What Is Prior to Intention
Lo que es previo a la intención
A student asks about the relationship between attention, intention, and awareness, leading to a discussion about the nature of thought, the practice of observing the mind, and the "I am" that has no content.
What Is Prior to Intention
A student asks about the relationship between attention, intention, and awareness, leading to a discussion about the nature of thought, the practice of observing the mind, and the "I am" that has no content.
I was thinking through the meditation process. When she was putting her attention on her feet, wasn't there an intention prior to that attention? But I immediately realized it's not just that, because something else could have caught our attention without our intention to do so. And if we take a step back, it's actually being aware of the attention or the intention. So probably awareness is prior to both. Is that right?
Yes. And there's something prior to the intention as well, because the intention is always prompted by something. There's always something prior in time. This connects to what you brought up in a previous group about dependent origination, which is a Buddhist concept. For example, if I say "direct your attention to your feet" and then you have the intention of bringing your attention to your feet, that intention was caused by my prompting. In time, nothing comes out of itself. The intention isn't the source, because it was a response to a prompting.
But what I'm pointing to is not just what is prior in time. I'm pointing to what is prior in the present moment. That which is prior to attention is prior to intention. If you name what it is, it's not that. There are words for it, but the words can make it into a thing, and it's not a thing. You could say "emptiness." You could say that which is prior is empty. But all descriptions are going to fail, because I could say "that which doesn't move," but actually there isn't anything that doesn't move.
Because there's nothing, there is nothing after all, right?
There is nothing, and there is everything, and there is something, simultaneously.
Watching thought without adding to it
Can I ask about what you described earlier about looking at thought? When a thought appears, we let it be. Of course, we try not to be engaged in the discussion about it. But when noticing it, I find that there's an identification happening. For example, when I watch a thought pass by, I find myself saying "judgment," or noticing that there's a narrative, or that I was thinking about the past. Even if I try not to say the word, I'm still aware that a narrative mode is happening. My question is: how should I watch it without that additional description, which can actually be quite noisy?
So the disruption you're calling out is the naming of what is happening. The way you can do what you're asking is by seeing that the naming is just more thought.
Yes, I realize that, but I just can't stop it.
You're creating a trap for yourself. If you want to not care about thought and you also want thought to stop, which one is it?
I know I can't stop thought. But it's my intention not to add to it, not to add more elements to the whole thing.
The trap of splitting thought in two
Perhaps you're splitting thought into two types: "This is a happening" and "This is one that I'm creating. I want to stop the one I'm creating and let the other one happen." But actually, the one you think you're creating is just more thought happening. It's just the identification with a thought that says, "This is the one I'm in control of. I want to stop doing the one I'm in control of." But if you're in control of it, then stop doing it. And if you're not, let it happen. It's just more thought. There's a trap in the idea that that type of thought is in your control. The you that's controlling that thought is also a thought.
The noting practice
Just like we can train attention to a certain degree, by watching our thoughts and including adding a label or description, can that part also be trained such that we ultimately drop the labeling? Or does labeling only reduce to a certain degree?
Labeling what is happening can be a valid practice, but it's quite technical and has to be quite specific. I recommend that when you do the labeling, you use just one label, which is "thought." Even the label "thought" is thought. Just see it: thought, thought, thought. And then you can have labels for what is not thought. Labeling the table is going to be a thought, but it's a tool of the mind. So: you notice thought, you label it "thought," and then what do you do? You label something that's not thought. Sound. Bird. Breath. Foot.
These are very powerful practices from the Southeast Asian branch of Buddhism. The noting practice is extremely powerful, but it has to be done with great intensity. You could do it in a very focused period, five or ten minutes, but it has to be really sharp, really focused. It's like: "thought," then name something that's not thought, then "thought" again when you see thought, then name something that's not thought.
Two kinds of practice
But the process you were describing to her earlier is definitely not that. It's just to observe, just to be a passive observer of the thoughts, right?
I was talking about two kinds of practice. The first is to have the body and mind, and especially the mind, develop the ability to withdraw from thinking: to create a recognition of thinking and bring attention to something that's not thinking, such as sensation, sight, or sound. You bring awareness out of the conceptual imagination.
That first kind of practice is often a requirement for going any further. If we can't do that, it's hard to do any other practice. That's why sitting practice, vipassana, traditional mindfulness, attention on the breath are all very valuable. But they're only valuable in the sense that we are building strength so that we can then go up the mountain. The strength isn't the objective; the objective is to go up the mountain.
Letting thought take you consciously
Then there's a second type of practice, which is to be able to let mind happen, see it, and understand it more deeply. For that, we need to allow mind to do what it does. If we're always pushing away from thought and into sensation, we don't develop the ability to look at the structure and the content of thought, to see how thought is operating.
That's what I gave a little suggestion of in the meditation: if thought is taking you, let it, and savor it. It's a very subtle pointing, but it's basically saying: recognize that you're going into thought and don't try to stop it. Instead of pushing it away and going into sensation, which is a common practice, let it happen. Consciously, with awareness, with wakefulness, let thought take you. But keep some sense of "I'm aware that I am going into thought."
From that place, it's very different from fully collapsing and being immersed and lost in thought. If you notice thought is taking you, let it take you and start to see what it's doing. Start to see why it's appealing, why it's so addictive. The more you see how it's operating, the more you can decide not to do that. You will have the ability to simply decide not to do that when you see fully how it's functioning.
Ultimately, thought doesn't take us. We do that. There's a jumping into thought, and there's a letting thought take you that happens in sleep while we're awake: daydreaming, identification. And there's a letting thought take you in an awake sense, where you are noticing it's thought and allowing all of its tricks and magic to happen. Because ultimately, it's a trick we play on ourselves, and we are doing it for a good reason.
And after a while, we probably will be able to catch our thoughts before they happen.
Let me adjust your words a little to make the statement true. You will be able to catch the identification before it happens. The thought isn't the problem. My teacher used to say: the heart pumps blood, the mind pumps thoughts. The only way to stop thought is to not have a mind, and I don't recommend that. The problem isn't having thoughts; it's believing them.
The one thought that rules them all
And like the Lord of the Rings, there's one thought that rules them all. It's the thought "I am," and then something after that. The knowing of the "I" as something is the thought that rules them all. One of the things we want to get to is to recognize the "I am" that has no content. When "I am" is just "I am," it has no content. It's not a body. It's not a mind. It's not experiential.
I think you had the sixth sense that I was about to ask you that question. "I am that I am." So is that about something beyond conception, beyond living the concept? Not just the concept, but really knowing it, sensing it, feeling it? And you're saying it's beyond experience?
Beingness, consciousness, knowing
It has qualities. I often use the word "beingness" as a way to point at it. You could also say "consciousness," but for some reason I personally find that "consciousness" can still create a sense of an object, as though there's this subtle thing that is consciousness. That's very personal in the sense that "consciousness" might be the right word for somebody, and "beingness" the wrong one. These are just words.
I also say "knowing." I like a definition of consciousness by Francis Lucille. He says: "The reality that is hearing these words right now." So it's the reality, that which is real. In Sanskrit, they have a different sense of reality and illusion compared to the West, philosophically. The difference is that illusion is that which comes and goes, and reality is that which doesn't.
Why did you say that it's not experience? So many teachers, when they mention the knowing, always talk about direct experience.
The zero experience
It's semantic, because I could also use the phrase "the experience of it." What I'm referring to specifically is phenomenological experience. By that I mean anything that has content. Thoughts, sensations, perceptions are all content.
I'm talking about what is prior to content, or what knows content. What knows content cannot be content. What is prior to content cannot depend on content. And that can be known directly. That can be experienced directly. Osho called it the "zero experience": the experience without experience. You have to juggle words to point to it. You could get very technical and speak about phenomena and the noumenal, go into philosophy, and that can be very valuable depending on the person. But to say it more simply: it's the experience without content, the zero experience, the experience without experience. It can be known directly, and ultimately it has to be known directly.
All of this, in a sense, is meant to slowly debunk what appears to be real but is not, so that you're left with what is real. And that will happen naturally.