I disagree, because I have a method for doing so which I believe is effective. I stumbled upon it accidentally, while doing a mental exercise. The point of the exercise was gaze control. Normally we look around automatically and unconsciously, so I went for a walk (on a familiar path with nothing to run into or trip over) and made an effort not to, to always keep my eyes in one particular position, and never divert my gaze. First, I went around looking only forward; then, looking almost straight up, navigating by peripheral vision and using treetops as landmarks. The key was, whenever I caught myself looking down, I would immediately close my eyes, reset, and resume. This both stopped me from continuing to look down and, more importantly, stopped me from thinking about the fact that I had done so.
You can do the same thing to unwanted thoughts, such as songs stuck in your head, as long as you have the right response prepared. First, identify the unwanted thought, and which parts of the brain it uses. In the case of a song, that’s your audio short-term memory, and if it has lyrics, your language processing centers. Next, prepare a thought which uses the same parts of the brain. I’ll call this a “reset thought”. In this case, a short meaningless phrase will work. Test it by trying to think both the reset thought and the unwanted thought at the same time, to make sure you can’t (alternating is okay though.) Next, reinforce the reset thought, by focusing on it exclusively for an hour or so. Finally, turn the unwanted thought into a trigger for the reset thought, so that both the unwanted thought and any meta-thought about the unwanted thought are forced out quickly. Repeat the reset thought until something else is ready to take its place.
Zen teaches students to use a short mantra as a reset thought. The important things are that it must be able to repeat in a loop, it must have a natural stopping point in which to let in the thought which follows after, and it must be simple enough for the area which is being reset to remember, without needing other parts of the brain to assist in recall.
YMMV, of course. I’m very interested in what you think of this, since you have data sources (students) which I don’t.
Zen teaches students to use a short mantra as a reset thought.
I was more-or-less with you up to this point. Perhaps you are confusing mantras and koans?
Also, it doesn’t sound like you’ve understood my point about “can’t decide not to have thoughts”. Your technique simply replaces one thought with another. I meant that we can’t choose not to have thoughts at all, only train ourselves to not follow them, or to replace them with other things.
Such training also does not constitute deciding not to have a thought, although you can certainly decide to apply the training or a technique to a particular thought or range of thoughts.
Zen teaches students to use a short mantra as a reset thought.
I was more-or-less with you up to this point. Perhaps you are confusing mantras and koans?
No, I am not. A mantra is a prepared thought that is used as a successor to unwanted thoughts, in order to force them out. It is not the only thing which can serve this purpose, but it is optimized for it. In fact, any thought will do, provided it is readily accessible; but a thought which takes awhile to generate won’t work, because the unwanted thought will continue and take hold in the mean time. This is usually either explained badly, under-emphasized, or not mentioned at all, but Crowley, at least, addresses it when he says “any intruding thoughts are thrown off by the mantra, just as pieces of putty would be from a fly-wheel” (in chapter 2).
Also, it doesn’t sound like you’ve understood my point about “can’t decide not to have thoughts”. Your technique simply replaces one thought with another. I meant that we can’t choose not to have thoughts at all, only train ourselves to not follow them, or to replace them with other things.
We seem to be talking past eachother here. By “not have a thought”, I mean that we can prevent a specific thought (such as a song or a political topic) from manifesting, not that we can stop thinking about all things entirely. I have noticed that if you consistently replace a thought quickly enough after it first manifests, then it will stop manifesting in the first place. Of course, if you replace the thought “X” with thought “it is bad to think X”, then X is still active in your mind, hence the need for something completely unrelated but which uses the same part of the brain to displace it with.
Such training also does not constitute deciding not to have a thought, although you can certainly decide to apply the training or a technique to a particular thought or range of thoughts.
Here, it seems we disagree only on the number of levels of indirection. If you decide to apply a technique to cause yourself to not have a thought, then that is the same as deciding to not have that thought. The technique is an implementation detail which is necessary after you make the decision, but not does not factor into the decision itself.
No, I am not. A mantra is a prepared thought that is used as a successor to unwanted thoughts, in order to force them out.
Um, no. That’s a koan.
A mantra is a sequence of sounds that is considered capable of causing transformation—it’s often a meaningful expression relating to spirituality.
A koan is intended to be inaccessible to rational thought—meditating upon a koan sufficiently should cause you to stop thinking and instead ‘become one with the koan’, arriving at its meaning entirely through intuition.
Some schools regard koans as actually containing teachings, while others regard them as meaningless statements to be repeated over and over to remove thoughts from the mind.
That’s very interesting, and makes lots of sense. Reminds me of the technique of kicking the wall to stop the headache.
How to know which substitutions are the most suitable? For instance, what would you use to substitute for bad memories of the past? Fears of the future? Boredom with the task at hand?
I happen not yet to be a great specialist in brain anatomy...
How to know which substitutions are the most suitable? For instance, what would you use to substitute for bad memories of the past? Fears of the future? Boredom with the task at hand?
I don’t think it’s the content of the thought you’re trying to displace that matters, but the type—ie, whether it’s verbal or visual, generated or played back from memory, etc. Details like subject and tense aren’t likely to matter.
Note that boredom is an issue for which this technique will not work, because boredom is not a separate thought, but a tag applied to other thoughts which you don’t want to get rid of. Also, traumatic memories are a likely special case and, thankfully, I don’t have any to experiment with, so I don’t know what will work there.
I disagree, because I have a method for doing so which I believe is effective. I stumbled upon it accidentally, while doing a mental exercise. The point of the exercise was gaze control. Normally we look around automatically and unconsciously, so I went for a walk (on a familiar path with nothing to run into or trip over) and made an effort not to, to always keep my eyes in one particular position, and never divert my gaze. First, I went around looking only forward; then, looking almost straight up, navigating by peripheral vision and using treetops as landmarks. The key was, whenever I caught myself looking down, I would immediately close my eyes, reset, and resume. This both stopped me from continuing to look down and, more importantly, stopped me from thinking about the fact that I had done so.
You can do the same thing to unwanted thoughts, such as songs stuck in your head, as long as you have the right response prepared. First, identify the unwanted thought, and which parts of the brain it uses. In the case of a song, that’s your audio short-term memory, and if it has lyrics, your language processing centers. Next, prepare a thought which uses the same parts of the brain. I’ll call this a “reset thought”. In this case, a short meaningless phrase will work. Test it by trying to think both the reset thought and the unwanted thought at the same time, to make sure you can’t (alternating is okay though.) Next, reinforce the reset thought, by focusing on it exclusively for an hour or so. Finally, turn the unwanted thought into a trigger for the reset thought, so that both the unwanted thought and any meta-thought about the unwanted thought are forced out quickly. Repeat the reset thought until something else is ready to take its place.
Zen teaches students to use a short mantra as a reset thought. The important things are that it must be able to repeat in a loop, it must have a natural stopping point in which to let in the thought which follows after, and it must be simple enough for the area which is being reset to remember, without needing other parts of the brain to assist in recall.
YMMV, of course. I’m very interested in what you think of this, since you have data sources (students) which I don’t.
I was more-or-less with you up to this point. Perhaps you are confusing mantras and koans?
Also, it doesn’t sound like you’ve understood my point about “can’t decide not to have thoughts”. Your technique simply replaces one thought with another. I meant that we can’t choose not to have thoughts at all, only train ourselves to not follow them, or to replace them with other things.
Such training also does not constitute deciding not to have a thought, although you can certainly decide to apply the training or a technique to a particular thought or range of thoughts.
No, I am not. A mantra is a prepared thought that is used as a successor to unwanted thoughts, in order to force them out. It is not the only thing which can serve this purpose, but it is optimized for it. In fact, any thought will do, provided it is readily accessible; but a thought which takes awhile to generate won’t work, because the unwanted thought will continue and take hold in the mean time. This is usually either explained badly, under-emphasized, or not mentioned at all, but Crowley, at least, addresses it when he says “any intruding thoughts are thrown off by the mantra, just as pieces of putty would be from a fly-wheel” (in chapter 2).
We seem to be talking past eachother here. By “not have a thought”, I mean that we can prevent a specific thought (such as a song or a political topic) from manifesting, not that we can stop thinking about all things entirely. I have noticed that if you consistently replace a thought quickly enough after it first manifests, then it will stop manifesting in the first place. Of course, if you replace the thought “X” with thought “it is bad to think X”, then X is still active in your mind, hence the need for something completely unrelated but which uses the same part of the brain to displace it with.
Here, it seems we disagree only on the number of levels of indirection. If you decide to apply a technique to cause yourself to not have a thought, then that is the same as deciding to not have that thought. The technique is an implementation detail which is necessary after you make the decision, but not does not factor into the decision itself.
Um, no. That’s a koan.
A mantra is a sequence of sounds that is considered capable of causing transformation—it’s often a meaningful expression relating to spirituality.
A koan is intended to be inaccessible to rational thought—meditating upon a koan sufficiently should cause you to stop thinking and instead ‘become one with the koan’, arriving at its meaning entirely through intuition.
Some schools regard koans as actually containing teachings, while others regard them as meaningless statements to be repeated over and over to remove thoughts from the mind.
I’m not sure whether my use of the word ‘mantra’ is correct, but I am reasonably certain that koans are not suitable for the purpose I described.
That’s very interesting, and makes lots of sense. Reminds me of the technique of kicking the wall to stop the headache.
How to know which substitutions are the most suitable? For instance, what would you use to substitute for bad memories of the past? Fears of the future? Boredom with the task at hand?
I happen not yet to be a great specialist in brain anatomy...
I don’t think it’s the content of the thought you’re trying to displace that matters, but the type—ie, whether it’s verbal or visual, generated or played back from memory, etc. Details like subject and tense aren’t likely to matter.
Note that boredom is an issue for which this technique will not work, because boredom is not a separate thought, but a tag applied to other thoughts which you don’t want to get rid of. Also, traumatic memories are a likely special case and, thankfully, I don’t have any to experiment with, so I don’t know what will work there.