What is thinking?

Tonight (14th of December) I will give a lecture about mindful thinking. In the oriental spiritual traditions thinking is mostly seen as: having thoughts. And thoughts hinder the mindful perception of everything other than myself. Being absorbed in thoughts means being absorbed in myself. Not that this is always a pleasant thing to be absorbed in my own being - but it distracts me from the world, that is certain. And so it seems to be necessary to step out of these thoughts and open my senses without thought for the world - and myself again.

But there is another kind of thinking - that maybe seems even more terrible than that of 'having thoughts'. It is the understanding thinking - the scientific thinking, the mathematical thinking. The necessary thinking by which we know where we are, who I am, who you are, which tree this is and so on. The thinking by which I know that I must leave a room through the door and not through the wall! This elementary thinking is not being recognised as thinking. Mostly the sense perception is considered as bearing its meaning in the perception itself. But regarding perceiving and understanding, we can learn to 'see' that in every second of wakeful life we really need to accompany our perceptions by thinking. It is a lack of mindfulness that we are not aware that sense-perception delivers no meaning at all, and that we have to think to recognise what our perceptions mean.

It is true, that if I am absorbed in thoughts that have nothing to do with perception, I miss my life and the life of my beloved. But if I perceive without thought, I also miss the same life and life of my beloved - because I only gaze at it and at them, without grasping the sense.

That is why I wrote last week, that we lose half of the world if we relax from thinking and let things go by simply with mindfulness. The mind has two sides: perception with the senses and perception of thoughts that belong to them. Sense-perception keeps us in the here and now, keeps us in physical life.

Thinking lifts us beyond the here and now, it bears us from the moment into eternity.
On earth we have to be in the moment. But we also have to be in the world from where we came and to which we will go again. I live on earth but my true being comes from elsewhere and will go there again when the time has come. We should not have completely forgotten this other world. It is still there in thinking, not in thoughts.


The history of thinking: The school of Athens by Rafael Santi, around 1510, Stanza della Segnatura.What is thinking? by Mieke Mosmuller