A lot of people seem to think that meditation is about "stopping thought". That it's, like, a goal to stop thinking.

I think this perspective can be an obstacle to practice. If we approach meditation with the goal of stopping thought, it's easy to experience aversion to thought, to our own mind's natural activity. Resistance. Paradoxically, resistance tends to reinforce the thing we are resisting, reifying it, solidifying it, feeding it on our attention.

My (uneducated, beginner's) understanding of the Dharma is that the goal of the path is not to stop thinking. It's to reduce unnecessary suffering.

Thinking is a cause of a lot of unnecessary suffering. And also part of various self-reinforcing (often transpersonal) dynamics that perpetuate suffering.

Thinking is empty. It's empty in the sense that it has no inherent existence independent of a way of looking, independent from perception.

But, like, my understanding of the Dharma is: This is true about literally everything. Perceptions. Phenomena. Thinking. Memory. Space. Time. The Self. There's nothing special about thinking in this regard.

Resisting thought is a manifestation of aversion, a form of clinging. Aversion is like a negative craving, a craving for the absence or cessation of a phenomenon.

Aversion is one of the classic Five Hindrances that prevent Samadhi.

You don't want to be cultivating aversion!

Cessation of thinking can happen as a result of meditation, but I think it's best to think about it (ha ha) as an interesting side effect of meditation. If it happens, hey, neat. But maybe don't get too excited about it? And maybe don't pursue it as a thing to re-create. Instead keep doing whatever you were doing? Or not doing?

You probably want to avoid cultivating a craving for the experience of the cessation of thought.

The teachers I learned meditation from encourage cultivation of equanimity toward thought. If you're doing the sort of meditation where you have an "object of focus", a thing you're trying to focus on, like the breath or a part of the body or and image or something, cool. Just note the thought, be like "oh. that's thinking." and return to whatever you are focusing on without making a big fuss about it. Make as little fuss as possible.

This worked well for me.

One day, I had an insight about thought. I'm focusing on my breath and counting them. Count one on the inhale, 2 on the exhale, 3 on the next inhale, 4 on the exhale, etc. up to 10. Then start again at 1.

You don't have to count breaths to focus on them, but I've found that it helps me focus and helps the mind calm down a little because it gives it something repetitive and kind of boring to do. It also helps me to notice when I get distracted because I notice that I'm not counting anymore, but instead thinking about something random.

So I'm sitting there meditating and I get distracted from my counting and am thinking about my day or sci fi fantasies or whatever. I notice I'm distracted, so I come back to the breath and the part of me that is still counting. Like, I got distracted on 3 and I come back and I'm on 8. A part of me I wasn't conscious of kept counting while I was away.

Suddenly I realize that the reverse is possible! That I can stay with the counting and the breath and the part of me that does discursive thought, one idea following the next in a sort-of narrative stream of consciousness? I can just let it wander off. I don't need to stop it. Or not stop it. It totally does not matter. I let it wander off.

Later, I learned how to let it wander off without counting.

I let the thinker wander off and think whatever it wants somewhere I'm not conscious of it. Did it eventually settle down and stop thinking? I don't know! Who cares? Maybe it comes back later. Maybe not. Whatever. Doesn't matter.

Sometimes when it comes back, it has something for me.

Today it was the idea "Hey, you should write a blog post about this."

So I did.

Thanks for reading.