Q: Should I practice repeatedly moving my attention away from thought, and instead focus it on what I can sense and perceive in the current moment?
/The Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of Washington
Should I practice repeatedly moving my attention away from thought, and instead focus it on what I can sense and perceive in the current moment?
When thought is no longer believed to be substantial and independent, then the need to do anything with it no longer arises. When thought is recognized as simply an appearance, an appearance no different than the rock beside the road or the blue hue of a passing car, it looses its import and the fixation drops away.
Moving the attention from one object to another can be useful when fixation is the current belief. Thought, by its nature, can be very convincing and the stories that play often trap the apparent separate self in the conceptual world of the mind. And trying to pretend it is not believed is itself just another belief (thought) that will maintain the weight that thinking carries.
Moving the attention to what we sense and perceive can break the hold of the thought patterns, and can initially be quite useful in mitigating the obsessive nature of thinking… but it too can trap the separate self through a more subtle form of object worshiping. As seekers, this practice can weaken the belief in the certainty of the mind, yet in time, one begins to consider it usefulness.
If we look at thoughts a bit more closely, we discover that they are a more magical than intentional and we see that they just appear of their own accord, quite like the ephemeral images that stream past as we drive along the road.
The common belief is that we author thoughts and thus control them, but that belief is really kind of silly based upon our experience.
For instance, I can now put the word "elephant" in your head simply by writing it.
And it's easy to do the same without even uttering the word: "Row, row, row your ____".
If I asked you to only think about the chair you are sitting on for the next ten minutes, very quickly you would realize the impossibility of such a request.
And if you controlled your thoughts, then what will your next thought be?
If you look back at the thoughts that passed through your consciousness as you read the last few sentences, how many did you author? What does it even mean to "author" something? Isn't "authorship" itself just another concept, another thought? And if you authored the thought, what authored the thought that authored the next thought?
The ownership that we take for thought is just a thought.
Close your eyes for about a second. Now close them again for a second. How much control did you have over your thoughts the first time your closed your eyes? And the second time? How different were the thoughts between each activity? Did a thought even appear? Etc.
We hold on to or push away thoughts when we believe them. Or coming at it another way: How often do you push away image of the gray tile in the lobby of your office? How much effort does it take to let pass the noticing of third door down the hall when you walk past it? When you reach for your socks in the morning, do you spend the rest of the day considering where they were located in the drawer? Each of those is actually a thought, but because we rarely give them significance, you might overlook that fact.
We fixate only on the thoughts we believe to be significant. When thoughts are no longer significant, they carry no weight and thus are no longer avoided or worshiped (and thus not "in the way"). They then are seen to appear. Period. I could also say they disappear, but in fact a thought appears... and another thought may appear noting the "previous thought" is no longer here. Nothing really happens. It's just a thought that suggests something "happened".
In the Zen tradition, the appearances are sometimes compared to the wind passing through the leaves of a tree. Why bother noting a particular "piece" of wind (thought) as it passes?
As I write this, there is no experience of authorship. There is no thinking. The words simply appear. I don't know how they do or why. To explore their origin would take effort and it's known that the effort itself would become the author of their "origin". But why bother? The next sentence will appear. Or it won't. I can be ok with this unknown or I can not be ok with it. Why would it matter? Being ok is just another thought appearing. Being not ok is just another thought appearing. Why give them significance? And even if they took on significance, wouldn't that too be just what is appearing?
So when we understand the unsubstantial nature of thought, that is, when we discover that thought is not personal, not personal at all, it is no longer of significance and it falls away just as it appears. We also see that putting our attention on "the current moment" is no different than fixating on thought (or a rock, for that matter) and the "current moment" ceases to exist as well.
For some, what is being said here is all a bit abstract. If it doesn't resonate, that's ok - move on and read something that feels more true to you. There is no "right" way, so trust your own inclinations.
If what is being said resonates, let yourself explore it. Trust the curiosity.
-----
Writing about spirituality is really a very absurd venture. It's not possible to illuminate what is being pointed to. Language requires the subject-object model and thus a duality that by its nature supports a belief in itself. And yet the words appear.
In the end, silence feels more true.