My therapist introduced me to meditation and one of the first things I realized from doing it is that my thoughts are not me. All my life I strongly identified with my thoughts, but I now understand that really they are just fleeting, uncontrolable, usually useless and sometime incorrect and untrue. They aren't me or mine and I don't need to take them so seriously or pour so much energy into them. I can just put attention on them without engaging and just watch them fade quickly away. As an anxious overthinker, this has been really life changing for me.
This. For me an additional key was shikantaza meditation. I did a lot of mindfulness meditation, noting stimuli and coming and going thoughts. But I never could stop engaging with my thoughts, particularly thoughts about how I was a "bad meditator" :) In Shikantaza, I can just sit down, I can't really do it wrong. And that was the thing that for the first time let me see that thoughts...just happen and it doesn't matter if I listen to them or not. If's fine that they happen, I can let them be.
"The more you put in the brain, the more the brain's going to have to digest." This analogy really struck a chord with me. In the video, Brad was referring specifically to avoiding social media and other unnecessary mental inputs before doing zazen. I think this is great advice and can be expanded beyond sitting. The times when I feel particularly caught up in thoughts are when I've spent too much time feeding my brain "junk food" (e.g. YT Shorts, doomscrolling, Netflix binging, etc.). The result is a kind of indigestion that makes it hard to let thoughts just do their thing. It's like when you've had too much literal junk food -- it's hard to let your stomach do its thing without paying attention when it's upset. Better to feed your brain a healthy diet and minimize the consumption of junk food as much as you can. Great stuff. Thanks, Brad!
I like this from Ken McCleod - "Some thoughts, feelings and sensations simply come and go on their own and cause no disturbance. Others catch me and I fall into distraction. Which does which is not something I control. As soon as I recognize that I have been distracted, I am already back. There is nothing more to do but start again."
My favorite one is when you get into a good rhythm during meditation and your mind goes "oh boy! I'm doing it! I'm meditating!" and you have to acknowledge it and turn away from it. Happens to me every time.
First, that Uchiyama quote changed my life and practice! ♥️ You have done a great job of outlining this Brad! These ideas and realities were transformative for me when I first heard them.
I was once sitting by the sea for maybe an hour or more. Anyways I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just sitting and I would sometimes be looking at the sea, hearing the seagulls shouting, maybe noticing a boat in the distance etc. And sometimes my thoughts would go into some past situations, or some fictional ones. Mostly conversations with people, like you also said. Sometimes I would sort of notice or wake up to the fact that I had just been very deep in some really elaborate conversation, and so focused on it that the sea and the seagulls and everything had disappeared completely. It feels kind of crazy but also in a way an impressive feat by the brain.
You actually heard it? Gosh! I heard it a few times locally in Ohio. The record label used to send me charts from college stations in which the song appeared.
This is funny, I find it super practical and relatable, I forwarded it to a friend. :) About the pretend conversations, I'm not saying this is appropriate, but I have found that those conversations help me find all kinds of things that I _shouldn't_ actually say in person. I try not to put effort into making the conversations happen, but I think I do get a little use out of them. :)
I have found that the more I practice zazen the more space there is between needing to act on my thoughts or just letting them go without action. I can watch them bubble up (looking for a problem to solve) and then just let them go on their way without any need to act or hold on to them.
Brad has a video on how to do zazen first thing in the morning: I tried it and it definitely works for me. Get up, let dogs out, use bathroom/drink water, let dogs in, proceed to zazen space. No morning news or bits of info-just straight to zazen.
Recently during my zazen i’ve began to experience things as “space”, it kind of clicked that there really really is no “me” and that I am just spaciousness in which all phenomena external and internal occur. It’s hard to describe in words. Every thing feels very impersonal now and while before that would have bothered me now it gets no reaction as even these sensations of fear or bother just appear in this space as any other phenomenon that can be seen in this “space”. It’s really quite bizarre having perception shift like this but it happened gradually. It all clicked together when I realised that some fantastical idea of getting somewhere being somewhere was really absurd and that this “space” in the now is all there has ever been, all there ever will be. No where to get to. Nothing to do. Any thoughts on this Brad?
@@anotherpilgrim8313 i’ve been doing meditating since I was 17 (i’m now 25) but that was just following the breath meditation which in hindsight I gained no observational skill from and I thought laying down doing that was sufficient. I’ve been doing zazen almost daily for around 20-40 minutes sometimes twice a day for around 4 months and in that time i’ve also gone vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong sometimes like today life’s stresses can overwhelm this “ability” but even that stress and whatever life throws is part of the suchness. Nothing abnormal nothing to shun.
@@alicanali1167 My journey has been on and off. I've also struggled to stick to a specific type of meditation. So, as you can imagine, I haven't made much progress. But I'm still hopeful that I'll figure out how to be consistent with my chosen meditation.
[4:49] “You start to notice that conscious attention and thought are not the same thing at all. Thought can just go on without conscious attention attending to it.” - Yes, that is a key observation! It might be helpful if you could tell people how you experienced that. In other words, what did you notice to let you see that truth? The obvious question is: if you were not conscious of your thoughts, how did you know you were having them?
An anthropology grad student I know wrote his thesis on: Why are American senior citizens broke? And what he discovered was that seniors have basements, garages, and attics FULL of a series of ''Next Generation'' microwaves, cameras, TV's, radios, toaster-ovens and so on. He said that people over a lifetime, fall under the spell of ADVERTISING, and they BUY the next NEW version of something they ALREADY HAVE. Ad-men sell the idea of ''new and improved.'' THIS is what the mind does. It MUST chew on ideas and stuff itself even when it is full. (Like a kid with candy or ice cream) The new ideas are tasty, exciting, and crave attention. Zazen allows us to enjoy the flavor of one idea at a time. 😉
Yeah, that's a real weird moment, isn't it? Catching your brain in problem solving mode BEFORE there's a problem to solve? I remember one day during work I took a break to go for a short walk outside, and the thought "I gotta think about that" drifted into my head. Only, there was nothing to think about - I was just taking a walk. Up until that point, I'd always assumed that "I gotta think about that" was just what I heard in my own head when I was working on a problem. It took catching my brain doing that during a walk for me to realize that "I gotta think about that" is just what my brain does, like my stomach churning out acid.
Brad over here spilling the tea on Tibetan Buddhists,lol.l i guess like Bo Loziff once said, "We're All Doing Time". I was probably a serious asshole in apast life too im sure. As long as we balance our karma and learn the lessons, we can chamge for the better. There is a redemption arc for ALL of us. Cheers
i've got a flip-flop extreme sorta mind..part of me wants to swear never to speak again..but if im honest that feeling only lasts til i wake up again after a sleep..
To me it seems like the title is not very adequate, it suggests some kind of a wu wei discussion, whereas you talked about the nature of thoughts. I'd be very interested in letting go vs. being passive in the context of action, not only thoughts.
I think my experience is a little different in that my mind Is pretty blank a lot of the time. Not like totally but there's not often rampaging thoughts. But, that's my normal mind and during zazen it's not any more or less than normal. And yeah then all this is the same and applicable. But it's at a pretty low rate. Lucky I guess
Would you rather people say something like “this is something that the illusory brain secretions contained to the fragment of the universe known as (name) found useful” ? Even that isnt it. So should people say nothing? Why do anything? Why say anything then? Just some thoughts
Guifeng Zongmi (780-841): was both the fifth patriarch of Huayan Buddhism & a patriarch of Heze Chan (a school of Chinese Zen). When describing his own tradition of Chan, in his “Chan Letter” (circa 830 CE) he wrote: “It is very difficult to describe Heze, but I must try. Its idea centers on the void and calm Knowing transmitted by Bodhidharma. This Knowing is no mindfulness. Heze practice is: “When a pulse of thought emerges, just be aware of it; being aware of it, it will slip into nothingness.” (p. 87) - Broughton, J. L. (2009). “Zongmi on Chan”
My therapist introduced me to meditation and one of the first things I realized from doing it is that my thoughts are not me. All my life I strongly identified with my thoughts, but I now understand that really they are just fleeting, uncontrolable, usually useless and sometime incorrect and untrue. They aren't me or mine and I don't need to take them so seriously or pour so much energy into them. I can just put attention on them without engaging and just watch them fade quickly away. As an anxious overthinker, this has been really life changing for me.
Is it worth considering what the me is? Is it anything apart from a concept and a feeling?
This. For me an additional key was shikantaza meditation. I did a lot of mindfulness meditation, noting stimuli and coming and going thoughts. But I never could stop engaging with my thoughts, particularly thoughts about how I was a "bad meditator" :) In Shikantaza, I can just sit down, I can't really do it wrong. And that was the thing that for the first time let me see that thoughts...just happen and it doesn't matter if I listen to them or not. If's fine that they happen, I can let them be.
A good and important lesson
"The more you put in the brain, the more the brain's going to have to digest." This analogy really struck a chord with me. In the video, Brad was referring specifically to avoiding social media and other unnecessary mental inputs before doing zazen. I think this is great advice and can be expanded beyond sitting. The times when I feel particularly caught up in thoughts are when I've spent too much time feeding my brain "junk food" (e.g. YT Shorts, doomscrolling, Netflix binging, etc.). The result is a kind of indigestion that makes it hard to let thoughts just do their thing. It's like when you've had too much literal junk food -- it's hard to let your stomach do its thing without paying attention when it's upset. Better to feed your brain a healthy diet and minimize the consumption of junk food as much as you can. Great stuff. Thanks, Brad!
Doomscrolling?
@@edgepixel8467, it’s when you scroll excessively through negative news or social media content.
I like this from Ken McCleod - "Some thoughts, feelings and sensations simply come and go on their own
and cause no disturbance. Others catch me and I fall into distraction. Which does which is not something I control. As soon as I recognize that I have been distracted, I am already back. There is nothing more to do but start again."
On several occasions I got almost blank, and in fact, there was one single thought, something like: "Oh boy, all the thoughts have suddenly ceased"
My favorite one is when you get into a good rhythm during meditation and your mind goes "oh boy! I'm doing it! I'm meditating!" and you have to acknowledge it and turn away from it. Happens to me every time.
First, that Uchiyama quote changed my life and practice! ♥️ You have done a great job of outlining this Brad! These ideas and realities were transformative for me when I first heard them.
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened” - Mark Twain.
I was once sitting by the sea for maybe an hour or more. Anyways I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just sitting and I would sometimes be looking at the sea, hearing the seagulls shouting, maybe noticing a boat in the distance etc. And sometimes my thoughts would go into some past situations, or some fictional ones. Mostly conversations with people, like you also said.
Sometimes I would sort of notice or wake up to the fact that I had just been very deep in some really elaborate conversation, and so focused on it that the sea and the seagulls and everything had disappeared completely. It feels kind of crazy but also in a way an impressive feat by the brain.
I remember that song playing on WOXY (Oxford, OH). Letting go questions are always a good thing to talk about. Viva Ziggy!
You actually heard it? Gosh! I heard it a few times locally in Ohio. The record label used to send me charts from college stations in which the song appeared.
It is so rewarding when the mind is more settled but it’s still hard to have a consistent practice
One of your all-time best talks. Thank you. Sadhu sadhu sadhu, as they say in the Theravada world. Which Ajahn Brahm translated as “awesome!”
Fantastic, illuninating video. Thanks so much
This is funny, I find it super practical and relatable, I forwarded it to a friend. :)
About the pretend conversations, I'm not saying this is appropriate, but I have found that those conversations help me find all kinds of things that I _shouldn't_ actually say in person.
I try not to put effort into making the conversations happen, but I think I do get a little use out of them. :)
6:57 great way of articulating this
I have found that the more I practice zazen the more space there is between needing to act on my thoughts or just letting them go without action. I can watch them bubble up (looking for a problem to solve) and then just let them go on their way without any need to act or hold on to them.
Brad has a video on how to do zazen first thing in the morning: I tried it and it definitely works for me. Get up, let dogs out, use bathroom/drink water, let dogs in, proceed to zazen space. No morning news or bits of info-just straight to zazen.
I just love your videos Brad, thank you! 😊🙏
The song in the end is actually good.
Basically don't let go and don't hold on
Just sit
If your mind is obsessing about them what does that have to do with you ?
Nice.
Recently during my zazen i’ve began to experience things as “space”, it kind of clicked that there really really is no “me” and that I am just spaciousness in which all phenomena external and internal occur. It’s hard to describe in words. Every thing feels very impersonal now and while before that would have bothered me now it gets no reaction as even these sensations of fear or bother just appear in this space as any other phenomenon that can be seen in this “space”. It’s really quite bizarre having perception shift like this but it happened gradually. It all clicked together when I realised that some fantastical idea of getting somewhere being somewhere was really absurd and that this “space” in the now is all there has ever been, all there ever will be. No where to get to. Nothing to do. Any thoughts on this Brad?
How long did that take you? By that I mean the length of your practice. Just curious.
@@anotherpilgrim8313 i’ve been doing meditating since I was 17 (i’m now 25) but that was just following the breath meditation which in hindsight I gained no observational skill from and I thought laying down doing that was sufficient. I’ve been doing zazen almost daily for around 20-40 minutes sometimes twice a day for around 4 months and in that time i’ve also gone vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong sometimes like today life’s stresses can overwhelm this “ability” but even that stress and whatever life throws is part of the suchness. Nothing abnormal nothing to shun.
@@alicanali1167 Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I enjoy hearing about people's spiritual journeys.
@@anotherpilgrim8313 my pleasure, how did yours unfold?
@@alicanali1167 My journey has been on and off. I've also struggled to stick to a specific type of meditation. So, as you can imagine, I haven't made much progress. But I'm still hopeful that I'll figure out how to be consistent with my chosen meditation.
[4:49] “You start to notice that conscious attention and thought are not the same thing at all. Thought can just go on without conscious attention attending to it.”
- Yes, that is a key observation!
It might be helpful if you could tell people how you experienced that. In other words, what did you notice to let you see that truth?
The obvious question is: if you were not conscious of your thoughts, how did you know you were having them?
How did who know? Was it me that knew?
Thanks, Brad, this video helped me a lot.
An anthropology grad student I know wrote his thesis on: Why are American senior citizens broke? And what he discovered was that seniors have basements, garages, and attics FULL of a series of ''Next Generation'' microwaves, cameras, TV's, radios, toaster-ovens and so on.
He said that people over a lifetime, fall under the spell of ADVERTISING, and they BUY the next NEW version of something they ALREADY HAVE. Ad-men sell the idea of ''new and improved.''
THIS is what the mind does. It MUST chew on ideas and stuff itself even when it is full. (Like a kid with candy or ice cream)
The new ideas are tasty, exciting, and crave attention.
Zazen allows us to enjoy the flavor of one idea at a time. 😉
Yeah, that's a real weird moment, isn't it? Catching your brain in problem solving mode BEFORE there's a problem to solve? I remember one day during work I took a break to go for a short walk outside, and the thought "I gotta think about that" drifted into my head. Only, there was nothing to think about - I was just taking a walk. Up until that point, I'd always assumed that "I gotta think about that" was just what I heard in my own head when I was working on a problem. It took catching my brain doing that during a walk for me to realize that "I gotta think about that" is just what my brain does, like my stomach churning out acid.
Brad over here spilling the tea on Tibetan Buddhists,lol.l i guess like Bo Loziff once said, "We're All Doing Time". I was probably a serious asshole in apast life too im sure. As long as we balance our karma and learn the lessons, we can chamge for the better. There is a redemption arc for ALL of us. Cheers
i've got a flip-flop extreme sorta mind..part of me wants to swear never to speak again..but if im honest that feeling only lasts til i wake up again after a sleep..
i've made myself upset with imagined arguments with imaginary people in my head 😂
Letting go is my MO
To me it seems like the title is not very adequate, it suggests some kind of a wu wei discussion, whereas you talked about the nature of thoughts.
I'd be very interested in letting go vs. being passive in the context of action, not only thoughts.
I think my experience is a little different in that my mind Is pretty blank a lot of the time. Not like totally but there's not often rampaging thoughts. But, that's my normal mind and during zazen it's not any more or less than normal. And yeah then all this is the same and applicable. But it's at a pretty low rate. Lucky I guess
Has anybody noticed that almost all the comments reflect on me, my or I?
Would you rather people say something like “this is something that the illusory brain secretions contained to the fragment of the universe known as (name) found useful” ? Even that isnt it. So should people say nothing? Why do anything? Why say anything then? Just some thoughts
I usually don't comment about how others perceived the video!
I could also be misinterpreting the implication of this comment. Let me know
@@TheJedynak there we go you said it again!!
Ignore thinking? How is that being mindful?
That is mindfulness.
Guifeng Zongmi (780-841): was both the fifth patriarch of Huayan Buddhism & a patriarch of Heze Chan (a school of Chinese Zen). When describing his own tradition of Chan, in his “Chan Letter” (circa 830 CE) he wrote:
“It is very difficult to describe Heze, but I must try. Its idea centers on the void and calm Knowing transmitted by Bodhidharma. This Knowing is no mindfulness. Heze practice is: “When a pulse of thought emerges, just be aware of it; being aware of it, it will slip into nothingness.” (p. 87)
- Broughton, J. L. (2009). “Zongmi on Chan”
@@HardcoreZen Thanks man. I guess you have to see it first to ignore it?
@@JimTemplemanThank you. Precisely. Hence my confusion.