justSo

The speaker discusses the concept of "not thinking" in Buddhism and how it differs from the Western idea of not thinking. Not thinking in Buddhism refers to a state of spontaneity and stream of consciousness without conscious direction. It is different from mindfulness. In Zen meditation, one can reach a profound state of non-thinking, where they are just present without being dependent on senses. This idea is difficult to convey in the West, where we are always thinking and easily influenced by distractions. It is a profound and complex idea that can be achieved through Buddhist practices. Hi everyone, I thought I'd talk a little bit about not thinking. Not thinking is an idea or a concept or something that is used a lot in the Buddhist idea of what enlightenment entails and it's very different to not thinking or unthinking or unravelling or forms of idiocy that we might be familiar with in the West where people just don't think about what they're doing. So it's sort of the opposite of mindfulness for some people. That's not what we're discussing here. What we're talking about is a form of spontaneity in which it's almost like a stream of consciousness without being conscious or without directing the manner, the shape and the way forward, the way things are going to move. It just sort of happens. So there is an element of this is the thoughts that are arising because you've got some sense of consciousness wherever you are unless you enter a very profound state of non-thinking where you literally, for example in Zen meditation or other forms of sitting meditation, you're literally just there without being dependent on the senses, the gates of the senses so you don't have a sense of oh I'm comfortable or uncomfortable, I'm sitting or I'm not sitting. You've gone beyond that into just a justness, a justness, a suchness and this is a very difficult idea to convey to most people in the West because we always think or we're always thinking or we're always wandering off in different directions, this way, that way, totally being influenced by the presentation of ideas, the presentation of distractions and the less distractions you have the easier it is to enter a state of un-being, un-thinking, un-dependent arising if we can put it like that. So this is a very profound and complex idea but in essence it's very simple and it comes about through the practice and the practices that are used in Buddhism. So anyway that's all I wanted to talk about today, so that's all from me. Bye now.