Thinking Your Way to Stillness
January 08, 2009
There’s a common perception that meditation doesn’t involve any thinking. You just force the mind to stay alert in the present moment and refuse to get involved in any thoughts at all. Then it will settle down. That approach works for some people in some circumstances, but not for everyone. This is why the Buddha gave a wide range of instructions on how to deal with distracting thoughts. Just noting them and dropping them is one way of dealing with them, but there are other ways of dealing with them as well, many of which require that you think in order to get around them.