How Thinking Creates Suffering
An insight shared by Jiddu Krishnamurti for you to muse and reflect on.
Neither him nor I would claim this is right or correct, that is for you to decide by yourself…
The Thinker and the Thought
I think, therefore I am…
Well, who is the I that is doing the thinking and how is this I separate from the thought that is being thought about?
That question almost makes no sense!
You see, when we think, there is nothing but thinking happening; in other words, we are simply that thought in the present moment. If we choose to think about what we were thinking a moment ago (meta cognition – thinking about thinking) we are pondering a past event. In this scenario we may feel like there is an I that is doing the thinking separate to the thought, but the reality is the thinking process which is producing that that as a logical output is happening in the present moment.
We are not I and the thought; we are the thought about I and the thought.
Put another way, the act of experience encompasses everything, there is no experiencer separate from the experience. When that sensation or perception arises, this is simply us thinking about the experience of the pat moment.
In the present moment there is only experience.
The Gap of Comparison
So, excepting that there is no such thing as a separation between the experiencer and the experience, where does this perception stem from?
Egoic mind is a repository of knowledge.
We accumulate knowledge such as language that we use to label, describe and then communicate about things.
When we have an experience, we then reflect on this experience using our knowledge (which is based on the past) to describe that experience to ourself.
This process of description is done by comparing information about the label we have applied to the new experience and with our stored knowledge about similarly labelled experiences, or our imagined constructs of what the definition of the label “should” be like.
This process of comparison to understand is an egoic process which had evolved to help us form our perception and communicate through the lens of the ego with other humans – this lens enables us to temper our communication and furnish it with greater depth and meaning. i.e. choosing our words carefully to convey subtext and/or imply things with our words (see the use of language tool).
This process while a natural feature of our egoic mind designed to help us build social networks does not always give rise to the most authentic communication – this is a much broader and deeper topic which we will not explore in this post.
What we can identify though, is that this process of comparison using labels creates a gap between the experience being reviewed and the knowledge being used to evaluate or judge the experience.
What is in the Gap?
Creativity and suffering.
When we judge our experiences, this gives us the opportunity to label, classify and/or simplify the experience so that it fits in to our map of the world (assimilation), or we can choose to modify and update our map of the world so that it now contains the new input from this experience (accommodation).
Either way though, when we initially evaluate the experience to see if it will be assimilated or accommodated, what we are doing is using old abstracted knowledge which is unique to the past experience. As such, there will always be a gap or a difference between the new experience being evaluated and the knowledge it is being compared to.
We can either fill this gap creatively through the process of accommodation, or experience energetic turbulence and waste as we try to resolve the difference and consolidate the experience in to established labels through the process of assimilation.
So now we can see how the process of assimilation gives rise to suffering through the creation of this gap born from comparison.
So, what are we to do?
Not think?
Authentic Experience
The alternative is to accept that no two experiences are ever exactly the same.
No man ever steps in to the same river twice.
for it is not the same river,
and he is not the same man.
– Hereclitus
Once we truly accept this, we tip towards a default internal process of accommodation rather than assimilation. You see, we cannot avoid the processes of meta cognition or evaluation of experiences – our minds are physiologically wired to do this to allow us to comprehend and acquire knowledge.
What we can do is see this process for what it is and influence how it happens. So next time you have the opportunity to meditate have a go at not using labels to describe anything. This means no labels for thoughts, feelings and emotions – no names. Just disregard the naming offered by your mind and instead connect with the feelings emerging within the present moment.
Try it, see how it feels and what insights this brings.
Defaulting to accommodation and reducing our use of labelling are the keys to allowing authentic experience to occur.
If we choose to accommodate new experience and embrace the unnamed unknown,
no longer will our unconscious thought processes manifest suffering.
What do you think?
Enjoy, for now.