreciate just knowing, "Wow, my mind is out of control with my thoughts." Some people have all these stages of developing meditation, and the first stage where you know you've succeeded and you're on the right track is when you realize your mind is out of control. It's much better to know your mind is out of control than to have a mind that's out of control and not know it. It's actually very significant, even though it's very easy to be frustrated and feel like, "I can't do it." But in fact, you are doing it; you've reached the first level, so congratulations!

As we learn to settle down and just be able to hold the thinking mind when that's necessary, we start seeing that thinking is not just a unitary thing. Thinking is made up of many composite parts. I like to make up a new English word, and that is "thoughting". There's thinking and there's thoughting. Thoughting is just the mind producing a single thought. "Oh, that's the hum of the heating system." That's like one thought. Thinking is when there's a chain of associations that happen, and one triggers the next, which triggers the next. "The hum of the heating system... probably people think we should have a quieter heating system in the meditation center... probably people now are being critical and judging me for not getting the right heating system... probably I'm failing as a meditation teacher because of the heating system... probably I need to move to another town and try to find a quieter place..." The mind spins, right? That's thinking.

A thought is just a thought that arises. But it isn't simply that; it's a thought with associated ideas that follow and build on it. It's also that I could have that thought—there's the sound of the heating system—or I could have fear that you guys are going to judge me because of that sound. The fear then gives food to the further thoughts that I have. Because this is such an important issue for my identity, my whole body is going to get tense. And that tension makes me feel uncomfortable, and that discomfort is something I react against, and that becomes food for more thinking. So a thought is not an innocent little floating sentence or image in the mind; it also comes along with stuff that feeds it, energizes it, and keeps it going.

What's possible is to begin seeing the thinking system, how it works, what feeds it. We see the physical side, the tension that's part of it, the emotional side that's part of it. As we start getting a hang of seeing what's going on, we start finding that we can leave it alone. We can stop trying to fix it or get away from it or stop it. In that leaving it alone, there's space for awareness to be there, space just to know it in a very easy way. "Oh, thinking. Thinking with fear. Thinking with tension. There's the tension." We start seeing these component parts of it, and it becomes a whole different game. It's a whole different event than what we thought it was, which was just some important problem we had to figure out by thinking our way through it.

So it's important with this practice to always remember it's meant to be very simple. We'll start this in a very simple way. As I talk, like with RAFT, it can get more complicated because there are so many different parts of it, but it's not meant to make it a complicated analysis. It's meant to support you by giving you the map of what is going on inside of you, so you're better able to see it in a simple way. If you don't know what's in there, it'll come up from behind and grab you; it'll kind of run the show. But if you start seeing how the whole thing operates, then you can step back and find some peace and calm with it. Part of what might seem complicated today is really meant to just give you the map so you can find a way to be simple with all of it.

Guided Meditation

So let's start very simply. Take a meditation posture, and I'm going to give you a very simple word to use that'll help you stay here with your experience right now, no matter what the experience is. You're allowed to be just as you want, just as you are. One word I'll offer you is kind of like a little support to help you recognize what is here. Just allow it to be what's here: "Oh, this is how it is." Say this word and then just notice how it actually is. After a while you can say the same word again as a pointer, as a support to put you in the right place to notice, "Oh, this is what it's like now." Seeing that this is what it's like now can be done simply, easily, like you're holding the experience, you're making space for it.

Gently closing your eyes and taking some long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing on the exhale, settling into your body as you exhale. Let your breathing return to normal. Spend some time scanning through your body. As you exhale, relax. Maybe the muscles of your face, soften your shoulders, maybe softening the belly.

Centering yourself on the breathing, being simply present for a few minutes with the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. Maybe noticing how the experience of breathing in is a different experience than breathing out.

And then gently, in a soft way, maybe a kind way, say to yourself the word "here." H-E-R-E. Because you're here. Recognize you're here, and then notice what your experience is here, in whatever way it shows itself to you. There's no right or wrong way to be here. "Here," and notice how it is for you.

You can find a nice relaxed rhythm, maybe every exhale or some rhythm where you can just say gently to yourself, "Here," and notice what is here for you. When you've noticed it, allowed it, before the mind drifts too far away, say "here" again. Doing this again and again.

If there's a lot of thinking: "Here." And then notice what it's like to have a mind that's thinking a lot. "Here."

Allow yourself to be as you are, but don't go galloping off with how you are, with your thoughts or whatever is happening. Pause in the middle of it with the word "here," and then recognize what "here" is for you at this moment. If "here" is thinking, just know it as thinking.

And then to bring this meditation to a close, notice first if there's some way you might be different now than you were when we started meditating. Has anything shifted for you? You can take a few long, slow breaths to feel reconnected to your body in a fuller way, and feel your body against the chair or the floor. When you're ready, you can open your eyes.

Reflections and Q&A

Gil: Partly that was trying to point out to you the simplicity of being present for one moment without agendas, without needing things to be any different, but just taking the moment to "here" and recognize what's here, and then again. It'd be interesting to hear from a few of you what that was like for you. What happened to you? What shifted for you?

Student: In just going back to the word "here," initially I'm thinking about the word "here" and it's just showing up in block letters in my head. But eventually, it just kind of shifts to where I'm just experiencing my body. There's no other way than just feeling it. I'm feeling the way my legs are bent, and I go back to thinking where I'm like, "Oh, that kind of hurts a little bit, maybe I need to take a better position," but just being able to feel it.

Gil: Great, that's nice. And did anything shift for you besides your direction of mindfulness?

Student: I mean, I feel more calm. My breath slowed down. I don't know if that shifted, but it was good.

Gil: Okay, great. Thank you.

Student: I noticed that it did interrupt my train of thought. What was nice is, yes, I went back to thinking, but I didn't go back to that same train. It was like a different train. Often what happens in my mind is this builds—the longer I'm on this train of thought, it builds my anxiety because then I'm trying to solve all the problems in my life. So it did help because it brought me back: "Okay, no, you're here." And then I would be calm for a little bit, and then my mind would start again.

Gil: Fantastic. I mean, to have that tool, to have that ability to do that, is maybe better than the alternative. Thank you. It's a skill that you build and develop over time. Every time you step away from those trains, you're no longer feeding it. So the more often you start doing that simple thing, the fuel dissipates, and after a while, there's no more fuel to keep the thinking going. But generally, the way people live, we're like the crazy coal shoveler on the train. We're just constantly putting more and more coal in the engine.

Student: The word "here" is helpful and it does bring me back. And then there's a moment of empty mind, and then I start wondering what I'm supposed to be paying attention to. "Oh, I'm supposed to be paying attention to the sensations in my body." So I'm looking for the sensations, you know, "Oh, I've got an itch over here, or wait a minute..." What am I supposed to be paying attention to?

Gil: So if you then said the "here" a little bit quicker, the next "here" would be, "Oh, 'here' is trying to figure out what to do." If you had done that, what do you think would have happened to you?

Student: Well, I'd be noticing what was going on in my brain.

Gil: Great, that would be a good thing. That's completely valid. And what it also means is that you're not going along with that thought. It sounds like you went along with it, trying to figure it out, right? But if you said, "Oh, what's here? Oh, it's just a mind trying to figure it out." That's all okay. And then you're on to the next thing: "Here... there's the sound of the heating system." Does that make sense? I'm trying to convey how simple this can be, that can step away so you're not in the fray. Step away so you're not being pushed around by the thoughts and going along with them. That was a great example of being pushed around a little bit by that thought. An alternative was just to recognize you are doing it: "Oh, I'm looking for where my attention should be." That's what's in the present moment. The mind is looking for something. "Oh, okay. That's it, end of story."

Student: For me actually it was very, very simple. It was like a medium around me, and I was dissolving in this air in the room, and I was feeling so great. So it was easier to do meditation this way.

Gil: Wonderful. Very nice.

Student: Hi. I'm actually still stuck on the first lecture and trying to get into the mindfulness of the body. One of the things I've noticed is when I come back into the breathing, sometimes I get a little too concentrated. When I get too concentrated on the breathing, then I have to detach myself into becoming a little bit more relaxed. That's a tension that I seem to be having all the time, and I've been trying to sort of relax it a bit.

Gil: So you're saying that you tend to want to stay focused on the breathing in the body, but if you do that, it gets a little bit too intense for you, and you feel a tension in your body, and you try to relax then?

Student: Yes, I'm trying to relax it so that I don't get too tense.

Gil: Up to a certain point, relaxing the body is really helpful for this process. The point where we stop doing it is when relaxing has become a project, because it's not easy to do. Now we're really struggling to try to relax better, tensing to relax better. Before you get to that point, you want to just kind of relax the practice and say, "Okay, what's happening here? Here is a mind that's intense with the breathing, and a body that's getting tense." Just keep it that simple. It's almost like you're trying to be very, very simple so you can see it well.

The last few years have been cats somehow in my life. If you're a stranger to a cat, you don't go right up to it and look it in the eye. Some cats, you really want to ignore. The first time you go into someone's house, turn away and ignore it, and then it feels safe to come to you. But if you make it a project to make friends with a cat, you're in trouble! The same thing with our inner life. If you make a project out of it, things won't stay around long enough to see clearly and well. So for you to just simply hear, "Oh, here I'm trying to be with a breath. Here I'm getting tense." Don't relax. At some point, stop relaxing and just be here with how it is. And then you might see that what's shy inside of you might finally show itself.

I don't know you, but I know people who've done something similar, and underneath it all, there's some fear. Fear of doing it wrong, fear of not getting something, fear of being left behind. "Oh, it's fear as the cat that's shy. Oh, that's what's driving this tension and this intensity—is the fear." So now we find the fear: "Okay, here, fear. This is what fear is like. I'm with fear now." Then what's interesting is it's probably another cat under that! But if you don't make it a project to fix it, just say "here" and kind of look at it out of the side of your eyes because it might be really shy, then you find something else is under that.

Student: Just one other thing is that when I do get into the breathing, it becomes quite focused. There's a point at which, if it's not getting stressed, it gets very focused, and that's when you can actually do the examination that you're talking about. I can feel the breath flowing through the body, but to get to that I have to struggle with all that tension about getting into the breath.

Gil: I mean, you're welcome to do it your way because eventually it seems to work.

Student: No, it's iffy. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Gil: Well then, maybe take the slow route. When it's not working, take a good look at that, and something needs to be settled in you. Once that gets settled, then you seem to have some nice capacity to get concentrated. When the challenging stuff settles, then your capacity for concentration can come in easier. When we're really settled and the mind isn't bouncing around wanting all kinds of things, there's a natural steadiness and subtleness where the mind gets fairly concentrated on the breathing. You're probably not going to believe what I say, but it can be one of the most exquisite experiences of life to just be right there coasting, riding on the breath coming and going. It isn't necessarily because the breath is such a great thing; what's a great thing is a mind that is in harmony, a mind that's unified, not fractured, not scattered. But you don't go there directly, because the cat will run away. You have to kind of learn this slow, patient process. "Here, this is what it's like. Here is fear."

Guided Meditation: A Tour of Thinking

Gil: Now it's easy to think it's going to be complicated. We're going to do a meditation where I'm going to try to help you become more familiar with your own process of thinking. Not everyone thinks the same way. Some people think more in images, some people in words, some people see words when they think. To learn the map of what we can be present for in this simple way, it helps to have a survey. It's like someone showing you around Redwood City the first time so you don't get lost. I'm going to give you a tour. For some of you, what you see in meeting yourself might be challenging. If you feel it's too much for you, you can open your eyes, look at the ceiling, or count the people in the room to help you settle again.

Take your meditation posture. If you're comfortable closing your eyes, close them. If you prefer to have them open, maybe half-open, gazing down towards the floor. As you exhale, relaxing the belly. Let the weight of your torso settle down to your waist and lower. The weight of your body settles onto your sitting bones. Here, feeling the contact with the chair and the floor as a kind of definitive statement of recognizing where you are, where "here" is. You're here, exactly this spot.

Relaxing the shoulders, letting the weight of the shoulders settle towards the floor. Relaxing in the face, as if the muscles on your face can fall away from the skull and be held gently by the skin. Maybe relaxing around the eyes, relaxing the thinking mind behind the eyes. Maybe softening in the mind.

For the next little while, you're allowed to think. Let yourself think, but as you think, know that you're thinking. Kind of like you're sitting at a table someplace, and the person at the table next to you is talking to someone, and you're just there listening, hearing their voice, the tone of their voice. So allow yourself to think, but just know that you're thinking. "Here, a person thinking."

Notice: do you think more in words or more in images? Or a combination of both? Or is your thinking more a form of emotional processing, almost as if you think with your emotions? Or is thinking a somatic experience almost? Or maybe it's all of the above. How would you characterize your thinking?

As you're aware of your thinking, do you have some relative sense of the speed of your thinking? Are you thinking quickly, a lot of thoughts in a hurry? Are you thinking in a slow, relaxed, easy way?

If there's an inner voice that thinks, is it a loud voice or a soft voice? If there are images being projected, are they in color or black and white? Are they fast or slow? Are they imposing, or are they kind of at a distance?

If you think in words, if you have an inner voice, what's the tone of voice that you use as you think? If you think in images, is there a mood that comes along, like mood music to the images? If there is a tone of voice or a mood, just know it. "Here, this is what it's like." For these minutes, it's okay to be this way. Just know it here like this.

As you think, either in words or images, is there any emotion connected to them? Any mood, state of mind? If there is an emotion, is it feeding the thinking, or is it a consequence of what you're thinking?

When you're thinking, is there any tension anywhere in your body associated with that thinking? Tension in the mind, in the face, shoulders, belly? If there is, that's okay. Just know it. "Here is tension."

What's the energy level of your thinking? Is it high energy, low energy? Is it agitated thinking, or is it calm thinking? Whatever it is, it's okay. Just know it. "Here, this is what it's like."

Are there any gaps between your thoughts? Are there times when you're not thinking, at the end of a sentence or an end of an image? And if there's a gap, what is that gap like for you? "Here, without thoughts, is like this."

Then as we continue, can you let go of your thinking? Can you let there be a pause where the thinking stops for a few moments? Letting go of your thoughts and dropping into your breathing. Letting go into your body breathing. We'll spend a few minutes just mindfulness of breathing. That's very simple. Just "here, inhale is like this." "Here, exhale is like this."

The final thing about thinking is that some forms of thinking are more on the surface mind, the mind that's helping us to survive and fight and flight. There's a different source for thinking that's not on the surface but deep inside. The thinking that helps us to thrive. Thinking connected to joy and love and care, generosity, kindness, wisdom. That's not about surviving; it's about a deep sense of well-being. Can you, in these last few minutes of this sitting, relax into your body? See if your attention can drop down someplace deep within. Can you find a different place to think from, a different center or reference point for thinking, where thinking feels more deep and calm, and is more likely to have your welfare in mind, your care?

Can you recognize that you have different ways of thinking, some more agitated, some more deep and calm?

To end this sitting, take a few long, slow deep breaths again. Feel connected to your body. Remember you're in this room with other people, and when you're ready, you can open your eyes.

Reflections and Q&A

Gil: Probably not a lot of you have had a tour of your thinking. I don't know how well that worked for you, but I'm curious to find out what was most interesting for you. Were you able to follow enough and find something that was eye-opening or new, or something that might be helpful?

Student: Initially there was a lot of resistance. Like, I did not want to go to my mind. Eventually, it just kind of happened gradually. Assigning the word "here," there was a different energy from when we did the first one. It was bumming me out. I did not enjoy sitting at that next table watching my mind do its thing.

Gil: You were annoyed by your mind?

Student: I was bummed out by it. It was making me very overwhelmed.

Gil: But was it a different mind than you usually have, or just that it's the usual mind but you got to see it better?

Student: Yes, I think that one. And then it was kind of hard to go back into the body after.

Gil: A very interesting exercise or way of approaching the mind, if it's a bummer of a mind—at least for now—is to imagine yourself that you're supposed to be the friend to that mind. You're sitting on a park bench and you're there to accept your friend who's having a hard time, and you're just there to listen, that's all. It's possible that bummer of a mind has never really been listened to, and maybe something different will happen if you listen. Not necessarily to the words and the meaning and what they're trying to say, but something deeper than that. Maybe listening to the emotion behind it, underneath it.

Student: Yeah, I don't like how my mind is either, so you're not alone. I had trouble with the idea of thinking from not a surface place at the very end. I was like, I don't know what that feels like or what that is like.

Gil: Of course. It's kind of like someone shows you a map of Redwood City and shows you a place you've never been. "Wow, someday maybe I'll go there." I just gave you the map so there's more to discover.

Student: Actually, it's not that I don't like it; I just don't like the content of my mind or what I'm drawn to.

Gil: This practice is to see that, and to hold it kindly, and to be with it. The mind begins to change if we don't participate and go along with the old habits. If we can hold it kindly in awareness: "Here, this is what it's like. Oh, this is what it's like not to like those thoughts, but let's at least be present for it," then something begins to shift. You don't have to be the one who changes things. The cat comes if you don't try to make it come.

Student: I had a very similar sort of experience. My analogy would be more like peeling back an onion. So the surface thinking was these images of things I have to do, things that are going on. And then as we progressed towards the end and you went deeper, there was less thinking, more emotion. I'm a very visual person, so it was images that were evocative. Being able to sit with them, feel them, and experience them in a different way was fantastic. I think that's probably part of what's drawn me to this as a practice and a tool to visit some of those things that I want to sit with—as you said, sit next to, arm around it.

Gil: The opportunity with this practice is to be able to eventually see all of who we are and hold all of it in the gaze of mindfulness, in the gaze of kindness. And visit places we've sometimes never seen. Everyone's going to have difficult minds in some sense or other, but to be able to visit the difficult places, but also the beautiful places and good places, and to find a radically different relationship to it all. The radical relationship of kind awareness—"just here, this is how it is"—actually begins shifting the territory dramatically. If you have an ecosystem and introduce one new species, the whole ecosystem changes. The ecosystem here changes radically with kindness or radical, simple awareness, because you're not going along with business as usual, and it makes room for something else to happen. Learning this non-reactive awareness that just allows things to be in the field of awareness means we can start being with what's difficult for us in a new way. We don't have to fix it, run away from it, or feel shame about it. We can just be, "Oh, this is how it is now." And then something shifts.

Student: I noticed a pattern in my mind that I've noticed before, but my reaction to it was different this time. I was quite excited to notice it. Which is this pattern of always looking for what I'm missing, forgetting, doing wrong, or what's going to happen that I don't want to happen. It was cool to see it and have some distance from it, not go along with it automatically. And the deeper thinking to me made a huge difference because it allowed me to let go of that, because that was very much surface-level thinking. I felt like I was able to let go of the scanning for problems.

Gil: I love what you said. What I hope is that now you don't take it as a given how you happen to be thinking. Some people think, "That's thinking and I just have to go along with it, I have no choice." But there actually are lots of choices. There are different ways to think, different places to think from, and there's a choice to watch it rather than be it, and that makes all the difference.

Student: The thing that I found most surprising was it's all verbal, it's all words. When I had thoughts that weren't driven by emotions—just meaningless chatter—that just kind of went away. And then when it was fed by emotions, it had a different quality to it. So that was most surprising, to see the difference between those two.

Gil: It's possible to notice sometimes that emotions are feeding the thinking, and sometimes thoughts are so strong that they trigger the emotions. Psychologists have said one of the leading causes of depression is rumination. We're saying all these things over and over again. If I say once to myself, "Gil, you're a lousy guy," I can get away with that once. But if I start saying it ten times a minute, it's going to start wearing me down. No wonder I get depressed! So many people are stuck in these loops of the same stories, the same thoughts. There are other ways, and one way that we have in mindfulness is it breaks the cycles by just noticing it. This "here" is a powerful thing. It's so simple that some people think it's ridiculous, but "here" breaks the cycles of a lifetime, and something new can happen.

Simplicity and the Spider Web

Gil: Now I want to review a little bit, because this emphasis on thinking here can seem like a big project. In fact, this is not supposed to be a big project. The idea with this meditation is to find something that's your home base. I recommend the breathing. The breathing is a wonderful place for many people to develop mindfulness, to develop more clarity of seeing, to develop the capacity to be with something, allowing it to be as it is.

Some days the breathing feels good, sometimes not good, sometimes you're controlling it, sometimes you're not controlling it, sometimes it's shallow, sometimes it's deep. We're trying to be just "here" with this. "Oh, here, this is what controlled breathing feels like," as opposed to, "Oh no, I can't meditate now, I'm controlling it." No, the point is, "Oh, here, this is what controlled breathing is like." "Oh, here, it's shallow breathing." Well, it's a little bit embarrassing to have shallow breath in California. After all, we have Esalen³ here, and humanistic psychology was born here, and it was all about deep, cathartic breathing. So I'm a Californian failure! No, it's just shallow breathing.

Let me tell a story. I lived at San Francisco Zen Center for many years. People could come there as guests. Someone called up to ask about becoming a guest, and the woman said, "Well, Robert the guest manager is not here now, he'll call you back." Robert called the guy back, but he wasn't home. He called later for Robert, but Robert wasn't in. Hearing that Robert wasn't in, the guy said to the person at the Zen Center, "Well, I guess it wasn't meant for me to come." The person at the Zen Center said, "No, it just means Robert's not here." [Laughter] So shallow breathing just means shallow breathing. Don't make a whole California thing about it.

So we start with the breathing, and breathing for many people is a settling, you get composed, it's relaxing to stay with the breath. It's a neutral place to direct the attention. Wherever we put our attention goes food. If attention's always going into our thinking, that's what we feed. If we're feeding something wholesome and healthy, which is mindfulness of breathing, it takes some of the food away from the thinking and the tensions we hold. So breathing is a default, but if something else becomes more compelling, we don't want to struggle between what wants our attention and the breathing. We just let go of the breathing and bring our attention to this other thing. "Oh, here, my knee hurts. Here, with a painful knee. Here, not liking a painful knee. Here, trying to figure out what to do with this." And after a while, maybe it's no longer so compelling, and then we go back to the breathing.

Maybe there's an emotion, maybe I'm sad. So then, "Oh, here, sad. This is what sad is like." I feel the sadness in the body. Maybe it hasn't gone away, but it's no longer so compelling, and then we go back to breathing. The breathing is a stabilizing force. The rhythm of breathing is calming, stabilizing, and it can help us from getting too reactive or caught up. You probably don't want to stay too long with the pain or the sadness—just long enough to really feel like you've been there for it, and then go back to the breathing. If you spend too much time with any one thing that's difficult, sometimes attitudes come in, and we might not realize we're actually thinking about it rather than being mindful of it.

The image I have for this is of a spider in a spider's web. The spider sits in the middle of the web and waits for something to happen elsewhere in the web. When something happens, the spider goes up to visit and see what's going on. Then the spider comes back to the center and waits for the next thing to happen. We just sit at the breathing at the middle of our web, and when something happens, we go out.

So thinking is just one more thing like that. If thinking is the predominant thing and you can't pay attention to breathing, then in a relaxed way, do mindfulness of thinking. It can be very simple: "Here, thinking is happening." Now you have a little bit of the map. Saying "here, this is thinking" might lead you to say, "Oh, here there's tense thinking. Here there's calm thinking. Oh, here there's frightened thinking. Here there's angry thinking. Or here there's tension in the body around thinking." It isn't like you go investigating as a project, but it's like, "Oh yeah, now I see there's more going on here than just the words or the images or the ideas."

Because of how easy it is to be seduced by thoughts, you want to be a little protected from that. So just come back to the breathing. Hopefully, there's a nice rhythm of being with the breath, being aware of something else, coming back to the breath. Sometimes you stay with the breath for a long time, sometimes you're not with the breath much because there's so much else going on.

But now you have the map of the things you can be aware of in a very simple way. It's not meant to be a project; it's meant to be recognizing what is. Then one day you might have this wonderful discovery: the difference between thinking and thought. "Oh, the mind just had a thought." And that's all it was. One thought arose and went. "Wow, where did it go?" You don't have to follow it, don't go looking for it. Just, "Oh, that was a thought." I was a thinker, but now I'm a thougter. When it's just a thought, it's usually because the mind is pretty relaxed and peaceful. It's very clear that the thought is not a problem. You could have the worst thought anyone has ever had, but as long as it just stays as a thought, it comes and it goes, it's not an issue.

As we go along with this practice, the nature of thinking changes. One of the ways is it gets thinner and softer. People talk about it like a veil that gets thinner and thinner, almost until it becomes like an evaporating cloud. Some people who do this notice that when they're calm, their mind feels very luminous or clear or open or wide. But if you have a really intense thought, locked into something, and you look at what the mind is like now, it can feel like it's gotten dark, contracted, tight, or small. Having all this understanding of thinking breaks the hegemony of the thoughts, breaks the way we're in its power or caught by it. It becomes easier to handle.

If there's really a lot of repeated thinking, a simple process I recommend: notice your thinking, see what emotions are underneath it driving it, and then feel those emotions in your body. Sometimes the emotion is what's most important. Sometimes thoughts are like the messenger, a signpost that says, "Hey over here, I need you over here!" pointing to the emotion. When there's a lot of intense thinking going on, it's usually because we have some emotional need; something inside needs our attention. So think: "What's the emotion? Can I feel that in the body? And now that I feel it in my body, can I just breathe with it in the body?" And then the whole thing might become so much simpler.

I hope the lesson of simplicity came through today. I suggest you try this kind of meditation at home. This is something you can do with thinking. If you're standing in line, rather than wondering about what chocolate you shouldn't buy, you might just notice, "Oh, I'll just look at my thoughts and what's going on here." Let it be seen clearly. Sit on the bench and just listen to it as a friend. Thank you. Tom is here, I'm here, and [unintelligible] is in the back. Next week will be the last week for this five-week series.