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It isn't just thoughts...
DairyLama
Veteran Veteran
We tend to focus a lot on thoughts, but what about visual thinking?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking
Is visual thinking conceptual? How can we use it in our practice?
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I learn better through pictorial instruction than written... when I was studying Shiatsu, the way I correlated the different Major and Associated organs (Yin & Yang components) with the 5 Elements (or Transformations, as we called them) was to draw pictures of the associations. I drew the pictures in the relevant associated colour and incorporated imagery of the moods, and other factors making up the perticular whole... It worked for me....
But I'm not sure that's what you're asking.... Because if anyone is speaking a guided meditation to me, it's difficult to 'hold' a particular image... it keeps changing itself, modyfying subtly form the original conjured-up image...
to steal a phrase...
"I dunno".....
This is the traditional format ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala
... however ... the pictorial, the auditory, life itself can be used as an associative symbolic remembering ...
For example:
and so on. We are in a Pure Land of Pictorial Symbols ...
Some Buddhists do visualisation practices, personally they aren't my cup of tea though.
I was reflecting how as Buddhists we sometimes see thoughts as bogeymen, like they create duality and distance us from direct experience, but visual thinking seems to get a free pass?
Well, I don't know that it gets a free pass. How did you come to that conclusion (given that such a minority of the population thinks that way...)?
(Damn! Spell-checker STILL not working any more!!
)
Tibetans (Buddhists) use visualisations in Tantra practice.
I think the idea behind it is that if you can believe yourself to be a deity and really believe, it shows how the ego is made up and how it is transient.
This was from a book by geshe Sonething. Path of compassion?
Interesting book
I get your question. I read Temple Grandin's book when it first came out (Thinking in Pictures) - she was autistic, and to her it's just a different way of thinking. The problem comes when people argue about thinking being some sort of negative thing - or 'how' one thinks. I visit a forum regularly where this kind of thing happens all the time, and it's just tedious when they get caught up in the intellectual arguments and that is precisely what the Buddha warned against.
I think visual thinking is what helps us conceptualize when words can only allude to meaning.
To give or understand most analogies, I think one would need to be able to visualize thought to a degree.
It rings a familial bell to the flower sermon as well.
Visual thinking......To develop this type of thinking skill, one would think it would depend on how good one's imagination is.... Vivid imagination comes to mind
I tried an instruction from a teacher where they told us to try and visualise a generic mental image of the "emptiness" of the "I" but I could just never do it. Find it much easier focusing on the feeling.
The methodology of Buddhist tantric practice that I was taught uses a very strong component of visualisation. Combined with auditory, kinesthetic (mudra/touch) and conjuring the attribute of a archetyoal quality or 'deity' : compassion, wisdom, action, healing etc
Yes, I don't see thinking as anything "bad", except when we take it too seriously. I wonder if visual thinking is the foundation for thought thinking?
Erm, 'thought thinking'? After I thought for a moment, I wondered if you were being funny.
Yes, it sounds odd, but pure visual thinking doesn't involve thoughts. I guess for most of us it's a mixture, and it's not easy to separate them out. The distinction is perhaps clearer when the mind calms down in meditation, there is still activity even when thoughts have ceased.
^^^ @SpinyNorman this sounds like 'right concentration' from the infamous 8 fold origami? It would explain some of the visualisation techniques. For example in Shingon Buddhism focus on elemental shapes in pictorial form or Ajikan character meditation ...
A as in Apple.
We think in symbols and images don't we?
Is there any other kind?
I think in words....
I think in words mostly, but there are images in there too, sort of lower down? Hard to describe.
I think about thinking (might make it a hobby)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_thought
When I'm trying to reason or analyze I think in words mostly but there is a kind of fluid montage going along with it. Sometimes it's subtle and others not so much.
When I'm remembering something or visualizing possibilities, then it's mostly visual thinking. Thinking in words kind of ruins the flow here, no?
I don't think "Ah yes, I remember when Joe fell down that hill", Joe just falls down the hill.
Indeed. I used to be in the building trade and there was a lot of visual thinking involved.
It would start with an image of the finished product, then there would be a succession of images to describe the process necessary, rather like time-lapse photography. I imagine it's the same for a lot of practical and creative activities.
Not me! I think in concepts. My thoughts are largely made up of maps and images flavored with colors and weights.
Words just get in the way, it seems, a lot of the time.
A lot of writing is just lawyers' spiel, and I find it nearly impossible to decipher. Take, for instance the next two paragraphs about growth hormones in milk, published by the Organic Valley Co-op. The first paragraph is very clear to me, but the meaning of the phrase I've stricken out in the second paragraph totally eludes me. Are they referring to the marketers of hormone-free or hormone-laden milk? My point is, as I learned in high school English, when you're writing you have to think about the little old lady who needs precise directions (or help) to get to the little yarn shop across two streets and up some other meandering ways. AND Visualization plays a key role in all of this.
What do milk and milk product labels need to say about not using rBST?
Labels must be truthful and not misleading. To avoid misleading consumers, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance from February 1994 suggests a label statement such as: “from cows not treated with rbST” or other truthful description.
As recently as August 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and FDA rejected a request for new restrictions on rBST marketing claims at the federal level. The FTC stated “food companies may inform consumers in advertising, as in labeling, that they do not use rBST.”
source: http://www.organicvalley.coop/why-organic/synthetic-hormones/about-rbgh/
We think in both words and images, although we each 'favor' one or the other. Sometimes some of us 'favor' words and at other times, the same some favor images. Perhaps we all go through that, I really say.
As for @Nirvana's confusion with the legal (bureaucratic) mumbo jumbo, of course, it is deliberately done. Your example, in plainer English, "Someone tried to make it easier for the plain folks on this rBST stuff, but they lost". Plain English is better for us "consumers", but the lawyers and bureaucrats don't like it - Obfuscation (vagueness) is the way they keep employed.
Deliberate obfuscation
Enough! Where's my cocoa?
Peace to all
Yes, it isn't just thoughts. Anyone here old enough to have lived before the era of iPhones should have no trouble understanding this.
Interesting to note that a lot of ancient languages are based on pictograms, ideograms and symbols, so there is a close relationship between images, words and concepts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram