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QUESTION 3 RESPONSES

HOW DO YOU THINK OF NOT THINKING?
How can you be without thought? How is it done??


When I want to "not think," first,I need to go to my quiet place, relax, breathe deeply, close my eyes, and then focus on a point(?) which I could say is somewhere above my eye level... (this is hard to describe) Then I have the sensation that I am empty and receptive and without distraction ... and able to be a vessel into which experiences / sensations / insights come.

Mary


The only thing I can relate to is the breath concentration used in yoga and/or meditation. If the mind is totally focused on the intake and release of prana there is little room for mindless thought. Unless this is considered thinking, about the breath that is.

breath

Do without doing, all get done.

Ian

Is there a difference between thought and feeling? If so, perhaps when one is loving, then one is not thinking.

Meher Baba says: "Start learning to love God by loving those whom you cannot love. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the more you forget yourself. And when you completely forget yourself, you find God."

I do not think it is possible to sustain this real love with out the grace of the Master.

Laurent

I think there are actually several answers.

[1] Buddha's method of opposite ideas canceling each other out.

This, I believe, is meant to be used with emotions. Opposite emotions are traced to their root, and their cause (karma) is discovered. One then deals calmly with the cause.

[2] Samadhi.

Samadhi is sometimes called a uniting of subject and object. Another popular description is "Runner's High". Athletics offers many examples of this state of mind. The rules of the game, the techniques, the personal doubts, all slip away from the mind. The body reaches complex goals in a natural manner. A nice example is provided by the foul-shots of basketball. These are very difficult, mostly because the action of game stops and the mind has ample time to reassert itself. Thinking resumes and trouble starts.

[3] Emergencies.

As I'm writing this, a television show is telling the story of a helecopter crash. Two men are trapped inside and the helecopter is about to explode. Without need of orders, a dozen men rush towards the helecopter. There is no plan, no examination of moral codes, no logical analysis of the situation, just action. Yet the action is intelligent and the men are saved.

In each of these examples the normal point of view falls away, and the "suchness", as Buddha describes it, of the situation is understood.

David de Void

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