“Each thought that you have is like a tiny drop in either the ocean of darkness or the ocean of light. If it is an aspiring thought, it is trying to feed you with affection, sweetness and love. If it is a desire-filled thought, it is only trying to bind you, blind you, capture you and devour you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Thoughts are intimately connected with desire: thoughts and desires both attach us to, and enmesh us in the finite and the unreal. They direct us away from the destination of happiness and fulfilment, our infinite soul, our true self. Desires enlist thoughts to aid them in their purpose, then clothe, embellish, intensify and propagate themselves with thoughts. Both come to us disguised as friends, mentors, even saviours, and we embrace them as such. Thoughts and desires alike stand as barriers fencing us inside our egos, and together expressly prohibit our entry into deeper meditation.
How tempting then, to ascribe blame to thoughts, desires, and to the mind itself, which nurtures both these antagonists. If we could only dispense with the mind, these destructive forces would have no harbour to dock their ships and unload their treacherous cargo.
Thoughts, desires and the mind itself are neutral: our problems arise from our attachment to, and identification with these phenomena. As we rush to embrace and claim thoughts and desires as our own, they claim us. By this same trade, Dr Faust sold his soul to the devil: we exchange infinite potentiality, for passing sensations and fleeting power.
We will always need the mind as our soul’s ideally suited instrument to live and operate in the world. To reject the mind is to throw away the baby with the bath water: the mind must be transformed and illumined – now.
“Each moment is an open door
To invite either
Aspiring and illumining thoughts
Or desiring and binding thoughts.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We meditate not just to have a good experience during meditation; we meditate to transform our consciousness, to intensify, expand and elevate our life experience, 24 hours a day.
As our meditation affects the quality of our life outside of meditation, so does our life outside of meditation impinge on the quality of our meditation.
It is useless to follow a strict diet for 2 hours each day, if we consume junk food for the remaining 22. Strictly disciplining our thoughts during meditation cannot be of much help, unless we carefully monitor and control our flow of thoughts while we are not meditating.
Thoughts are hugely influential in shaping the consciousness we radiate and offer to the world from moment to moment. Our thoughts are 100 per cent our responsibility. As we choose our clothes according to how we wish to present to ourselves and the world, so must we be careful and wise in selecting the wardrobe of thoughts we inhabit, wear and display.
As dust settles and weeds grow, so thoughts will occupy our every idle or distracted moment. To outpace unwanted thoughts, remain always active and dynamic, ever striving for a goal – for aspiration and dynamism give positive focus and form to our thoughts.
Thoughts are the food and currency of our limited and limiting mind; to escape the mind is to escape the corrosive influence of thoughts.
Our spiritual heart is our saviour and refuge. The more we can be in our heart, the better. Humility, gratitude, selflessness and humour are magnets that draw us into our thought-proof heart. Immerse yourself in these qualities: the thought-monster will gradually weaken and eventually surrender.
“If your mind is brave,
Then challenge thought!
If you heart is pure,
Then transcend thought!”
– Sri Chinmoy
When we live near a volcano, to protect ourselves from its eruptions, we have two options: fortify our home so it can withstand a lava flow (and pray); or move to somewhere without volcanos, like Australia. The second is the safest and surest choice.
Once we have acquired the capacity to detach ourselves from the thought process, we can either post a guard to allow only good and inspiring thoughts to enter our consciousness; or we can fly beyond the thought-horizons into the meditation-skies of peace, light and bliss.
Flying in outer space, a rocket appears stationary, the universe a vast stillness; in pure meditation all is poise, balance and calm. Yet to reach outer space, the rocket required a stupendous effort to counteract and overcome earth’s massive gravity; to attain the bliss of silent meditation demands the mightiest aspiration of intense focus to counteract and overcome the attachment-gravity of thoughts.
On our own, we are no match for thoughts. Only by taking the help of a higher power, can we overcome them. Thoughts have their own astonishing velocity and immense power. To transcend thoughts, we must be faster and/or vaster than thoughts.
To be faster than thoughts, we must propel ourselves with intense aspiration, or fly on the wings of divine Grace.
To be vaster than thoughts, we must ascend beyond the mind and expand toward the infinite. Thoughts can live and breathe only in the artificial atmosphere of the finite mind. Outside and beyond the mind, thoughts have no bearing, traction or oxygen. Incapable of rising or expanding beyond their self-created finite realm, before the light of the infinite, thoughts evaporate into their true form: nothingness.
Once we are able to detach ourselves from the thought process, if we then choose to allow certain thoughts into our meditation-hall, we must be extremely careful and cautious in our approach.
During meditation, our awareness is heightened and everything is intensified – including the power of thoughts. As Sri Chinmoy has written: “During meditation, if a wrong thought comes, it is like an arrow entering and piercing your inner life.” Yes, positive thoughts can assist and elevate our meditation – but one wrong or negative thought is like releasing rotten egg gas in a perfume shop; it can completely wreck our meditation and leave us in a worse mood than before we started.
So, the guard we post at our door must be extremely vigilant and adept at checking the ID and establishing the credentials of each thought before allowing it access to our meditation.
Thoughts almost never travel alone. They come in “trains of thought”, and these trains can be endless. When one thought appears at our door, inevitably its extended family and friends will be ready to come pouring in the moment our door is slightly ajar. Once we “entertain” one thought, our door is effectively thrown wide open: each thought will summon all its friends, and our party becomes a free-for-all. Among the uninvited guests, some may be disreputable characters who revel in creating disturbance, refuse to leave, trash our home and leave our consciousness a complete mess.
We keep our homes neat and tidy. To allow negative thoughts to run amok during meditation is the same as to have an open sewer running through our lounge room.
In meditation, mind your mind! Treat every thought as an explosive hot potato. Invite only your most trusted, pure, uplifting thoughts – or better, none at all.
As our mind gradually develops a tolerance for inner silence, with practise, we acquire the crucial capacity to detach ourselves from thoughts. In the beginning, this is difficult because we identify ourselves with our thoughts – we feel we are our thoughts. It is impossible to detach ourselves from that we consider to be our very existence, like separating the fragrance from a flower, or blue from the sky.
Once we realise that thoughts are not something we are, but things we have, like clothes from our wardrobe, or tracks selected from a playlist, only then can we imagine existing apart from our thoughts. Once we conceive ourselves as separate to our thoughts, we realise it is not inevitable that thoughts dominate us.
Thoughts do not own us, and cannot be allowed any more to control us.
As our own sovereign consciousness, we must take control of our mind’s immigration policy, and carefully choose, to which thoughts we will issue entry visas to live, study and work in our consciousness-realm.
It is useless to have a policy we cannot enforce. If we are to determine which thoughts we allow to enter, we must know we can exclude those we wish to exclude: we must first develop the enforcement capability to exclude all thoughts.
Detachment is the key, and must be practised. You are here: your mind is there. Imagine your mind is a pristine whiteboard; continually erase each and every thought-mark. Your mind is the sky – keep your mind-sky blue, empty of thought-clouds. Thoughts are projected onto an outdoor screen; remove the screen and the projections are lost into the night. Your mind is a silent, sound-proof room and thoughts are chattering monkeys, helplessly stuck outside with no access.
In detachment, thought-control grows; from detachment, thought-mastery flows.
If we keep our house spotlessly clean, pests will find no food source and cannot make a home there. Whenever we are bothered by thoughts – either in meditation or any other time – the most effective remedy is to make our minds spotlessly pure and sparkling clean by blocking out, flushing away or sweeping aside all thoughts.
For temporary relief from unwanted thoughts, we don’t even need to meditate, we just need distraction – we might engage in strenuous physical activity, sing, read, listen to music, watch a thrilling sports game or phone an engaging friend. Yet all we are accomplishing here, is to swap one costume of thoughts for another.
To free the mind of thoughts completely, we must surgically remove any thoughts that are already inside our mind, and ban any new thoughts from entering.
To treat thoughts already inside the mind, we direct all our attention and channel our focus to a single point of concentration – our chosen object, mantra, music or creative visualisation exercise. Starved of attention, our unwanted thoughts fade and disappear.
To completely clear and then to keep the mind clear, to disallow new thoughts, requires constant vigilance, which cannot be achieved by distraction alone. Here the patient, practised discipline of meditation is indispensable. Our mind is so used to constant activity, constant distraction, that for it to be occupied with only one thought – let alone no thoughts – feels strange at first, disconcerting, even alien and somewhat alarming.
Like a child first entering the water, or a newborn foal on wobbly legs, the mind needs time to adapt to the unfamiliar milieu of thoughtless silence.
To control and detach from thoughts, we must first enrol our mind in the training school to master the art of accepting, welcoming and embracing inner silence.
It’s all very well to say: “Keep out all thoughts!” This is easier said, than done…
It is wise to know one’s enemy. Thoughts in themselves are not our enemy – it is their hold over us, and our helpless attraction to them, which stand as a ruthless barrier to our meditation and inner peace. In our quest to control thoughts, to keep them at bay, it is well to consider the nature of thoughts, and our obsession with them.
As we require oxygen, so thoughts depend utterly on our attention, for their food and fuel. The more we focus or dwell on a thought, the greater its power and influence. When we ignore a thought completely, it starves and withers, and might as well never have existed for us. It is we who make each thought powerful, or not – indeed, we are the power source for the entire thought industry, a Frankenstein of our own creation.
When we speak of controlling thoughts, it is not thoughts in themselves we seek to control: it is our attention on and attachment to thoughts that we can and must rein in.
As long as we identify ourselves primarily with our thinking minds, we imagine and even believe that we are our thoughts, that without them, we could not exist – when actually it is thoughts which rely on us, not the other way around. If we were only our minds, we might indeed need thoughts – but we are not, and can never be, our mere mind.
Pests only inhabit a welcoming environment. We have gone out of our way to make ourselves an attractive home to thoughts, putting out the ‘Welcome!’ mat and offering free board and lodging.
The first step in pest control, is to clean up our house…
Some inspiring thoughts are good and helpful to our meditation practise. Ultimately, we will allow and even welcome such divine thoughts as our friends and supporters.
The problem is, that until a thought has entered our mind and presented itself, we cannot know in advance whether it will be a good thought or a bad thought, helpful or harmful.
We simply cannot take the risk to allow in harmful, negative thoughts, for easily they can destroy our entire meditation and wreck everything we have so carefully built.
So, the best policy is to strive to allow no thought whatsoever during our meditation. Close the mind’s door firmly, put out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and post a guard at the door.
Thoughts have their own pride. When a thought comes with the intention of disturbing our meditation, if it finds our door is locked, it may knock and try to get our attention. After a while of being ignored and shunned, it will feel unvalued and beneath its dignity to persist wasting its time on such a rude and ungrateful fellow. As it departs in a huff, we are free to meditate in peace.
What about the good thoughts though? By locking them out, won’t we miss the benefit of their helpful guidance? Not at all – when a friendly thought sees our ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, it knows and respects we are doing something important. A good thought has our best interests at heart, and waits patiently until we are free to welcome it.
Never fear that by keeping out all thoughts, you will miss out and be the loser: like panning for gold, we sift out the silt of negative and destructive thoughts, to be left ultimately with only the golden, inspiring and aspiring thoughts.
“Threaten idle thoughts.
Chase idle thoughts.
Strangle idle thoughts.
Happiness and satisfaction
Will immediately befriend you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Following Ramakrishna’s advice, to use a second thorn to remove the thorn embedded in our foot – to focus our mind on one thing, by which to keep unwanted thoughts and unwelcome distractions at bay – how to find the right ‘thorn’ for our purpose?
To help extricate ourselves from thoughts, we need to depart from the negative in favour of the positive; to shift the home base of our consciousness from our mind into our heart. So, whatever we choose to focus on must be positive, and imbued with the qualities of our spiritual heart.
To keep thoughts and distractions at bay, the object of our focus must be more attractive, charming, lovable, inspiring and fulfilling than all the queue of thoughts demanding our attention.
Whether we choose an object, sound, image, visualisation, mantra or music, let it be simple, pure, beautiful, humble and light. Simplicity disarms the complexity of thoughts; purity removes the stain of thoughts; beauty out-charms the allure of thoughts; humility tames the pride of thoughts; light lifts the weight and illumines the gloom of thoughts. By any and all these weapons of the heart, the power of thoughts is neutered, their dominion nullified, their spell over us dispelled.
Whether we gaze at a flower or candle flame; chant our favourite mantra; imagine ourselves on a remote beach or mountain top; or fly on the wings of the music-bird – ultimately, it is not what we choose to focus on that will determine our success: it is how fervently and wholeheartedly we offer ourselves to our task.
The more eagerness, love and joy we bring to our endeavour, the faster, surer, more lasting will be our success.
All our lives, we have been thought-bound, thought-defined and mind-confined. How then can we possibly do without thinking and thoughts? The notion is almost inconceivable, for our thoughts are as much our identity as our own skin.
As Sri Ramakrishna observed, sometimes to remove a thorn from our foot, we must use another thorn. If we are to transcend thoughts, we have to use the powers and capacities in our arsenal: to employ the mind against itself, and thoughts to conquer thought.
To clear the mind of thoughts, we need to concentrate the mind. We associate concentration very closely with thought itself. ‘Thinking’ is generally regarded as concentrated or organised thought. So, if we set about to use concentration to clear the mind of thoughts, on what shall we concentrate? Since it is virtually impossible for us to concentrate on ‘nothing’, we must concentrate on something we know how to concentrate on – a thought!
If there are no direct flights to our chosen destination, we will proceed via one or more stopover destinations along the way. If our goal is to reach a state of “no thoughts” – an empty mind – and we have no means of reaching that goal directly, let us aim first at an intermediary goal. In this case, let us narrow our focus down from numberless thoughts to just one thought: once we have reached that goal, from our new vantage point we will seek a way to our ultimate goal of zero thoughts.
This is the power of concentration in action: focusing exclusively on one chosen thought, we employ that thought as a shield to protect us, to ward off and filter out the multitudes of unnecessary, distracting thoughts. Thus, one thought can save and liberate us from the scourge of thoughts.
Contemplation
is beyond
the thought-mind.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We meditate to enter into, bring forward and enjoy the spiritual qualities of our heart – peace, love, light, joy, oneness. To gain access to our spiritual heart, we have first to calm and quieten our mind. To calm our mind, we must reduce our flow of thoughts. To enter the deepest meditation, we must go beyond the mind’s domain altogether, where no thought can reach.
Our observing, analysing, reasoning, deducing mind sets us above and beyond, and liberates us from the largely instinctive animal consciousness. Our mental capacities and achievements, especially through sciences and technology have helped mankind achieve considerable mastery of our finite universe. The rational, organising mind is mankind’s greatest accomplishment in the finite realms – until rising spiritual aspiration suggests the possibilities of transcending the finite and embracing the infinite – thenceforth, our mighty asset becomes our limiting liability.
Until we have transcended our mind and thought-attachment, we follow René Descartes – “I think, therefore I am.” We feel we are our thoughts and thinking process, our ideas, conclusions, beliefs, ideals and prejudices. To go beyond the mind and relinquish thoughts, requires letting go of our very concept of who and what we are. This is not easy, and cannot be achieved overnight.
There are two approaches to subduing thoughts in meditation:
a) – challenge thoughts and chase them away; or
b) – ignore thoughts altogether, taking refuge in the spiritual heart where thoughts have no existence and no purchase.
In coming episodes of “Meditation Matters”, we will explore ways and means to pursue both these pathways: concentration exercises to challenge and expel thoughts from the mind, alongside ways to enter directly those rarer atmospheres wherein thoughts are rendered redundant and simply expire.
“If we cannot control
Each and every thought,
We are forced to become
The perfect slaves of thought.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We are familiar with the consequences of not being able to control our thoughts: our thoughts instead, control us. Most of us, most of the time, are guided by our thoughts or emotions, rather than our heart and soul. Our thoughts and emotions mostly arise from and are focused on limited and limiting realities; hence our infinite heart and free soul suffocate under the constricting blanket of the confined finite. Estranged from our soul – our perennial source of happiness, love, light and freedom – our life experience is captive to frustration, tension, insecurity and unhappiness.
We are forced to play the roles of characters alien to our true nature. Eternally infinite, pure, free beings of light and delight, we masquerade as confused, hesitant, fearful, cramped, petty creatures of uncertain obscurity.
Like desires, thoughts per se do not pose a threat to us: our mortal peril lies in our attachment to thoughts. It is the chains and bonds of attachment which render us helpless, imprison us and forbid our happiness.
Our predicament is stark: unless and until we can control our thoughts and thought process, we remain forever a slave. We might glimpse occasional happiness or catch an echo of partial satisfaction, but any chance of reaching our potential or fulfilling our soul’s purpose is a remote and forlorn dream.
The only way we can consciously gain mastery over our own thought process is through meditation. Yet to effectively meditate, we must gain mastery over our thoughts. This seeming “Catch 22” can only be resolved through sustained, dedicated, determined, patient commitment to our daily meditation practise.
Practise really does make perfect; slow and steady truly wins the race.
“Sometimes I wonder
Whether thoughts are made of misery
Or misery is made of thoughts.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Every level of our existence below the mind – body and vital – and every level above the mind – heart and soul – exist and operate without thoughts. Thoughts are exclusive to the thinking mind: they are its food, bricks, language, currency, secret service and armed forces.
As a spider spins its web out of its own body, so the mind constructs its own universe out of itself, from its limited and binding thoughts. Designed to capture its prey, the web imprisons its maker. So, in seeking to impose meaning on the chaos of the universe, the mind is entrapped and imprisoned by its own thoughts, fears, pride and prejudice.
A thinking mind acts as a black hole in our spiritual life, actively devouring light, peace and joy from its surrounding inner galaxies. Peace, light and joy are all native to our soul – infinitely free and ever expansive. The moment they are grabbed by the thinking mind, light is obscured, peace ruffled, and joy retreats into misery.
Thoughts and misery are interdependent. Thoughts enmesh us in the material and tether us to the temporal; while misery accrues from the combined tyrannies of finite time and space.
Thoughts constrict and restrict, as they are limited and limiting. In limitation, we are bound, and bound to suffer. Thoughts are misery’s oxygen – no thoughts, no misery; in the heart’s bliss, thoughts are utterly redundant. Misery begets thoughts, as thoughts nurture misery.
To bury misery and bask in eternal joy, we must master our thoughts once and for all. While ultimate victory may be a distant dream, let our goal be daily progress, lessening thoughts gradually and inexorably as, step by step, we approach our goal.
