Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World? A Series of Articles

Part Three – Viewing Your Thoughts from a Distance

In this series, “Can Meditation Practice Affect How We View Our World?” we’ve discussed how emotions may not be due to what “causes” our reaction. What this means is that when an emotion or thought to arise within our mind, for example a desire for something or an angry thought about something that is said, we catch ourselves and realize that whatever triggered the arising is not its cause. Viewed this way, we can begin to change our mind slowly, becoming less affected by the thoughts and emotions that arise within our mind as being due to something external to ourselves. This concept can be a difficult one to wrap our mind around, mostly because we’re so used to blaming our environment – something “out there” – for what we think and feel. I find this one of the hardest practices to do on a regular basis. How about you?

We’ve also learned that by anchoring our attention to the breath, bringing our mind back to the present moment by using our breath, we can repeatedly return to the present, especially when our mind is blown about by strong emotions or thoughts. This provides us with an antidote to the distraction that can occur when we’re confronted with a mind that has been affected by strong emotions or thoughts. It helps us to return to ourselves, to return to our mind.

Meditation Helps You to View Your Thoughts from a Distance

The title of this post, Viewing Our Thoughts from a Distance, gives us a clue to how to work with our thoughts. Like the clouds in the sky, when viewed from a distance, that is, seeing them as a phenomenon of the mind, we can gain some space from them. If even for a moment we’re able to watch or observe a thought, without getting caught up in it, then we can get some “breathing room” for that thought and let it dissipate.

Some time ago, on a particularly grueling bicycle ride, while preparing myself for the Colorado Triple Bypass, during the last 2 hours of the ride, I experienced intense pain due to a poor selection of a bike seat. Each time that I pedaled (90 times per minute times 60 minutes times two hours = 10,800 revolutions!) I experienced relentless pain on the inside of my pelvic arch (the symphysis pubis).

My only way to deal with this situation was to prevent myself from getting caught up in the thought, “ouch, this hurts!” I had forty miles to ride and there was no way that I was going to make it home if I “meditated” on my pain. It was an unwelcome, put powerful way of putting into practice not allowing my mind to get caught up in thoughts. And it was awesome, both in how hard I struggled, as well as in the brief moments when I was able to keep my mind in check, focusing all of my attention to each peddle stroke and to the glorious landscapes near Boulder.

You’re Used to Taking Your Thoughts as Something Real

To view our thoughts from a distance takes some practice. We’re so used to taking our thoughts as something “real” that to begin with, we need to just watch them and realize that they come and go spontaneously. Left to their own nature, thoughts and emotions are self-limiting, that is – they arise and dissipate just like the clouds in the sky. It’s only due to our grasping after them and creating more thoughts about our thoughts that they persist.

Begin right now, watching your thoughts as you would watch the clouds pass by in the sky. Each time that you become distracted by a thought (or two!) gently bring your attention back to the present using your breath, and then return to watching your thoughts.

To watch your thoughts from a distance, imagine that as each thought rises you’re watching waves rise and fall on the ocean. Imagine yourself at the beach, just watching the waves. When you’re at the beach, you don’t tell each wave to fall back into the ocean, do you? And the ocean doesn’t have to command each wave back into itself; they just come and go, naturally, as the nature of the ocean. In the same way, try watching your thoughts and imagine sitting on the beach, carefree, without any involvement in the waves.

Here is a list of metaphors that are used throughout different contemplative traditions to describe the nature of thoughts and emotions and our relationship to them. See if any of them work for you. If you have other images or ideas that you work with please let me know.

METAPHORS FOR RELATING WITH YOUR THOUGHTS:

• In the book The Joy of Living, author Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche writes, “Just as space isn’t defined by the objects that move through it, awareness isn’t defined by the thoughts, emotions, and so on that it apprehends. Awareness like space, simply is.”[i]
• In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, author Sogyal Rinpoche writes, “So whatever thoughts and emotions arise, allow them to rise and settle, like the waves in the ocean. Whatever you find yourself thinking, let that thought rise and settle, without any constraint. Don’t grasp at it, feed it, or indulge it; don’t cling to it and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor invite them; be like the ocean looking at its own waves, or the sky gazing down on the clouds that pass through it.”[ii]
• There’s another metaphor that can be used which is to view our thoughts like trains passing through a station. The station is not the trains, nor is it particularly pleased or saddened by which trains pass through it. Trains come and go without affecting the station.

I’d like to end this post with a quote from author James Finley in his book, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, where he writes, “As each thought arises, simply be present, open, and awake to the thought as it arises. As the thought endures, simply be present, open, and awake to the thought as it endures. And as the thought passes away, simply remain present, open, and awake to the thought as it passes away.”[iii]

[i] Rinpoche, Yongey Mingyur. The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007, pg. 140.

[ii] Rinpoche, Sogyal. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1992, pg. 92.

[iii] Finley, James. Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God. San Francisco: Harper, 2004, pg. 26.