Quiet Thought in Two Old Texts

A thought runs on in a quiet room. Two old texts, from opposite ends of the world, give two different instructions for it. KTT counts the running thought, and the instruction to quiet it, as thoughts, noticed or not, even when they arrive as a restlessness. Reports of fewer words in contemplation appear in many traditions. The sources read for this article did not test whether those reports describe the same state, and the comparison is only made after each text is read on its own.

Think of not thinking

In the Fukanzazengi, the Japanese monk Dōgen wrote: “Think of not-thinking.” Then he asks how, and answers: “Non-thinking.” It is traditionally dated 1227, though the earliest manuscript carries a date of 1233 and one scholar places it later. The line echoes an exchange in eighth-century China between the Chan master Yaoshan and a monk. Commentators read it in different ways. Hee-Jin Kim called it objectless, non-referential thinking. A modern Soto teacher compared it to an engine idling in neutral, where thoughts idle and are not followed.

A cloud of forgetting

The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous English text of the late fourteenth century, usually dated to about 1375. Its instruction runs the other way. The reader is told to put every thought, even a good one, beneath a “cloud of forgetting” and to reach toward God with a “naked intent” of love. If thoughts press in, the text suggests a single short word, such as God or love, to beat them down. Twentieth-century centering prayer takes this practice as its root.

What science has done with the traditions

In 2010, Fred Travis and Jonathan Shear reviewed meditation practices from Vedic, Buddhist and Chinese traditions by their reported brain-wave patterns. They sorted them into three categories: focused attention, open monitoring and a third they call automatic self-transcending. The categories differed in what attention does, in the relation of the one meditating to the object, and in procedure. They warned against averaging meditations together. The authors are affiliated with Maharishi University of Management, and the third category includes Transcendental Meditation, which that university teaches.

What is not known

Whether Dōgen’s non-thinking and the Cloud’s forgetting describe the same state is not known. The texts differ in aim: one is a practice of sitting, the other a prayer directed to God.

Whether the thoughts of practitioners actually fall in number is not known from these sources. Translations and commentaries were read, not measurements.

How far the three categories of the 2010 review hold is open, and the review did not read the Christian text at all.