“A long time ago, Descartes said, ‘I think therefore I am.’ This is where philosophy begins. But if you are not thinking, what? This is where Zen practice begins.”
—Seung Sahn

kay, so how is it possible “not to think?”

First, I would like to make a distinction between having thoughts and thinking (I’m not suggesting that Zen Master Seung Sahn would agree with me – this is just my own personal observation). Anyone who is alive has thoughts dropping in, constantly. You sit down to meditate and you become quite aware of this fact rather quickly. It’s alarming. You realize this mind you call yours is not your own!

Of course, it’s normal to have thoughts.

But thinking is different in this way: Thinking begins when you actively engage with these thoughts. When you follow them around and get lost in them. When you branch here and there in the discursive highways. When you noodle the juicy stories and obsess over the endless dramas.

Zen practice teaches you to stay with the breath. When you stay with the breath, you reel that wily attention back from whence it’s gone. You interrupt the habitual engagement with the runaway train. The monkey mind.

The practice is to keep doing this.

“But how will you get anything done if you’re not thinking?”

Ah, that is the great mystery, which can only be revealed to you when you seriously take this practice on. If you stick with it, you’ll begin to realize that insights can guide you perfectly. They will start to drop into that empty space where your attention had been caught in the past, future, right, wrong, good, bad, like this, hate that…

Insights are thoughts that drop in like raindrops on the surface of the water. You don’t need to follow them along or engage with them. They inform all on their own. If you allow them to.