The Practice of Tasting Thought
La Práctica de Saborear el Pensamiento
A student asks about the tension between redirecting attention away from thought and learning to stay with thought, and wonders how one knows when the work is "done."
The Practice of Tasting Thought
A student asks about the tension between redirecting attention away from thought and learning to stay with thought, and wonders how one knows when the work is "done."
I wanted to ask about a nuance you mentioned in the meditation. I've been listening to the recorded meditations between our sessions, and the way I had been interpreting the practice of noticing thoughts was: when thoughts come in, contemplate how they are often a distraction we choose to engage in, perhaps to avoid something that's happening now. So if I notice I'm in thought, it's not that it's bad, but I redirect back to sensation and explore there.
In today's meditation, though, I heard another layer more clearly. I had been making a kind of practice out of it: if I'm in thought, come back to sensation. And I've been doing that in my daily life, not just during meditation. In some way, I think I was believing that if I got better at catching thoughts, I would arrive somewhere different, that I'd be more open energetically. On the other hand, I've also been exploring whether thought itself is still part of this unknowable presence.
What do you mean by that?
Whether thought is still part of it, part of this presence, if you use that word.
The many forms of practice
The thing with this work is that there are a million forms, a million practices, and some of them (not all) are useful to some degree and in some way. I am always going back and forth to meet somebody where they are, and if it's a meditation with a group, it's just going to be whatever is moving. I can understand how that can be very confusing, because there can be a lot of contradiction.
What you're presenting now is a kind of paradox: if the work is always to move away from thought into sensation, that's going to become a pattern that is limiting. There is only a half truth in that. It is a very valid and valuable practice, especially at first.
The exploration in today's meditation was the tasting of thought. That points to not needing to move away from thought into sensation. It goes a bit deeper, but you can't start there. It is very hard for somebody who barely notices the difference between thought and reality, or who doesn't yet recognize thought as thought.
Recognizing thought as thought
The practice you are describing is very valuable for starting to recognize more and more the nature of thought, or to recognize something as a thought. For most people, when you say "the future," it's reality. They treat it as something real rather than something imagined. When I call the future imagined, I'm pointing to the fact that it's an aspect of mind, an aspect of thought. Whatever you can say about the future now is what you are able to imagine by predicting from what you've learned from experience. All of that is going to be a construct of thought. Most people will debate that.
But the more you recognize the nature of thought, the more it becomes clear: yes, that's all the future is, imagination. The nature of imagination is images, which are thoughts. Sounds I can imagine from conversations I might have tomorrow, which are thoughts. Things I might feel, which are thoughts, because they are imagined now. I can have a thought, and that thought can produce some emotion or feeling right now, so in a sense that emotion is not imagined. But anything I can see of the future is imagined.
At first, it is very important to start distinguishing what of what's happening now is thought. I would say a lot more than what people normally think are thoughts are actually thoughts, and that can go really deep. You could just take that single point: notice what is a thought to be a thought. What you think is real, notice that it is actually thought. That recognition could go very deep. But you would usually need some guidance, because it's hard to see certain things that just seem real and recognize them as thought.
From anchoring to turning around
The practice you're describing, of being pulled into thought and then going into sensation, starts to create that discernment, that separation from engaging with thought as something real. We get pulled into thought because something of it starts to seem more real than just thought. Going into sensation, using it as an anchor (the breath, the skin, perception), helps distinguish and recognize thought as thought.
But at some point, we can start exploring a kind of turning around where we don't need to pull away from thought. You can just be with a stream of thought, knowing of it as thought. Then you can explore allowing the stream of thought and seeing more deeply its nature, the mechanisms of it. You start to recognize: whenever this kind of thing happens, I have this kind of thought activating, and it's pulling me in this way. You can start feeling into the energetics of that.
As you say, thought is often helping us not be in touch with something happening now. It is a valid practice to ask: what is the sensation or feeling happening now that thought is helping me manage? But at some point there is value in the turning around, in not pushing thought away. However, if we go back into thought by making it real, that is not what I'm talking about. The tasting of thought that I'm pointing to is recognizing it as thought and then exploring the experience of it.
I understand the distinction in my experience. This leads to my second question. I feel like I'm straddling that paradox where the practice of redirecting is useful, and at the same time there are moments for noticing that the thought came from nowhere and is going nowhere, for opening up to any resistance and tasting the nature of it.
So the other question I came with is: at what point do you know when you're done? Because on the one hand, I can taste the "tastiness," and tastiness tastes better than imagination. I'm seeing that and going deeper into it. But at the same time, the way my mind interprets glimpses is that they come out of nowhere and feel energetically different. Now, that's my mind's interpretation in this moment, and I try to question it. You've shared before, "What about the glimpse is still present now?" I guess there still seems to be a paradox: the tastiness is always there, and yet there is something that shifts, or maybe it's not a time-bound thing, but my mind makes it one. It's like past a point of no return.
When you know the work is done
You're asking: when do you know you're done? Do you mean in a certain part of this process, or more generally?
A sign that the work is done is that it is going on its own, that there isn't anything you need to be doing. There is ease no matter what. Even if life circumstances are challenging, there's a certain deep sense of ease. That's a sign. Glimpses are no longer important or even relevant, because in a sense you're always in a kind of timeless glimpse, which is this tasting.
When everything that's happening is being tasted and savored, in the sense that there isn't a negative tone at the heart of it, then nothing really needs to be done. The savoring is happening on its own, because you've recognized that all there is, is what is happening, and all of it can be savored. You don't need to have this in these words; these are just my words.
All glimpses do is show, reveal, deeper truth of what is. But once that truth is seen, what is, is always that. It is always true. The glimpse becomes irrelevant. There doesn't need to be a reconfirmation of something that was already seen to be true.
What I am cannot be threatened
For example, you could say that everything can be savored. Those are words pointing to a recognition. The recognition could be put as: what I am is not threatened by what is.
As a whole process, you could arrive at that through self-inquiry. "What am I? Who am I? Where am I?" You could explore that and recognize that what you are is not threatened, cannot be threatened, because you glimpse your true nature. In practice, the experience is that whatever is happening is welcome. It's not just welcome; it's savored, because nothing threatens what I am.
Buddhism goes about it in a different way. Self-inquiry is more of a nonduality practice, but Buddhism approaches it through seeing the nature of self to be empty. It is just different words. What I am cannot be threatened, because there is nothing that I can say I am. There isn't something that I am that can be threatened. I have to be something in order for it to be threatened. Because what I am is empty, unknowable, unknown, it cannot be threatened. Therefore, I am free to taste and savor whatever is happening. I am free to listen to the deepest callings and explore that in this life freely, to savor it without any attachment to the outcome, because it doesn't matter.
I have preferences for the outcome to be better rather than worse, and that's playful, it's fun. But in that process there's a shedding of the mechanisms of resisting, which you could call identification. Identification is just saying no to what is in some form. And the only way you can do that is by having thoughts about what is and making those thoughts real, having them not be just thoughts.
Thank you. I feel quite blissed out right now, so the questions don't really seem to matter. I will explore.
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The pivot between labeling and direct experience
I think I understand the theory, but there's this one little, almost imperceptible pivot, which is actually a huge pivot. I've been looking for the direct experience, instead of noticing the labeling. That's fascinating.
The direct experience is always present. Having thoughts that label is not the problem. The problem is when the labeling becomes the real object. When you hear the sound of a bird, for instance, the central experience becomes the imagined "bird," and the sound itself is over there, secondary.
All you need to recognize is that there are two aspects. There's the texture of sound, and then there's the imagination of "bird." The same applies to sensations. There's the texture of sensation, the tingling, and then there's the image: "feet," "toes." This discernment between perception and thought, between sensation and thought, is what develops over time.
It makes me wonder why this has tripped me up for so long. That's what comes up: it's fascinating. Anyway, this is a new experience for me.
There's something that makes me want to cry, something about talking about these things. I feel so alienated, so cold and foreign, like I don't belong, like I can't go there. I'm not made like that. I've been listening to these dialogues and not all of them are like that; many of them have me sitting at the edge of my seat. But I have such a strong reaction to the ones where it's like, "Just get it, just get it." And now it's shifting. For me, I would say: just embrace that experience. It has a whole different texture to it.
I don't have to go on. But it hit me. I'm really glad I spoke up, because I wanted to explore both the topic and my reaction to this forum personally.
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Being with what is difficult
There's the act itself, and then the aftermath. If I don't do the thing, I'm hit with this reality check: "I just don't have it in me. I don't have what it takes." It's almost like an identity I put on myself.
What I found useful in the meditation was what you were describing about knowing the experience to be what it is and relating to it in a different way. I'm able to feel into the pain and all the thoughts and turmoil of the whole thing and allow it to exist without putting a label on it, without coloring it. Or even though it's already colored, I'm experiencing it in a new way that's really hard to articulate.
You're putting it well. Even if there is a label, even if what's appearing is self-criticism, all of that too can be seen. What matters is that you see it for what it is, which is what you're describing. "This is a label. This is an identification." And that is the doorway to seeing things for what they are.
It was a very sensitive and intimate experience to be with the difficult labels, to be with the difficult fears and doubts. I was trying to open up to all these different sensations: "What does this say about you?" I was trying to melt into that rather than try to control the fact that it was happening.
Melt into it, and recognize it for what it is. What is sensation, perception, thought, emotion, rather than trying to change what is. Recognize: this is sensation, and here is the intimate direct experience of it. This is thought. This is a sense of contraction. This is a sense of resistance, the taste of resistance, the taste of self-criticism. Recognize those thoughts as imagination. This is mind stuff. It's not true. It's not reality. It's mind. It's thought.
Allowing the unknown
At the start, I didn't know how to relate to the meditation. I was just floating around in my body, and for me it's important to have an anchor, so the breath was very useful. But then, what you said about letting whatever is happening take you where it needs to go, I felt that was very true with my own fears. Letting myself experience the pure horror of the experience shifted it into being something I could allow to be there.
And that allowing invites a tasting of love. In a sense, it's being able to love the horror. Not in the sense of wanting it to be what it is, but in the wisdom that it's worse to reject it, and that the doorway is in the allowing.
I'm also a bit worried that I won't be as gentle or as allowing after this session, for example. It's a very sensitive thing.
I understand. It's delicate.
And I'm still afraid, I guess.
And then, what's the direct, intimate experience of that, right now? There are thoughts, there are worries, thoughts about the future, thoughts about things being a certain way that you'd rather they not be, negative consequences. Those are all thoughts, which create emotions we call fear, which you're experiencing in some form.
Following what is real
But there are things in my life I want to confront, things I want to do. And it just feels like such a powerful force, the avoidance.
The avoidance, you mean?
Yes. I want the thing so badly, and it has so much else mixed in with it. The avoidance just doesn't want me to, or doesn't even believe I could go there. It's like not seeing what's on the other side of the wall.
And you cannot know. Part of the beauty is that everything is always mysterious and surprising and new. Even when things appear to repeat, nothing really ever repeats.
You're touching upon something important. There's a life force, a humanity, a human aspect that has its own value: to live fully. You called it a powerful force of wanting, and I am fully in favor of that. This work in no sense goes against it, at least not in the way I know it. In fact, it frees you to live fully from the deeper life force.
There's a true, deep life force that is fully alive and in line with wakefulness. And then there's the wanting and desiring that's problematic, which comes from fear. It comes from the mechanisms we use to avoid what we really want. Those are, in a sense, two forces pulling in opposite directions.
What is it that I really want?
That's an exploration, a deeper and deeper unfolding. It clarifies the more you are able to see through illusions, which are tempting. The temptation to keep an illusion as something real is the avoidance.
To make it more practical: imagine you want to call a friend. There's a desire for connection. What you really want is to connect with this person. But now you can imagine all the ways the attempt could go wrong, all forms of rejection, all forms of it not going well, of feeling you did something wrong, of feeling shame, all kinds of negative outcomes.
Because the mind activates fear and all of these possibilities, there's going to be a temptation toward something else, something you want that is not the connection. So there's the wanting of the connection, which (let's assume hypothetically) is the deeper want in that moment. And then there's going to be something else: "All I really want is to watch something, or to go to sleep." But if you taste and look deeply, more and more you'll start to recognize the flavor of something that's more real and the flavor of something that's fear-based.
You're saying it's always worth following, the thing that's more real?
Yes. It's freer. It's more loving. It's more beautiful.
Some people are very good at just facing things head-on.
And that's a good way to start classifying yourself as not in that camp, so why should you bother? You're not made for it. That's not for you. That's the "go to sleep" direction.
Identity as avoidance
I guess that's where I'm stuck. For a long time, my identity has been this avoidant one.
That's what identity is. All the work on identification is exactly that. That's what it is for everybody: a form of avoidance, and also, as you said, putting oneself in categories. You categorize yourself as the person who is not able to go left, and what you really want to do is go left. So then you create a life of going right, which is suffering. At the heart of it is: "I know what I am, and it's the one who goes right and doesn't go left." That creates a sense of security, a sense of control, but at its source is suffering, and its motive is avoidance.
The peeling away only happens through going toward it. There are many ways for the peeling away to happen, and they have to be complementary. It's impossible to know what I'm really avoiding without first doing some disidentification. Without seeing through the illusions of thought, it's almost impossible to recognize what I really want.
So, as with the meditation, just accessing some of that intimacy, you felt it: "This tastes like more than avoidance. This is more of what I really want." Otherwise, how can you convince a drug addict that what they really want isn't the drugs? The experience they're having is, "That's all I want. I want nothing other than the drug." Some work needs to be done to recognize that the drug is an avoidance, that I want something else.
And there needs to be a certain willingness to see the truth. To see the truth means letting myself see what I think is real, which is not. There's a humiliation aspect to that, a humility: "I'm wrong. I've been attached to something false, something that has been in disservice." That also has an aspect of pain. The drug addict is a metaphor, but it could be an actual substance, or it could be a form of behaving. It's always some addiction to a form of control, of thought and emotion, either through a substance or certain behavior.
I think that's very fitting, because I did struggle with that for a while: what I think I want, rather than what I really want in the bigger picture.
What we really want and what we most fear
What we really want starts to become very similar to what we're most afraid of.
Most similar?
Back to the example: calling a friend versus going to sleep. What's scarier?
They're both quite scary. But I think going to sleep is scarier, because I know it's coming from a kind of avoidance.
I was hoping you'd say that, because you're aware of the self-betrayal nature of it. And that's really good, because it means, in a sense, you're screwed. You can't be fully taken by illusion.
So it's true.
Screwed in a good sense, but I use that expression because there is an aspect of that: not being able to go into denial. To love truth more than illusion really starts taking us to a place of surrender. And surrender, by definition, is not what we really want, at least not at the surface. At a deeper level, yes. But we would like to be free without having to surrender.
It will always include the fear of the unknown. But once you are able to taste the fear of the unknown to a point where you can sit with it and savor it, you're free. Free from the need to avoid.
That's beautiful. I think I touched on that a little bit during the meditation.
Savoring the unknowable
This fear of the unknown, this intimacy with the unknown, is probably a very beautiful way of putting it. When we no longer need to make the unknown known, we are free. The unknowable is by definition what cannot be known. When we make it known, we go into illusion. So when we can be with the unknown and savor it, we are free from the need to be in illusion.
I felt like I couldn't take it all in at once, but just tasting it was something.
It's an acquired taste. It takes a bit of time. It's like giving the best wine to a five-year-old. He's going to spit it out.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.