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Stop thinking!
betaboy
Veteran
Most people misunderstand this message to mean that they should suppress thoughts. Not possible, not even desirable.
So what does this mean? It simply means every time there is a problem, thoughts are responsible in some way. So it is better to reject them. That's the meaning. The rejection doesn't become a full-time activity in itself.
This is very important for beginners to understand, or they'll spend hours during meditation practice trying to do the impossible (and feeling frustrated as a result).
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Comments
Don't reject either. Notice and let go. Rejection of thoughts is an act of judgment and "aversion".
Sorry betaboy thats a strawman*...unless you can give a link to any Buddhist teacher telling anyone to stop thinking..
They ALL say the opposite..dont try to stop thinking.
Instead develop awareness of the thinking process and of individual thoughts as they come and go.
"Stop Thinking"
Perhaps you ( @betaboy ) mean stop overthinking? Rejecting any thoughts, especially for beginners like myself, is very counter-productive to understanding Buddhism, or, in a more general sense, anything for that matter.
Could you elaborate on what you mean? I'm not sure I understand.
The more we try and stop or reject thoughts, the more they stick around. For example if I said you can think about anything but a white polar bear then you immediately think of a while polar bear. If we tell the brain not to think of something, it has to check to see if we are thinking of it or not and so it keeps coming back.
It's learning how to watch thoughts come and go without attaching to them thats more helpful in the long run. Thoughts are a bit like being at a train station watching trains come and go, we can just watch the trains, we do not have to get on them all
Stop thinking = dead doesn't it?
One would think...
What happens as relaxed concentration becomes absorption, is that thoughts slow right down..and become.............fewer.
But that is an effect. Not a aim.
I would suggest that the point of concentrated meditation is to sharpen the mind like a knife, the best knife fit for work is a sharp one, similarly the best mind fit for work is a sharp one
Lets see...1) define 'mind' in this context. @ThailandTom
2) How is relaxed concentration 'sharpening ' ?
3) How is meditation 'work ' ?
LOL
http://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/essay/thinking/d/doc1109.html
Another!
"Stop thinking" is a fairly common zen teaching. The question now is: What does "stop thinking" actually mean? It really does not mean what people ordinarily think it means! It has a much deeper meaning than that.
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Those of you who dont understand what letting go is. Its just waiting a few seconds while the thought/feeling arises, than youll forget about it after those few seconds. You have to outlast the feeling than it will realize "I guess I cant bother him with this one, oh well im outta here".
Personally, I cannot go into why I think this opinion is wrong, I do not have the energy,
For meditation, as I once heard it explained to me, treat thoughts like guests in your house, but you don't come to meet them, greet them, serve them tea, or anything at all. Eventually they will leave.
Yea I have heard this one before, if you have a thought just make a mental note of when it enters, let it do what it does, obverse, and let ot go whenever it goes. be the tree that sways in the breeze rather than the tree leaning in against the wind. Everyone gets 'bad' meditation sessions from time to time, you just need to let them be and realise your fame of mind in that particular moment. There seems to be a very thin line between wanting to grasp as liberation and actually liberating oneself, without wanting to...
I don't reject thoughts. There is no point, the more you reject them the more they come. If you simply wait for them to go away, that is when you get caught in following the thoughts and turn them into a big story web.
2 different things work for me.
First, (and this works in or out of meditation) when a thought arises, I just notice it is there, more like a "Hey there, thought" and then when I breathe out, I let it dissolve into space.
Second, when a thought arises, I simply bookmark it as "thinking" and then check my posture and go back to my breath. Most of the time this works. When it doesn't is when I go back to the first option.
Sometimes I catch myself in a lengthy story telling session, and it's actually pretty funny to see that happen, to watch your brain do those kinds of crazy things. Then I put my ego in the corner or tell it to sit down and be quiet. That works as well.
I also heard to use "mindfulness of breath" and the "meditation object" as a leash for our monkey mind. We shouldn't worry about it as long as the leash is there.
Ajahn Chah once said - 'meditation can be like being the buffalo farmer. the buffalo are you breath, the focus of your time. If they roam away then let them, but note it. They WILL ALWAYS RETURN to their watering hole which is your concentration on your breath, just make a note and return.' being fully and totally aware of one inhalation and exhalation is quite a fete
ONE WITH THE SKY
~Longchenpa
"In the absence of an objective field, everything equalized,
No discernable point of reference, no object and no order, can exist;
The ground collapses, the path collapses and the goal collapses,
And thoughts of good or bad, deviation and error, are inconceivable;
...
"Committed to equalization, bound in the now, the universe resolved,
Samsara and nirvana have reverted to ubiquitous spaciousness.
The questions, 'What is it?' 'How is it?' lie unanswered.
'What can I do?' 'Who am I?' likewise, unanswerable!
What can we do when all our certainties have vanished?
We can only laugh outright at the absurdity of it.
...
"The entire galaxy of delusory constructs, inner and outer, collapses
And linear time melts in the now, self-dissolving, fading into space;
Days and dates fade away; months, years and eons dissolve;
The one and the many vanished, sacred and profane both clarified;
The delusive ground of samsara and nirvana clarified in its innate spaciousness.
...
"Even 'spaciousness', as an intellectually contrived entity, dissolves.
Whatever we have practiced, however we strive, is useless now,
And intellectual gall exhausted, what a great marvel is the sky—
The pathless vagrant is one with the sky!"
.....
"Within the one sole sphere without edges or corners
The deluded mind holds ideas of unity and differentiation;
Within the self-sprung awareness in the now without causes or conditions,
What holds to the samsaric process is a luminous obstructing spirit;
Within unlimited, nonspatial, spontaneity,
Attachment to a determinate view is the devil of conceit;
Within noncrystallizing emptiness free of substance and attribute
Perverse intellect infers presence or absence, appearance or emptiness:
Abandon the cage of determinacy and bias
And know the nonspatial spontaneity that is like the sky!"
..
~"Spaciousness: The Radical. Dzogchen of the Vajra-Heart. Longchenpa’s Precious Treasury of the Dharmadhatu." Translation by Keith Dowman.
This is very similar to how I experience 'not reacting' immediately when a thought or feeling arises.
I just watch it rise up, know what it is, and 'do nothing'. It then declines and disintegrates and disappears. Usually, something ELSE has arisen in the meantime so unless I'm meditating, I don't see the cessation of the thought or emotion. It's like the arising has a brief lifespan if you leave it alone. If you react with aversion, it seems to give it 'energy' thus prolonging it's lifespan. If you clutch onto it and ride it like a pony, well, clearly you've energized it and extended it's lifespan.
Jill Bolte Taylor (My Stroke of Insight, she's on youtube TEDtalks) is a brain anatomist who had a stroke and witnessed her own stroke, the damage, and the recovery from a scientists point of view. One excellent bit of advice I got from her is about anger; when anger arises, there is a neurohormone storm. This 'storm' is made up of chemicals, and these chemicals basically stay intact and effective for ONLY about 90 seconds.
Say someone gets in your face and shouts angrily, accusing you. Immediately, your brain does its THING, squirts of this and that neurohormone and chemical come flying out and bathe your neurons so now you too are defensively angry.
If you simply sit there and refuse to react in any way (and that means thought proliferation inside your head), you can watch the second hand of your watch and find that at approximately 90 seconds post asshole-attack, you no long feel the zizzing adrenaline in your body and the quiet inside is beginning to return.
No doubt your persecutor is now ogling you with a very perplexed and HOPEFULLY embarrassed facial expression
or has walked away, I mean really, 90 seconds in acute conflict is a LOOOOONG time to watch a Buddhist taking great interest in the arising, peaking, declining and cessation of their own anger 
Great insight and use of the teachings, @Heyimacrab.
You can't stop thinking. They arise from prior causes and conditions. The best that you can do is to create conditions for them to not overpower the mind.
One of the way to do this is to notice a space or gap between thoughts and learn to stay with those silent moments instead of allowing the thoughts to grab all the attention.
In other words - Mind the gap.