The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

Chapter Ten

Right Thinking

When Right View is solid in us, we have Right Thinking. We need this at the foundation of our thinking. Training ourselves will cause Right View to improve. Thinking is the speech of our mind. Right Thinking makes our speech clear and beneficial. Because thinking often leads to action, Right Thinking is needed to take us down the path to Right Action.

Right Thinking reflects the way things are. Wrong thinking causes us to think in an upside-down way. Practicing Right Thinking is not easy. Our mind takes us in one direction whilst our body wants to go in another. Mind and body are not unified. Conscious breathing is an important link. When we concentrate on our breathing, we bring body and mind back together again.

When Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am," he meant that we can prove our existence by the fact that our thinking exists. Because we think, we are really there. We exist. Or, you can conclude the opposite: "I think, therefore I am not." When mind and body are apart, we get lost and cannot really say that we are here. If we breathe mindfully and touch the healing and refreshing elements that are inside and surrounding us, we will find peace and solidity. It stops us being preoccupied by past sorrows and future anxieties. It helps us be in touch with life in the present moment. A lot of our thinking is unnecessary; thoughts that are limited and carry little understanding. Sometimes we have a tape always running in our head - day and night - unable to turn it off. We worry and become tense and have nightmares. Mindfulness can let us hear the tape and notice whether our thinking is useful or not.

Thinking has two parts: initial thought and developing thought. The first is "I have to turn in a report for history." The development is to wonder about the correctness of the assignment, do we need to proofread it again, whether the teacher will notice it is late, etc. This is Vitarka (original thought). Vichara is the development of that original thought. 

In dhyana (first meditative stage) both kinds of thinking are present. In the second stage, neither is there - we are actually in deeper contact with reality, free of words and concepts. While walking in the woods, Thich noticed a little girl deep in thought. "Grandfather monk, what colour is that tree's bark?" He told her, "It is the colour that you see." He wanted her to enter the wonderful world that was right in front of her. 

Four practices related to Right Thinking. 

1. "Are you sure?" -- if there is a rope in your path and you see it as a snake, you will have fear-based thinking. The more erroneous your perception, the more wrong your thinking will be. Ask yourself this question again and again. Incorrect perceptions cause wrong thinking and unnecessary suffering.
2. "What am I doing?" -- ask yourself this to help you release your thinking about the past or the future, and come back to the present moment. It will help you be right here, right now. Just smile in response. That will demonstrate your true presence. This will also help you overcome the habit of wanting to finish things quickly. Smile to yourself and tell yourself whatever you are doing at that moment is the most important job. If your thoughts are carrying you away, you need mindfulness to intervene. (To a point.)*  For example: Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building many temples. Bodhidharma said, "None whatsoever." Not wanting to be elsewhere and not caring about fame or recognitiion will give you boundless merit and you will be happy. When your thinking is concentrated, you do things in mindfulness and you will be happy and a resource for others.
3. "Hello, Habit Energy." -- We stick to our habits, even the ones that cause suffering. Workaholism for example. Our ancestors had to work all the time just to eat. But today, our way of working can be compulsive and prevent us from having contact with life. We think about work all the time and don't have time to breathe. Find time to contemplate the cherry blossom and drink our tea in mindfulness. How we act depends on how we think, and how we think depends on our habit energies. Make good friends with your habitual patterns of thinking and acting. Then you can accept these ingrained thoughts and not feel guilty about them. They will lose power over us. Right Thinking leads to Right Action.
4. Bodhichitta -- Our "mind of love! is the deep wish to cultivate understanding in order to bring happiness to many beings. It is the motivating force of mindful living. With that at the foundation of our thinking, everything we do or say will help others be liberated. Right Thinking also gives rise to Right Diligence. 

In a sutra the Buddha described the practice as "changing the peg." A carpenter can use a peg to connect two blocks of wood, and if he finds that the old peg is no good, he would like to change it with another peg. Just by driving the new peg into the old one, he can replace the old one with the new one. So if you have a state of being that you don’t like, you can change the peg. That peg is called a mental formation. We have fifty-one categories of mental formation. Fear is one, anger is another one, and jealousy is another one. If you don’t like it, change the peg: use another peg and change it. And since you have stored within yourself many wonderful pegs, it is very easy for you to take one of the pegs and just change it. Then, suddenly, you find yourself on the other shore. And by going back to the present moment, you will discover these pegs, these wonders that belong to life, that are available to you: the positive things that you can identify through your full presence. That is why it is said that our true home is in the here and the now; and if you practice going back to your true home, you’ll be able to meet, to touch, to identify these wonderful things, these miracles that will be available to you every time you need them. Crossing to the other shore is a matter of seconds or minutes if you are already capable of identifying the positive things that are still available to you. Among them I just mentioned one: the fact that you are still alive.

Right Thinking is thinking that is in accord with Right View, like a map that guides us. We we get there, we have to put the map down and fully enter reality.
"Think non-thinking" is a well-used statement in Zen. Dwell deeply in the present moment and touch the seeds of joy, peace and liberation  heal and transform your suffering, and be truly present for others. 

* Dan and I discussed this last evening and both felt that this is not not necessarily the case. I for one have to think of many things at one time. Standing washing 84,000 dishes without thinking or other things (or listening to music) would soon have me tearing my hair out from sheer brain-numbness.