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simultaneously. As the instructions say: focus on the body
while noticing thoughts with detachment. We consciously
focus on the body, while monitoring the automatic thinking
in the background.
Paying attention to something always divides the world
into two: what we focus on and everything else. The body
and the thoughts. Foreground and background. The center
and the periphery. Figure and field. The path and the scenery.
What we regard as most important in the moment, and what
we see as potential distractions to that.
Attention highlights one thing alone. This is critical when-
ever we try to do something physical. Action is always unitary.
Our thoughts can scatter and fragment, but we can’t walk in
five different directions at once. We have to make continuous
this-and-not-that choices to do even the simplest action.
Even when we meditate and apparently do nothing, we
still split our attentional resources. One part of our attention
looks inward. We use conscious, top-down, controlled “selec-
tive attention” to focus on the body. The other part looks out-
ward. We use automatic, bottom-up, reactive “monitoring
attention” for the peripheral thoughts that push their way
onto the mental stage.
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“Selective attention” involves making a conscious choice
to focus for longer and more deeply than usual on the sen-
sations of the body. Although this calms us down, it is also
surprisingly dynamic and enjoyable in a quiet way. It is
“approach” behavior guided by the reward circuitry of the
brain.
“Monitoring attention,” on the other hand, is vigilant and
dismissive. It is “withdrawal” behavior. Monitoring involves
noticing, evaluating, and mostly discarding the peripheral
thoughts, sounds, and emotions as rapidly as possible.
Monitoring attention is economical and aims to conserve
resources. It “notices” but doesn’t “process” or “elaborate” on
the peripheral data any more than necessary. It is a space-
maker. It aims to keep the mental stage uncluttered for the
chosen task of focusing on the body. Most of the peripheral
input can be dismissed instantly, but some will be important
enough to be briefly processed (“Don’t forget to make that
phone call!”).
Ideally we give whatever arises just the right amount of
attention it needs: no more but also no less. If we give it too
little attention or try to ignore it, it may continue to niggle
at us from the sidelines. If we give it too much attention, we
will lose focus on the body. The few seconds or milliseconds it
takes to process a peripheral stimulus is not enough to break
the body-focused flow of a meditation. In fact, by processing
potential distractions rapidly, it keeps the meditation run-
ning smoothly.
This focusing-monitoring duality is reflected in most
meditation instructions. For example: Focus on the body
and let everything else go. Focus on the body while noticing
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thoughts with detachment. Focus on the breath while noticing everything else with nonjudgmental acceptance.
There are many rule-of-thumb instructions relating to the
monitoring of peripheral data: Just watch. Be an observer.
Let it all pass by like leaves in a stream or clouds in the sky.
Notice thoughts without reacting to them (or without pro-
cessing them, or without elaborating on them). Accept what-
ever happens with an open, curious mind.
The mindfulness-based stress reduction approach,
derived from Zen, is slightly different. It cultivates an “open”
or “empty,” unfocused state of mind. Although thoughts
invariably arise, they are to be seen as the unimportant epi-
phenomena that go with being alive. An instructor will tell
you that there is no need to either attach to or resist these
thoughts. You are encouraged to let them simply pass through
the mental space.
Often, however, these gentle and encouraging instruc-
tions are not enough. Trying to lightly brush aside unwanted
thoughts, or contain them through acceptance, or let them
pass through, is a strategy that can only go so far. Some of
our thoughts and our patterns around them are so obsessive
that they won’t readily submit to such mild treatment. Just
ask any anxious person if they find it easy to “let thoughts
gently float away.”
My students often complain that they’re not thinking
well (too scattered, can’t focus, can’t remember, can’t stop).
Although we all would like a quick fix, the first step toward
controlling thoughts is to remind ourselves that we can’t just
switch the mind off. (Thinking is a continuous automatic pro-
cess.) Nor can we focus better by trying harder (too stressful
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and tiring). We can’t argue ourselves out of runaway thought or force ourselves to go to sleep. (The brain usually ignores
top-down commands.) Nor can we pretend that all thoughts
are unimportant (some of them obviously are important).
Nonetheless we can still learn to control our thoughts much
better than we normally do.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MEDITATE?
When you start to meditate, you will find that it takes at least
half a minute to mentally settle into your body. You have to
shift attention from outer to inner, from thought and action to
internal body sensations. That’s a big shift. It takes time to acti-
vate the mental map of your body, so don’t expect it to happen
instantly.
Eventually, you connect well with the breath. You feel it
rise. You feel it fall. You feel the beginning and end of each
breath. This is mindfulness as “selective, sustained attention.”
You gently explore the moment-to-moment sensations of the
breath. This is good-quality attention, and it feels satisfying
to do.
Sooner or later, however, you’re likely to get sidetracked.
You may revert to a previous thought, or to something that
seems much more important than the breath. It could be last
night’s TV program, or lunch, or the mortgage. When you
realize you’ve been distracted, you’ve got a choice. You could
continue thinking about that subject for as long as you nor-
mally would. Or you could say, “Not now. I need to relax.” So
you tick that thought off and refocus on the breath.
It might take only a second to do this, but a lot will have
happened. You were mindful of the thought and you stopped
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the conversation with it. You evaluated i
t as useless. And you deliberately abandoned it. This is good economical “monitoring attention” at work: perception + evaluation + response.
It didn’t take long enough to seriously distract you from
your primary focus on the breath. You were tempted but you
didn’t succumb. Only when you stay with a thought for more
than ten seconds does it start to become a serious distraction.
So you recommit to the breath. You feel it rise. You feel
it fall. You feel the breath starting to loosen up. Your whole
body starts to feel good, but before you know it, another
thought captures you. When you are mindful of this new dis-
traction, you go through the same procedure. You stop that
thought, evaluate it, tick it off, and return to the breath. This
is the natural rhythm of any meditation. You focus, get dis-
tracted, dismiss the distraction, refocus, and so on.
Fairly soon you realize that it is quite pleasant to return
to the breath. It is a much quieter place than chasing your
thoughts. The pleasure principle now kicks in. At a gut level
you start to understand the value of focusing, and the sense
of mental control is quite lovely. You feel the mind settling
and the body relaxing, and the positive sensory feedback
makes it so much easier to stay on track. Peripheral thoughts
will still tempt you, but they won’t be such a problem. They
will have lost their “stickiness,” their usual emotional charge.
This is the ideal place in any meditation. You are actively
focused on the breath while “noticing” but not “processing”
your thoughts.
Sometimes, however, a thought truly becomes a capital-D
Distraction, and you need a better strategy than noticing
it and letting go. Unless you also learn to manage strong,
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intrusive, and often important thoughts, your meditation
will always be liable to disintegrate.
NAME THE THOUGHT
Good thought control starts with learning to manage an indi-
vidual thought that has grown into a “distraction.” To do so,
we have to bring that thought out of automatic runaway mode
into full consciousness. The best way to do this is to become
mindful of it—to “hold it in mind”—and verbally identify it. As
the Buddha said, you are mindful if you know what is in your
mind, and you can describe it to yourself. In the Sutta he gives precise examples of how to do this, as you will see later in this
book.
I briefly introduced this technique in chapter 3. The strat-
egy is simple but immensely powerful. We just ask: “What is
this? What am I thinking about?” and we come up with an
appropriate word to describe it: “work” or “money” or “Dan-
iel.” This is called “naming” or “categorizing” or “labeling” or
“noting.” To do this, we have to stop the momentum of the
thought and hold it in the mind for long enough to classify it.
This has the effect of objectifying the thought. Nam-
ing a thought puts it “outside” the body (which remains the
main focus of attention) and gives us a choice about how to
respond. Shall I give it more energy or less energy? Shall I
feed it or starve it? Shall I process it further or refocus on the
body? To name a thought is not to suppress it. Nor is it a way
of consciously reappraising it, as we would, for instance, with
cognitive behavioral therapy. It means that we recognize
its presence while nonetheless suspending our tendency to
engage further with it.
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This is what psychologists call “nonjudgmental accep-
tance”—a kind of cunning, strategic, let-it-be laziness. If we
stop processing a thought for more than a few seconds, it
starts to fade. Even if it remains in consciousness, the neural
networks that represent it decline from the active processing
state to a passive, waiting state. The thought drifts from cen-
ter stage to the wings. If we don’t feed the stray cat, eventually
it wanders off.
Naming works so well because it inhibits the emotional
charge that powers the thought. To use language engages
the brain’s left-hemispheric prefrontal cortex. This region is
essential for rational, verbal thought. When activated, it has
an inhibitory effect on the limbic system deep in the brain
where emotions are generated. This means that the act of
naming saps the emotional energy from the thought. (The
chapter “Painful Emotion” looks into this mechanism in more
detail; see page 193.)
I confess that it took me years, aided by my studies in
cognitive psychology, to realize how potent this technique is.
I find that my students generally fail to take it seriously, as
well. It might seem relatively simple, but “naming a thought”
is a skill that benefits from being done with precision. When
I ask my students how they named a troublesome thought,
they usually don’t give me a name. They give me instead a
description, which is often quite lengthy, of what they were
thinking about!
This tells me that they were still elaborating on it. I often
have to prompt them by saying, “The name for this thought
is ‘work’ or ‘shopping.’” To name is to give a single word label
to something. It is the kind of word you would put on a filing
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cabinet file. It is not about resolving the issue or understanding it more deeply.
To be mindful of something also means holding it still.
If you don’t actively feed it, it will naturally shrink in impor-
tance. To categorize a thought, and to see it outside of your-
self, is quite enough to weaken the vast majority of your
thoughts. Students gradually learn to notice the difference
between elaborating on a thought and “just seeing” it.
When all else fails, however, the Buddha said that holding
a thought in mind also means “holding it down,” in the way
that “a strong man forces down and subdues a weaker one.”
This use of willpower, however, is only a last resort after the
gentler strategies have failed. Willpower is never as potent as
we would like it to be, and it is always a limited resource.
Many people find it a revelation to understand that they
don’t have to respond to every one of their thoughts. If they
are fully mindful, they can make an executive choice about
whether to follow a thought or not. This is a crucial life skill,
since giving energy to any one thought necessarily excludes
others which may be more valuable.
For some people, using imagery can work just as well
at this task as language. “Naming” a thought “captures” it
in a word and “boxes” it up. It is very natural and intuitive
&
nbsp; to use imagery to enhance this process. As human beings,
we “think” with pictures just as much as with words. If our
thought is about Daniel, we could see also “see” him as an
image (like a computer icon).
Once we have converted a thought into a word or a picture
we can manipulate it. We can put it “outside” of ourselves or
in the distance. We can put it on a shelf or a mental list or in
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a rubbish bin or in a filing cabinet. We can schedule it for a time in the future. We can place a thought in the geographical space around us, left or right, up or down, near or far. We
can bury a thought, or put it into a thought-bubble, or throw
it off a cliff, or grind it under our feet or throw it back into
the stream of consciousness. You can be confident that any
image that spontaneously occurs to you about how to man-
age a thought is likely to be useful.
Another strategy to escape a thought is to switch obses-
sions. We can disengage from a thought by actively thinking
about something else that is strong enough to hold our atten-
tion. This is not a last-resort strategy. It is a way of practicing
the vital cognitive skill of attention switching. The Dutch
Renaissance thinker Erasmus called this “using a nail to
extract a nail.”
An even more drastic approach is to continuously stone-
wall thought or to “play a dead bat” or to basically say “no”
to everything indiscriminately. Meditation as a monastic
tradition places high value on inactivity and emotional
withdrawal: “Be firm and unmoving like a mountain.” This
sweeping indifference to all worldly vanities may lead to a
dull mind, but that could be better than mental chaos. Expe-
rienced meditators occasionally take this too far. They culti-
vate an automatic “do nothing” response to everything.
Some thoughts are so important (sick child, big decision,
recent catastrophe) that they do need to remain somewhere in
consciousness. Naming allows you to quarantine an import-
ant thought off to the side. It will still draw some energy, but
you don’t need to get entangled in it. While still aware of it,
you can continue with your main work of focusing on the
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