Thought and Reality
Pensamiento y realidad
A question about the distinction between thoughts and non-thoughts, and why it matters to recognize how much of our experience is shaped by the world of thought.
Thought and Reality
A question about the distinction between thoughts and non-thoughts, and why it matters to recognize how much of our experience is shaped by the world of thought.
Can you clarify why you differentiate between thoughts and non-thoughts? You said that sound is not thought. What is the importance of that distinction?
A first step is to see that a lot of what we engage with, thinking it is reality, is just thought. By reality, I mean that we equate our thoughts to the same level of reality as, say, the couch in front of us. When we are imagining tomorrow, it starts to feel as real as the couch.
Distinguishing types of experience
It is important to start recognizing how we can distinguish, for example, sound from sight. These are two types of perception, and the distinction is very easy. We don't confuse them: if we see something, we don't mistake it for a sound, and if we hear something, we don't mistake it for an image. There are some exceptions, like synesthesia, but in general this is straightforward.
With thoughts, however, we often lose the notion that we are engaging with thoughts. We think we are relating to reality, and it is just thought. So it is important to start recognizing how much of what we engage with is the world of thought before you can look more deeply into what is happening in the mind, for example, in the work of disidentification or self-inquiry.
Sensation, perception, and thought
I distinguish between sensation, perception, and thoughts. You could also talk about mind and sensation and perception as all falling under a broader definition of mind, but semantically, I separate them.
Isn't perception also a kind of thought?
Yes, it depends on how you define it. Within a definition of mind where all thoughts, all perceptions, and all sensations are in a sense "mind," I am still distinguishing what is perception and what is sensation from what I would describe as reflection. Some definitions even call what I am describing as thought "consciousness." In certain Buddhist frameworks, for example, the activation of mind as imagination is defined as consciousness. It gets very confusing.
So for simplicity: sensation is that which is experienced through the body, through skin and flesh. There is also a level of feeling that comes through sensation. Perception includes sound and sight. Then thoughts, the way I define them, are like a reflection on sensation and perception. There is imagination using images, imagination using sounds, and also imagination at the level of sensation, where a thought can create an emotion, which is more on the level of sensation but is still a kind of reflection.
Within what you could call "big mind," everything is mind; every appearance is mind. But at the level of personal experience, these distinctions are useful.
Why this matters
Just as we can easily recognize the difference between sound and sight, it is important to recognize the difference between imagined sounds, imagined forms, and the world of concepts. Consider this: if you removed all memory, if everything you had ever learned went away, you would not even know there is a universe, that there are planets, that there are other people beyond the ones in the room. You would not know what you are or what anything around you is. You would not know what a book is. All of that comes through what I would call thought. It is what constructs the map and the understanding of the reality we inhabit.
This is, for me, a basic skill or training. Some people, if they do not meditate, carry a lot of confusion around this. One can start imagining tomorrow and it seems as though one is engaging with reality beyond thought, when in fact one is just engaging with thought. That thought can be useful, but that is the limit of it.
Would you consider tinnitus a thought or a sound?
I don't think that distinction is important for this purpose. What matters in distinguishing thoughts from other experience is to see how we can get lost in the imagination. That is the point.