The Thinking Mind

The first meaning that comes to mind when I hear “time of thinking” is that I have to take some time bringing thoughts to my mind, to encourage them. Thinking usually has to do with the action of using one’s mind to produce thoughts. But the exercise 2 in DTS, entitled “Time of Thinking”, try to convey a different approach.

It asks to let thoughts arise in the mind. And let go the dependence on the content of the thoughts for knowledge of what is happening, to let go the concern for continuity. But this is the default mode of operation of the ordinary mind, to make sense of what is happening. There is this pull to continue to do this, a subtle anxiety and perhaps fear, an emotional tone permeating the mind.

As I do the exercise, I see that the sensations in my body are not being felt, and the surroundings continue unnoticed. The quality of the experience is tense and fragmented. Only the necklace of stories of what is happening continues, phrase by phrase, bead by bead.

But the exercise “time of thinking”, that I am invited to do, asks me to rest in the activity of thinking, to stay with the thinking of each thought. Resting and staying tell me that I don´t have to do anything. Just be open to see what is happening; just be receptive, not rejecting or trying to manipulate anything or to construct anything.

As I bring attention to include my body and my breath, and the room I am practicing, there is a shift. I can see the resistance, and this knowledge makes it melt little by little. A spacious quality is perceived allowing an intimate contact with the field of experience, with awareness.

“In intimacy, lines of communication form, we are not confined to linear or circular structures, but can return to the multidimensionality of appearance. Feedback invites a new sense of the whole.” DTS 252

Are the thinking mind and the field one and the same? When awareness merges with the field, the time of thinking can be seen as the dynamic of the thinking mind, and a different kind of knowing is available.