Daily Dharma

Stream of Thoughts

We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.

Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us. This process doesn’t magically happen by itself. It takes energy. We call the effort to cultivate our ability to be in the present moment “practice” or “meditation practice.”

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith

The "incessant stream of thoughts" does indeed drive my actions now. Since my thoughts tend to not only race but diverge onto multiple paths my actions tend to be few (the thoughts overwhelm me into inaction it often seems) and they tend to be uninformed by reality. In other words. I tend to say and sometimes do things that are not based on what is actually happening in my world. An example would by my misinterpretation of what someone has said to me so that I react in a defensive or aggressive manner. If I had either not given my interpretation of whatever the person had said any credence without checking to see if that is what they really meant, the resulting reaction from that person would not be so angry and confused.

My practice now consists of random moments of following my breath, reading books on Zen or related matter and the care of plants. These are good but not substitutes for a daily zazen routine. I want to go to my old pattern of two 30 minute sittings a day plus study and work practice (mindfulness in my actions).