Open the hand of thought?

[Alina]

You have to separate "thoughts" from "thinking". Thoughts will always come. No point in trying to stop these. ThinkING, however, is actively doing something. You have already intervened. Okumura describes it as "interacting with thoughts". Although it feels out of our control, it is a mental avoidance strategy we have internalized. Therefore, when the mind is ready and becomes aware of our doing, our thinkING, we stop this doing and therefore return to non-doing, time and time again.

Thank you solenziz for sharing this distinction, I had never thought of it this way, it's much more clear to me now (I hope it will help to me open my hand...).

Thank you everyone for this very insightful thread.

Gassho

Alina
ST

[Nengei]

The instructions place me in a state where I have to do something when I sit. For example, I sit and my mind goes "Now that I'm sitting I must let go of any arising thoughts", and when there are no thoughts it goes "Now there are no thoughts". It's as if there's a constant monitoring due to these instructions.

First, I am a novice priest, so take all I say accordingly.

When I see this, that you wrote, it feels familiar to me. The looking for instructions, a "right way" to do this thing we do. I suggest that, for now, you let go of this idea and just sit. Zazen is not an academic exercise. Gain 10,000 years' experience with just sitting. Don't worry about perfect letting go of thoughts. Don't worry about floods of ideas. Let them come. The first half of letting them go, you see, is letting them come.

Know that if you feel that your entire session of sitting was worthless and entirely wrong, it was, in fact, entirely perfect, and worth everything. Just sit. Just sit. Just sit. All the other stuff will come.

Gassho,
Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[Houzan]

The first half of letting them go, you see, is letting them come.

Gassho2

Gassho, Michael
Sat

[Simon]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I was recently reading also The Essence of Zen by Sekkei Harada, which gives an interesting interpretation of the classic Dogen's quote "think of not thinking". First of all, Dogen's quote is translated as

Think of not thinking. How is this done? By leaving thinking as-it-is.

Then, he proceeds to explain what "leaving thinking as-it-is" means and he says "When there is thinking, there is only thinking, and while thinking, there is liberation. And when not thinking, there is only not thinking, and while not thinking, there is liberation". This to me sounds like a more natural approach where instead of setting the intention of letting thoughts go, we let thoughts be thoughts, and by leaving them to be as they are they just go by themselves, because that's their nature. Thoughts come and go by themselves and no one has to let them come and go.

[Jundo]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I was recently reading also The Essence of Zen by Sekkei Harada, which gives an interesting interpretation of the classic Dogen's quote "think of not thinking". First of all, Dogen's quote is translated as



Then, he proceeds to explain what "leaving thinking as-it-is" means and he says "When there is thinking, there is only thinking, and while thinking, there is liberation. And when not thinking, there is only not thinking, and while not thinking, there is liberation". This to me sounds like a more natural approach where instead of setting the intention of letting thoughts go, we let thoughts be thoughts, and by leaving them to be as they are they just go by themselves, because that's their nature. Thoughts come and go by themselves and no one has to let them come and go.

I feel what you describe is the same as has been said.

When finding oneself not "letting them be," then "let them be."

I gave a talk yesterday on semantics, inspired in part by this chat. If you want a listen, it is about 55:00 here ...

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...e-Let-Go-Words

Gassho, J