You mean discursive thinking like that voice in your head? Yeah, we do that in shikantaza. After you turn it off what’s left is the sensation of the breath, the sound of wind chimes outside and, if your eyes are open, the image of the wall in front of you. It takes me about 30 minutes of deliberate intention in a peaceful room to get into this state.
I think getting rid of the voice in my head temporarily is very easy. Trivially, by replacing it with a loud repeating dum dum dum sound in my head, though Im not sure that counts. But I’ve also just done 30s of no auditory imagination while looking around in my non-blank room, and it took maybe 5s to get there. Is this one of those buddhist terms of art where it actually means way more than a layperson would reasonably think it does?
I think getting rid of the voice in my head temporarily is very easy. Trivially, by replacing it with a loud repeating dum dum dum sound in my head, though Im not sure that counts. But I’ve also just done 30s of no auditory imagination while looking around in my non-blank room, and it took maybe 5s to get there. Is this one of those buddhist terms of art where it actually means way more than a layperson would reasonably think it does?