I was listening to the “Daily Calm” yesterday. “Calm”, one of my favourite apps, takes you through guided meditations which help you to be calmer, more grateful or more present. In it, I was told that the solution to not thinking clearly was regular meditation practice. I have heard this advice many times before from meditators. For instance, they say that being upset by your thinking, or being angry at the state of the world, or not being present in the moment, or not feeling grateful, are problems which can be solved with the technique of practising meditation. Similarly, the idea that meditation is a practice which rewards the diligent is common. I also hear from a lot of yoga friends that they wish they could bring the peace they feel when practicing yoga out into the real world. Many of them solve this problem by practicing yoga more and more.

The late Daisetz Taitaro Suzuki, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in Otani University in Kyoto, wrote the lovely book “The Zen Doctrine of No Mind”, “An examination of the purpose and technique of Zen training based upon the teaching of the eighth-century master Hui-neng”. The start of the book is given to explaining the differences between the Southern School of Zen and Hui-Neng’s Northern School. Shen-Hsiu, the leader of the Southern school, wrote

The body is the Bodhi-tree

The mind is like the mirror bright

Take heed to keep it always clean

And let not dust collect upon it

Hui-Neng wrote:

There is no Bodhi-tree

Nor stand of mirror bright

Since all is void

Where can the dust alight

“‘From the first not a thing is’ this was the first proclamation made by Hui-Neng. It is a bomb thrown into the camp of Shen-Hsiu and his predecessors”.

Your mind already has Buddha-nature, but sometimes you forget that. In higher states of mind, it’s easier to remember your true nature, and in lower states, it’s easier to forget it. Your state of mind varies; everyone’s does. The great master Hui-Neng had days when his thinking wasn’t trustworthy just like you do. I’m not trying to insult Hui-Neng, only to point that he too was human and differing states of mind come with the territory. Clearer states of mind feel more meditative. You are more likely to be present in the moment and to see your moment-to-moment experience more philosophically. In lower states of mind, your thinking is less trustworthy and you’re more likely to be upsetting yourself by taking thinking about the past or the future too seriously or personally.

Seeing lower and higher states of mind as something fundamental to the nature of all thinking beings is a useful direction. Sometimes being more aware in the moment of what is causing the cloudiness of your thinking means the clouds lift. It is not possible to stop your thinking; the engine is always running. How much you engage the clutch is up to you. How much you see your thinking as being personal to you is up to you. How seriously you take your thoughts is up to you. There are a lot of feedback loops in thinking. By not taking your thinking too seriously you’ll find the accelerator eases and slows everything down.

Gaps between your thoughts will open up. With less on your mind, you’ll be open to new thought, new directions, less habitual choices.

Some people have higher states of mind when they’re exercising, some in the shower, some when in nature. Some people think clearly more often after sleeping well. It’s important to realise that none of these places or conditions are required. The mind can think clearly anywhere, any time. You’ll know it when it happens because it will feel good, feel right. Your feeling is a barometer for your thinking. You are always just feeling your thinking.

And – practising meditation works too. Applying this as a technique changes your experience of the world. After practising meditation many people feel better, because they are thinking more clearly. But when applying this ‘thing’ called meditation sometimes people mix up the thing and the experience. They mistaking the practise with the meditative state. Understanding that this meditative state is a natural occurence of your mind is seeing where your experience comes from in the first place. “From the first not a thing is”.

I experienced this as a very freeing insight. You can experience meditation in the middle of a hectic workplace. In a busy, crowded city. When all around you are panicing. With screaming kids, late for school in the morning. Again. Your meditative experience of life is shaped not from any of these external circumstances, although in the moment it often appears to. Similarly your meditative experience of life does not come from practising meditation or the speific poses of yoga, even though it often seems like it does. Instead it only comes from the degree to which you’re aware of the nature of thinking.