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A primer on thought for newbies
RichardH
Veteran
The content of this post is not news to experienced practitioners, but the subject came up recently with some new (offline) practitioners who seemed confused about what can be a confusing topic. This little primer may be a useful to folks who are new to meditation. This is just one way of looking at practicing with thought, and not some claim to gospel on the matter.
For practice sake, thought can be seen to have two dimensions, a real dimension and an unreal dimension. The real dimension is a simple sense phenomena. For example a thought steals attention from the ambient sounds of our environment to varying degrees. This real dimension of thought is dependently arising and empty of inherent existence, just like dogs and people and chairs. The other dimension of thought is unreal, this unreal dimension is the thought's symbolic representation of the real world, the thought's symbolic content. It can be understood as being like a picture on a post card. The paper and ink of the card is real, but the symbolic representation on the card is not real. These symbolic representations of thought do not have a true one to one correspondence with the real world. I can be sitting here in a chair and have the thought “the chair is here”, and at that moment there is a functional fit, there is a one to one correspondence between the symbolic content of the thought, and the chair under my bum. However, if I go to visit a friend and park my car on the street, I may think while I am inside, “The car is parked on the street” assuming a one to one correspondence , but this may not be true. I might come outside and find the car has been towed . This is because the symbol representations of thought diverge from the real world exponentially as we move outward in space and time, somewhat like a weather model. Now consider taking these symbolic pictures of the world as the real world. This is the situation we find ourselves in without practice, literally living our life in a projected, often paranoid dream. IMHO, noticing absorption in the symbolic content of thought, and recognizing their simple sense reality, is the key to entering practice. Without this there is no moving from the theory of Dharma to the realization of Dharma.
For practice sake, thought can be seen to have two dimensions, a real dimension and an unreal dimension. The real dimension is a simple sense phenomena. For example a thought steals attention from the ambient sounds of our environment to varying degrees. This real dimension of thought is dependently arising and empty of inherent existence, just like dogs and people and chairs. The other dimension of thought is unreal, this unreal dimension is the thought's symbolic representation of the real world, the thought's symbolic content. It can be understood as being like a picture on a post card. The paper and ink of the card is real, but the symbolic representation on the card is not real. These symbolic representations of thought do not have a true one to one correspondence with the real world. I can be sitting here in a chair and have the thought “the chair is here”, and at that moment there is a functional fit, there is a one to one correspondence between the symbolic content of the thought, and the chair under my bum. However, if I go to visit a friend and park my car on the street, I may think while I am inside, “The car is parked on the street” assuming a one to one correspondence , but this may not be true. I might come outside and find the car has been towed . This is because the symbol representations of thought diverge from the real world exponentially as we move outward in space and time, somewhat like a weather model. Now consider taking these symbolic pictures of the world as the real world. This is the situation we find ourselves in without practice, literally living our life in a projected, often paranoid dream. IMHO, noticing absorption in the symbolic content of thought, and recognizing their simple sense reality, is the key to entering practice. Without this there is no moving from the theory of Dharma to the realization of Dharma.
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Comments
And then I was like, "Who just said, 'Huh? Oh wow!'? Whose controling my thoughts? Nobody?"
Funny thing, the sense of self survived all that. Tough little bugger I guess.