SWITCH (Talk 5): Working with Difficult Thoughts | Chop the Thought
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What does it mean to "crush mind with mind?” And when does such a drastic-sounding step become necessary? In this final talk on the Vitakkasanthana Sutta, Zuisei takes up the fifth and last of the SWITCH tools: when all else has failed, we chop a thought at the root before it has a chance to take hold and grow. Along the way, she explores the nature of vitakka-vichara, the incessant inner dialogue that keeps us separated from reality, and points to what becomes possible when we finally get quiet enough to see what lies beneath all our thinking and fabrication—a world of possibility.
This dharma talk on SWITCH, Part 5, Chopping the Root of the Thought was given by Zuisei Goddard. Scroll below for video, audio, and transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
SWITCH (Talk 5):
Working with Difficult Thoughts | Chop
We are covering the last skillful sign in the Vitakkasanthana Sutta, the “Relaxation of Thoughts.” This sign I’ve called “chop” for the practice of cutting off at the root a thought that, because of its nature, we don’t want to give any space to, any time, any chance for it to take hold in our mind, because it’s an especially sticky thought, or an especially noxious thought, or an especially distracting thought. We can look at some examples in a moment, but first, a word about the term vitakka in the title of the sutra, which I should have mentioned at the beginning of the series, but neglected to do so.
Recognizing Distracting Thoughts
Vitakka is the Pali for “thinking” or “applied thought,” and Santhana, bringing something to a standstill, cutting off its momentum—a definition that’s especially helpful in this last nimitta, this last sign of “crushing mind with mind.” The term vitakka usually appears in the sutras as a compound with the word vicara (VICHARA), which means “discursive thinking” or “sustained thought.” Together, vitakka-vichara are considered to be the verbal function of the mind—our inner dialogue, in other words.
When we speak of “practicing noble silence,” as we do during a retreat, this instruction refers both to outer speech, but also, very importantly, to vitakka-vichara, that incessant dialogue that keeps us separated from reality. That’s why it’s so important to still it. It’s not innocuous. Every moment we spend talking to ourselves about what we’re going to have for dinner, or about that awful racket the neighbor was making last night, or what we should wear for that important meeting at work, we’re engaging in vitakka-vichara.
It reminds me of Annie Dillard saying in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that we’re like a blind person at a ball game with a radio pressed to our ear. We move through the world with commentary running incessantly through our minds, because we think that to know anything, we have to explain it to ourselves. I’d say we’re like a seeing person at a ball game with a radio to our ear. We do see what’s going on, and still, we talk to ourselves about it, as if perceiving it were not enough. It’s only when I explain it to myself that I make it real.
Practice shows us that it’s actually the opposite, to really know what’s going on, we have to shut up. We have to get quiet enough to see what’s in front of us, and not what we’ve created with all that verbal fabrication. Because the full phrase used in the sutra is vitakkasaṅkhārasaṇṭhānaṁ. There they are again, sankhara, or the Sanskrit samskara—our fabrications, our creations, which we hold so dear and which confuse things so.
I remember many years ago having an interaction with my teacher. I told him about some problem I was having, expecting he’d be sympathetic, tell me how sorry he was that I had to go through that. But he just nodded and changed the subject. In the moment I was fine, I thought, Oh, it’s not a big deal, right. But afterward—afterward I started thinking some more, and the story came in: Why doesn’t he care? My teacher doesn’t care. If he doesn’t care, no one does. Before long I had a full-blown pity party going. This is what our stories do sometimes. This is what our thinking does.
Any discursive thinking is vitakka-vicara—the “thinking and more thinking,” as one teacher translated it, that gets in the way of us seeing directly. That’s why this sutra is focused on stilling these types of thoughts, on doing what we need to do to quiet them down, so we can see clearly. There’s a bit of a catch here because vitakka-vicara also appears in the description of the first jhana, and some teachers translate vitakka-vicara as “initial” and “sustained thought,” or “directed thought and evaluation” as another translation says. We need these to focus our attention, right?
The Right Kind of Thinking at the Right Time
We need to be able to hold the breath in mind, in our awareness, and then we need to be able to keep our attention on it over time. We also need to reflect on what we’re doing and correct our attention if it wanders. We need to be able to evaluate the result of our application. Other teachers say: No, when we’re talking about vitakka-vicara, we’re always referring to thinking—all those background thoughts that you can and should ignore if you really want your concentration to grow stronger. Sustained thought and evaluation are something else, and you do need them to establish your concentration.
Think of koan study. You need to be able to memorize the koan, then think about its question, and hold it in mind. When we get distracted, we need to be able to notice that, let go of the distracting thought, and return to the koan. It’s also absolutely true that to see deeply into the koan, we have to let all thought die down. There were many times I went in to see my teacher, presented my koan, answered his questions, came out of the room, and afterward had no idea what had happened. I simply couldn’t have told you what I said or what he said. Yet I passed the koan, I answered the question. There was insight, but no conceptualization. That can definitely happen—that you see something and don’t know intellectually what it is you’ve seen, not in the moment. Then, over time, you learn to integrate the two.
No thinking at all won’t help us. Just thinking won’t help us either. So we need the right kind of thinking at the right time. Which takes us back to the need to let go of vitakka-vichara. At some point, we just have to get quiet, otherwise all that talking will get in the way. It’s like walking around with a mirror before your face. You see yourself instead of what’s in front of you. You see “through a glass, darkly,” as Saint Paul once said. Someone was telling me about a photo that won some sort of award—it was of a young woman standing before the Grand Canyon. There’s this majesty unfolding behind her but she can’t see it, because she has a phone up to her face and is taking a selfie. We miss so much, when we see so little.
Imagine a tick on the edge of a blade of grass going, Woah! Look at this mountain! It’s amazing! Meanwhile, it’s a speck in one piece of grass in a huge field at the edge of a town in a country that’s one of 195 countries in the world in one planet out of 100 billion in the galaxy, in a universe that has about two trillion galaxies. What we see is but a sliver of what there is to see.
So, we’ve been working on switching a distracting thought and if that doesn’t work, warning ourselves of the danger of keeping that kind of thought going. If that doesn’t work, we ignore the thought, we remove our attention from it so it loses momentum. If that doesn’t work, then we trace the thought back to its root, we get very quiet and very still and try to find the place that the thought comes from, which is the same place that a thought goes when it goes.
See for yourself what can’t be perceived or understood.
Have you ever tried that—trying to catch the moment a thought appears, or the moment when it fades? Where does it go when it goes? Where does it arise from when it pops up? If you can see that clearly, you’ve arrived. There’s no more work for you to do, and you don’t need this whole SWITCH thing. You’re already a “master of the courses of thought,” as the sutra says. You think what you want to think, and you don’t think what you don’t want to think. But, if you haven’t seen that place before thought, and thoughts of greed, hatred, and ignorance are still plaguing you, then you can use the last tool. What I call the nimitta of last resort, the no holds barred sign: We chop the thought right as it comes up, not giving it any chance to take hold in the mind. We “crush mind with mind,” the sutra says, “like a strong man who grabs a weaker man by the head or throat or shoulder and squeezes, squashes, and crushes them.”
It’s an unfortunate simile, and it seems at odds with what meditation is supposed to be, doesn’t it? Also with what this sutra is all about—isn’t it called the “Relaxation of Thoughts”? It is, but think of this sign as the contingency plan. When switching and warning and ignoring and tracing haven’t worked, that means you’re dealing with some serious thoughts. Being serious, they have the potential to do serious damage.
I’ll just have one, the alcoholic thinks to themselves. That’s the kind of thought you want to chop. Or any thought that starts with “what if.” What if the test comes out positive? What if I lose my job? What if I can’t make ends meet? What if I end up homeless? Any thought that starts with “Always” and “Never,” “Everyone,” and “No one.” I always fail. I never get what I want. Everyone hates me. No one understands me. These thoughts will take you nowhere good, and so, you cut them down before they have a chance to proliferate like bacteria.
Chop: Practice Instruction
The full reference to this sign in the sutra says:
If unskillful thoughts—imbued with desire, aversion, or delusion—still arise in the mind, then—with your teeth clenched and your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth—you should beat down, constrain, and crush mind with awareness.
It’s a reference to one of the first practices the Buddha did when he spent six years with the wandering ascetics after leaving his palace. In order to tame his mind, he tried all sorts of ascetic practices like not eating, not breathing, not sleeping, and the first one he tried was this:
Why don’t I, with teeth clenched and tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth, squeeze, squash, and scorch mind with mind?’ That’s what I did, until sweat ran from my armpits. It was like when a strong man grabs a weaker man by the head or throat or shoulder and squeezes, squashes, and crushes them.
So it’s pretty much word for word what appears in the Vitakkasanthana Sutta. Some scholars argue that it’s out of place, that it was a later addition, but from experience I can tell you that this sign is sometimes necessary. You don’t argue with the thought, you don’t negotiate, you simply cut it off at the pass. You don’t let it advance. One teacher described this sign as a “disciplined act of non-cooperation.” I like that, because it shows it’s not just about will power. Seeing that this thought will harm me, I decide to not cooperate with it. It’s like that moment when you simply close the app in the middle of a reel. No more, you say to yourself. This isn’t helping me, so no more.
Of course, the danger is we might suppress something that we need to look at, playing whac-a-mole with our thoughts. So we have to be careful. We can remind ourselves that we’re slowly chipping away at the defilements, so the bright light of wisdom can shine in our minds. There’s a line in the liturgy to celebrate the Buddha’s enlightenment that says, “May the bright light of wisdom shine forever, banishing the dark night of ignorance.” That’s followed by “May we diligently and sincerely carry forth your dharma.” We’re speaking to the Buddha when we say this.
That’s why we’re doing all this work—to diligently and sincerely carry forth the dharma. Let’s not lose sight of that. We can be off in our little corners with our minds roiling or our bodies hurting as we do zazen and think, What’s the point? How is this helping? How does sitting zazen make any difference in the world?
One way to answer that question is to look at our own minds. When I sit, does it make a difference? Am I quieter? Do I see more clearly? Am I less reactive? Am I a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more alive? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then we can rest assured that this is what we’re bringing to the world. The line between inside and outside is very thin, like an eggshell. It’s actually nonexistent, and that’s what we see when we get very quiet and very still.
Dionysius the Areopagite, a Christian mystic said:
Leave behind everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable... and be raised up, as far as possible, to that which is beyond all being and all knowledge.
For us the feeling might be more of going down. We go down into the depths of our being to that place that is beyond being and knowing. If you have any doubts about whether going to that place is worthwhile, whether it has anything to offer you or the world, my suggestion to you is, go there. Let go of all you can perceive and understand. Let go of all that you can think about, talk to yourself about, and go there. See for yourself what can’t be perceived or understood. Then, I assure you, you’ll know what it is for, and what our practice is for. Without a doubt, you’ll know. I promise you.
Explore further
01 : SWITCH (Talk 1): Working with Difficult Thoughts with Zuisei Goddard
02 : Instructions on Not Giving Up (aka SWITCH) with Zuisei Goddard
03 : When No Thing Works | Buddhist Practice During Crisis with Zuisei Goddard
Working with Difficult Thoughts | Chop the Root of a Thought, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Video, audio, and transcript available.