Thoughts on Thoughts
Where do our thoughts come from? The current Western scientific understanding is that they come from firing neurons within the brain. However it has relatively recently been discovered that the heart also has its own neurons, so do some of our thoughts come from the heart? What about the intestines? They too have been shown to have a neural network, so maybe our ‘gut instinct’ is real and some of our thoughts come from down there? Is it possible that some thoughts may come from somewhere else – like from outside of the body altogether?
It may come as a surprise to some but the brain itself is largely over-looked within Chinese medical theory. People often assume that is because the brain wasn’t properly understood by the ancient Chinese, so it was therefore omitted from their organ-system theories. However this could not be further from the truth. They understood the brain, not as something that generates thought, but instead as some kind organic filter that filters out thoughts from a sea of consciousness.
To understand this concept we must at first understand the Daoist philosophy of existence from where this idea stems. The theory is that all of reality is born from the vast potential of Dao. It moves down through the spiritual and energetic realms, before finally manifesting in to this dense physical realm. It is here where we all live and our bodies interact with the realm of matter. This physical realm however, is seen as only very small portion of the totality of reality and it is the brain that connects us to this small part of the spectrum of existence.
If we didn’t have the brain we wouldn’t be able to cope with the multitude of signals, frequencies and vibrations with which we are continuously bombarded. The physical realm would be inseparable from the energetic and spiritual realms and the sheer amount of information would make it impossible for us to function. The brain then filters this information in to something more manageable and to allow us to make some sort of sense of the world.
The brain can therefore be likened to a sort of radio receiver which can be tuned in to different channels or frequencies. Some people may have a wider bandwidth than others, allowing access to more information and we can be seen to be all listening to a slightly different station. In this analogy, thoughts like radio waves, can be seen as something that originates outside of the constraints of the physical body.
A popular method of meditation is to sit quietly and watch your thoughts come and go as they arise. This is a difficult practice and you may often find yourself thinking your thoughts and then following them off down a train of thinking. Before you know it your mind has been wandering all over the place, rather than simply observing. This is because there is a part of the mind doesn’t like to be quiet- it doesn’t like to be forgotten about. At first it will tap into random streams of conscious thought, until it finds one that you like to think about, thereby capturing your attention. Once it then knows what you like to think about, it will tune in to this channel more readily, so that more streams of thought can be created.
This is what practitioners of meditation refer to as the monkey mind. It tricks you in to thinking, and it doesn’t really care whether the thoughts are good or bad, just as long as they are thought. The unruly mind trying to justify and perpetuate its existence. This is why the ancient Chinese didn’t give the brain as much attention as we do today in the West.
The aim of the meditator is to try and watch these thoughts arise and fall without giving them any attention and patiently bringing it back in line if it wanders off. And I am told with good authority, that if you ignore them with indifference for long enough, eventually the monkey mind gives up streaming these thoughts altogether and you can enter in to non-thought and true meditation. And when that time arises, all you are left with is the one who is doing the observing.