I can safely say that meditation is primarily conceived and presented as a way to get out of one’s head and back in to one’s body and senses. Optimal meditative states are considered those where thoughts cease—and every meditation practice is supposed to somehow accomplish arriving at a quiet, thought-free state of mind. Thoughts are not just mere distractions—they are often seen as the cause of suffering. There are teachers who believe that nothing good can come out of thinking, and that meditation practice should never “encourage” thinking but always “let go of it.”

            These and similar statements about thinking in meditation seem so absolute and authoritative that we often forget that they are narratives about meditation. By that I am I mean that they are someone’s story about thinking in meditation. Unfortunately, it has become many people’s story, and therefore has achieved greater credence as a belief in how things really are, that an “awakened” individual sees the world with a mind where “thinking” has stopped.  This belief is so entrenched in the meditation community and culture that to question it goes against the very notion as to what meditation is and where it should lead (the narrative that it should always lead to the elimination of thoughts).

            It is not my intent to convince you through the dismantling of the narrative of “no thought in meditation is the truth” that the opposite narrative of “thought can lead to true understandings” is more valid. People can meditate with both narratives. They have done so for centuries in the Buddhist tradition. There is age-old distinction between vipassana (seeing into the nature of inner experience) and samatha (stilling the mind) practice. But unfortunately, vipassana has been invested with the narratives of samatha practice—most vipassana techniques and methods are meant to still the mind and arrive at thought-free states, which blur the distinction between these two “narrative” strands of meditation. 

All you need to do is question whether there has to be a single, over-arching narrative for meditation practice, such as all practices should lead to “thought-free” states of mind, or whether multiple narratives about meditation practice are possible, and perhaps even healthier and wiser. Such a multiplicity of narratives does exist in traditional meditation practices, but are viewed more like streams that should flow into one large river, rather than as separate strands of meditation practice and experience. For example, someone can do traditional practices on mindfulness of breathing, loving-kindness, and noting moment-by-moment experiences, knowing that they are indeed separate practices with their own narratives, but somehow see them as operating under a grander narrative of leading to awakened states of mind that are free of thought. If one were to set aside the grand narrative and just practice with the separate narratives of each of these practices, the notion of becoming “thought-free” would certainly factor less into those practices. Loving-kindness practice certainly requires thinking and feeling. A noting practice starts off with the use of language to describe momentary experiences, and mindfulness of breathing, surely the purest no-thought practice of the bunch, may at times require verbal observations, such as “in” and “out” as well as moments of remembering to return one’s attention to the breath and some kind of thought about where the breath is and what it is like. Though initially taught as techniques that utilize thinking, they are supposed to lead to that which is beyond thinking, which keeps the narrative of “no-thought” as the dominant narrative.

If the practices you are using require thinking, then thinking is useful. Why then the message that thinking is somehow wrong or bad? Isn’t it just a case of some kinds of thinking being wrong while other kinds of thinking are deemed right? In the case of traditional practices, isn’t it that thinking that pertains to noticing your breath is considered useful while thinking about what you will do after the meditation sitting is considered a distraction? For it is believed that thinking that pertains to your breath will lead to experiences of no thought, or of a pure awareness, while thinking that is about what you will do later in the day is believed not to lead to the elimination of thinking, but to more thinking. It can be safely said that thinking which eventually leads to the elimination of thought is the only kind of thinking one should engage in during meditation. And very few people seem to question that narrative. That brings us back to where this article started, except with one interesting twist: Is thinking that is meant to eliminate thought the same as thinking that is done to understand what fuels thought?