“There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought.”
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2)
Our species is wont to believe we are superior to the rest of Creation. This attitude is defended on the basis of our ability to “think.” We are, after all, the creature that reasons. Alas, in truth, we are instead the animal that chooses self-delusion and our reliance on the habit of “thinking” has proven to be our undoing.
Thomas Troward reminds us of the role that the mind plays in creating fear. “We are surrounded by all sorts of circumstances that we do not desire. Yes, you fear them, and in so doing you think them; and in this way you are constantly exercising this Divine prerogative of creation by Thought, only through ignorance you use it in a wrong direction.”[i]
Insight # 56 comes to us from Henepola Gunaratana (b. 1927) the founding abbot of the Bhavana Society. He was born in Sri Lanka and has been a Buddhist monk since age 12.
“There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought. That difference is very subtle. It is primarily a matter of feeling or texture. A thought you are simply aware of with bare attention feels light in texture; there is a sense of distance between that thought and the awareness viewing it. It arises like a bubble, and it passes away without necessarily giving rise to the next thought in that chain. Normal conscious thought is much heavier in texture. It is ponderous, commanding, and compulsive. It sucks you in and grabs control of consciousness. By its very nature it is obsessional, and it leads straight to the next thought in the chain, with apparently no gap between them.”[ii]
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Additional Reading:
- Thinking, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
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[i] Troward, Thomas. Collected Essays of Thomas Troward. Marina Del Rey, CA: De Vorss and Company, 1921, p. 27.
[ii] Gunaratana, Henepola. Mindfulness in Plain English. Boston: Wisdom Publications. 1991, p. 76.
