Sometimes, the things closest to us are the hardest to distinguish from one another. Thoughts arise in our minds every day, so constantly that we begin to believe that our thoughts are who we are. When anger arises, we think that we are angry. When anxiety arises, we think that we are anxious. When we think about yesterday, we follow our thoughts back into yesterday. When we think about tomorrow, we run ahead into tomorrow, even though our body is still sitting right here. Mindfulness allows us to see that there is something within us that can know that thinking is taking place. And that tiny space between thinking and knowing that we are thinking may be one of the most important spaces in life.<\/p>\n
Thought is something that arises and keeps moving. One moment it travels back into the past, the next it moves forward into the future. It creates one story and then continues into another. Sometimes the actual event ended long ago, yet the event inside our mind refuses to end. Thought, therefore, is not a problem in itself. The problem begins when we do not realize where our thoughts are taking us and unconsciously become part of the stories they create.<\/p>\n
A vivid analogy is to think of thought as a thief and mindfulness as the owner of the house. A thief can work most easily when the owner is asleep. In the same way, thoughts can pull us deeply into anger, fear, anxiety, or suffering when we are unaware. But the moment the owner wakes up, the thief can no longer act so freely. The important thing, then, is not to run around trying to catch every thief who enters the house. It is to keep the owner awake.<\/p>\n
This is subtler than simply telling ourselves to think positively. Positive thinking is still thinking. It merely replaces one kind of thought with another. Mindfulness operates on a different level. It does not argue with thought. It does not try to label one thought as good and another as bad. Its role is simply to know that a thought is arising. Once we are aware of it, the thought may still remain, but we no longer have to follow it every time.<\/p>\n
Consider another image. A human being is standing between two trees. One tree represents form, or the body. The other represents the mental world, or thought. Mindfulness is the one standing in the middle, able to see both without running over to embrace either tree. This image carries an important meaning because, for much of our lives, we do not remain in the middle. We throw ourselves into our thoughts and hold on to them so tightly that we forget they are simply something arising in the mind.<\/p>\n
Notice what happens when someone says something we dislike. Their sentence may last only five seconds, but we can take those five seconds and replay them in our minds for five hours. Some people continue for five days, or even five years. The external event ended after five seconds, but our thoughts took over and created an extended version of suffering. Without mindfulness, we do not see this process because everything we think feels completely real. As awareness begins to develop, however, we start to see that the event itself is one thing, while our thoughts about the event are another. Much of our suffering may come more from the latter than from the former.<\/p>\n
This points to an important principle of human development. Before developing the quality of our thinking, perhaps we first need to develop the person who is using thought. No matter how powerful a tool may be, if its user lacks awareness, that tool can eventually take control of the user. Thought is no different. It is an extraordinarily powerful tool. Human beings have built homes, cities, technologies, and civilizations through thought. Yet the same capacity for thought can create conflict, greed, fear, and harm. When human beings become better thinkers without becoming more aware of their own thinking, intelligence does not necessarily lead the world toward peace.<\/p>\n
This idea is consistent with an inside-out approach to human development, which places being before thinking and doing. Success does not arise from the ability to think or act alone. We must also return inward. Self-awareness and a stable inner foundation become the starting point from which thinking, relationships, collaboration, and action can grow. At the same time, quality thinking is not simply thinking continuously or searching for reasons to support what we already believe. It is thinking with an awareness of why we are thinking in the first place.<\/p>\n
Mindfulness does not aim to eliminate thought, because a human being who never thinks would hardly be able to live. When driving and deciding whether to turn left or right, we need to think. When planning a business, we need to think. When solving a problem, we need to think. Deliberate thought remains a valuable tool. What we need to recognize is involuntary thought: the thoughts that quietly arise and gradually pull us away from awareness before we even notice what has happened.<\/p>\n
Practicing mindfulness, therefore, is not a war against thought. It is a transformation in our relationship with thought. Instead of a thought arising and automatically carrying us away, a thought can arise and we can see it. Instead of becoming an angry person when anger arises, we can know that anger is arising. Instead of drowning in anxiety, we can see that an anxious thought is passing through the mind. The difference may appear small, but its effect on life can be profound, because the moment we can see what is happening, we begin to have a choice.<\/p>\n
Consider hatred. Having a reason to hate someone and choosing whether or not to hate that person are two different things. An external event may already have occurred, but there is still an inner space in which we can choose whether to become a slave to the emotion or to recognize it for what it is. Mindfulness creates this small space between stimulus and response. And within this small space, human freedom begins to emerge.<\/p>\n
We might therefore say that thought is something that arises to be known, while mindfulness is the capacity to know that it is arising. Thought can take us into the past or carry us into the future, while mindfulness brings us back to what is actually happening in the present. Thought creates stories. Mindfulness allows us to see those stories as they are. And as we become more capable of seeing them, we may gradually discover something interesting: many things we once believed had to be completely resolved may not need to be resolved at all. Sometimes, simply seeing them clearly is enough for them to gradually lose their power over us.<\/p>\n
In the end, the most important question may not be what we have been thinking about today. Human beings cannot stop every thought from arising. A more interesting question is this: throughout all those moments when thoughts arose, how many times were we aware that we were thinking?<\/p>\n
When we are unaware, thought becomes our master.<\/p>\n
When we are aware, thought returns to being a tool for living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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