How do you think?

[Jundo]

Knowing that the sky is blues because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light, the grass is green because it produce a bright pigment called chlorophyll, and thoughts are thoughts because….well, this one is a bit harder to explain….ahah!....can only add to our experience as long as we do not forget that molecules, red light, and chlorophyll are only a model of reality.

Yes, yes. But first know the clear sky with sun shining right through the clouds of thoughts ... the grass tips which each hold countless universes. Dogen wrote in Shobogenzo-Uji ...

Know that in this way there are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses
throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the
entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice.
When you are at this place, there is just one grass, there is just one form; there is understanding of form and no-understanding of form; there is
understanding of grass and no-understanding of grass. Since there is nothing
but just this moment, the time-being is all the time there is. Grass-being,
form-being are both time.
Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any
being or any world is left out of the present moment.

And once one has mastered that, well, okay to come back to the world of fragmented sunlight bouncing off chlorophyll. Blues may appear even bluer, and greens even greener than before.

Gassho, J

[alan.r]

It is not really merely that "Your true self is before thinking", as was said. It is better said that one must truly know this "before thinking" to realize that one's "true self" is both in thinking and before thinking, and was and is here all along. Even thinking becomes Buddha ... better said, is and has been Buddha all along, though perhaps we were too caught up in our thoughts to realize so.

Yeah, this is it for me. When I read "true self is before thinking," I thought, why before? Why not after? Why not during? Why not always? Same with becoming; nothing to become. Like Shingen says, grass grows by itself, and I'd add that the sky blooms and flowers sky, and thoughts think especially when rain makes clouds, and the cat sits in your family room doing zazen, while we imagine we know.

Gassho

[Jishin]

the cat sits in your family room doing zazen, while we imagine we know.

Gassho

[Daitetsu]

Yeah, this is it for me. When I read "true self is before thinking," I thought, why before? Why not after? Why not during? Why not always?

Sure the true self is there all the time - where would it go?
However, one must first realise that thoughts make discrimination, categories, separation, and (dis)likes. Only after one has realised this fact, one can see that even those thoughts and this world of samsara are actually just the other side of the same coin, and that one has been IT all along.
IMHO it is only after realising that words cause separation that we can see that both samsara as well as nirvana are just different aspects of the same thing.
And in that way we have the chance to go from life living us to us living life and then back to life living us again - the same like the beginning, yet completely different.

Gassho,

Daitetsu

[moondance]

Thanks everyone for this thread!

I found I wanted to immediately dive into "the mind" and explain it away. It's the therapist in me I guess. Then I read the responses and realized, "I don't need to do this anymore." But I will offer support to Andrea1974! Hey Andrea, my mind does all this too! I get stuck in worrying about the future and my own stress and anxiety. But finally, after all these years, I think the only thing that really helps this mind-state is Zazen and practice, practice, practice. In essence, I've fired my therapist and re-hired the Buddha. We'll see what happens. So far, I "feel better" than I have in years!

Warmly,
Diana

[Joyo]

Andrea, sounds like your thoughts are very similar to my own. I too over think and analyze things a lot of the time. Going for a walk in nature to clear my head helps. But even more so, persistently sitting (for a year now), even when the thoughts are racing (which they almost always are) has helped a lot. I still get the over-analytical too much thinking, but now, I can separate myself from those thoughts more, and not cling to them or identify with them so strongly.

And I still sit, each day, with a racing mind.

Gassho,
Joyo

[Nameless]

Thanks for this post Andrea. I do experience this. Often I find with a clear mind I can ask myself a question and I get an answer in a "you" form. We tend to call this voice intuition, conscience, the superego etc... If I have to call it anything I call it Buddha (though I know this is is not quite right). The longer (haha time is funny) I practice the more this voice becomes the only voice, so the less I need to ask.

Gassho, Foolish John