Taking Down the Scaffolding of Thought

[Happy Buddha]

THOUGHTS AS SCAFFOLDING:
When I was living in the retreat centre in North Wales there was a large house about a mile away which had scaffolding holding up its "west wing" as it was leaning badly. The scaffolding as I remember had been there for many years and had done its job of holding it altogether. Recently in meditation the image of that building and scaffolding popped into my mind and I knew instantly the meaning of this.

It came to me that thoughts are like scaffolding, they hold things together. Sadly for us this is not always a pleasant experience. When I say thoughts I am talking about the believed but unconscious thoughts that stampede through our heads all day long. I am not talking about conscious thinking around things like planning a future event, or reflection about a project. I am not taking either about creative thinking, which is a wonderful thing. The thoughts I am talking about are the stressful thoughts that race through our minds nearly all day long commenting on nearly all that we do. These thoughts keep repeating the same stories and we keep believing those same stories - they keep our view of the world and ourselves fairly static from one day to the next. They are very predictable.

They keep in place our self-image, which without all these believed thoughts would just dwindle away to dust - but leaving us a whole lot more peaceful. Or more accurately our self-image would be much more fluid and flexible, not tight and rigid.

When we are held together by thought scaffolding we meet the world with pre-conceived ideas of how to act and be. These are based on past experience and normally include fear and anxiety. For example, some of us get anxious when the phone rings. For others it may be when they meet new people and they get shy or nervous. We all experience the consequences of thought scaffolding in slightly different ways.

Freeing ourselves from believed thoughts
Mindfulness can be seen as taking away the scaffolding. Just as a scaffolder takes his time unscrewing the bolts that hold it all together so the meditator takes his/her time becoming free of believed thoughts. It takes time to free ourselves from these believed thoughts because we feel without these "image creating" thoughts we would fall to pieces. Through mindfulness meditation we can learn to trust in something that is "behind" and "beyond" this level of experience and unless we learn this we will always be held together by thought scaffolding. What that something "beyond" thought is cannot really be described - just experienced. But the best term I know is intuitive awareness.

Try this
Find a quiet place and sit quietly for 10 minutes. Take your attention to your breath and follow its rhythm. Notice when you get distracted by thoughts, and instead of criticising yourself for getting lost in thinking just say to yourself, “thinking.” When you have drifted into “thought land” there is always a moment when you “pop” back to awareness of here and now. At that moment just again say to yourself, “thinking,” and return your attention to the body and the breath once again. When this drifting happens we often get into judgements about not doing it right and criticising ourselves, but this is just tightening the thought scaffolding. We loosen the thought scaffolding simple by observing the thinking itself and not reacting in any way. This takes time but once you begin to loosen the thought scaffolding joy enters our life.

[JonW]

Excellent post, Happy Buddha. And welcome back!
You've inspired me to take half a hour off work. I'm taking Banjo to the beach to stare at the waves and chase seagulls. I'll be doing the staring, Banj' is in charge of the chasing.
All good things, Jon

[Happy Buddha]

Doing Banjo, seagulls and waves - how lovely is that!

Where do live wonder???

[JonW]

I'm in Hove, HB, right by the singsong, sunshiny seaside. Try saying that after a pint of ale. Good things, JW

[Gareth]

This is a beautiful post Suryacitta, thank you for giving continued support to our forum.

I was particularly struck by where you talk about self-image being more fluid, and that is exactly right. The ego is constantly providing these pieces of scaffolding in order to keep the structure that it wants in place. Whereas the reality is that everything is constantly changing - even ourselves. When reality comes into conflict with that that we have built in our mind, then suffering occurs.

Thankyou for the reply that you gave to Jenna too - it's important to have an experienced voice round here.

[JonW]

Maintaining that ego is exhausting for all of us. One little ego trapped in a bag of bones, staring out at a separate world. No wonder so many of us in the west are riddled with anxiety. And that's the crucial thing about mindfulness. It's not just about connecting with oneself, it's about connecting with other people and with the natural world. When those connections are formed, the world is a far less scary place. In fact, it's not scary at all.
If anyone is interesting in reading about non-duality, David Carse's Perfect Brilliant Stillness is hard to beat in my opinion.

[stacheman101]

Darn you, Jon! Yet another author to check out. Joan Tollifson, now this fellow. I read Toni Packer years ago. There's no doubt in my mind she's brilliant and the real deal, but I found her approach too...fluid for me. Advaita Vedanta and non-duality continue to interest me, though. With all this reading, when will I have time to practice?

[Gareth]

Nobody can read as much as Jon.

[JonW]

Reading IS practice.
Everything is practice, up to and including cooking Banjo his pork chop.

[stacheman101]

I suppose reading can be practice for me, if I remain mindful while doing it. I downloaded Bare Bones Meditation by Tollifson on my iPad Kindle, and am enjoying it enormously. Thank you for mentioning her in the forum.