Zen masters explain how to deal with obsessive thoughts

Can we be intruders of ourselves? It looks like it is. The obsessive or intrusive thoughts they imply a distressing complexity for those who make them. Reflections, fantasies and even unfortunate scenarios that, beyond taking our breath away, force the mind to let go of its roots. Many people stick to them with resistance, and as an imbalance between the binomial be Y desireLittle by little, they move away from the patience necessary to avoid losing their balance.

According to the doctor Rick Hansonfounder of Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative WisdomheThe mind naturally focuses on negative thoughts, and discards those that cause a degree of well-being. It is a measure of survival keeping bad things in mind also helps to deal with them Let’s imagine this quality thousands of years ago, when humans faced an even more mysterious and wild world. This does not justify bad thoughts; but it lets us know why they are there. And since it is a complex neural process that has evolved with us, it is impossible to get rid of them, but there are ways to overcome them, and the first step is in become aware of them.

How a Zen master explains thought

The zen masters They have understood this for centuries. Though not via neuroscience, they have used methods like meditation to calm the waters of their thinking. Carrying out meditation is undertaking the search for oneself, the understanding of that universal being that we forget most of the time, but that in essence we are. It involves great spiritual strength, because one must deal, among other things, with our dark mirror; that is, with those intrusive thoughtsas well as with our mistakes, fears and undesirable real scenarios.

Hence the zen master Eihei Dogen firmly accept that:

«The life of a Zen master is a continuous mistake.»

while for the teacher Taisen Deshimaruwho spread Zen thought in Europe and Africa —and who was in charge of more than a hundred dojos— is about seeing existence beyond dualities:

The spiritual is material and the material becomes spiritual. The spirit exists in each of our cells and, finally, the spirit is the body, the body is the spirit. There is also the activity, the energy, which are not dualistic.

Needless to say, these teachers exemplify the power of meditation in dealing with this process. Hence zen is also called the middle way. It is about aiming for balance, and not just «discarding» what we do not like (such as intrusive thoughts). All suffering and anxiety can only disappear if its roots are cut, those that maintain the connection between the ego and the material world, and that are constantly strengthened with the power of the mind, the will.

«The ego suffers by itself, without ego there is no suffering.»

And what is the ego? Something that we all feel, because, this teacher tells us:

«Even if you don’t want to think, thoughts arise.»

But…

«No one is locked up in a prison for having bad thoughts.»

Zen masters such as Taisen Deshimaru and Eihen Dogen put into practice the zazen –the development of being that it involves–, and they invite us to accept our thoughts whatever their nature, but always seek to go beyond everything that determines us on the material plane. After all, whether we want it or not, negative thoughts are part of our psyche, as neuroscience explains, and they are part of our spirit in its development in the world, as Zen thought explains.

This makes Zen not a path to perfection, but to the life of a free being. And to his philosophy a reflective and very sensible antidote to combat intrusive thoughts because, as Allan Watts said,«A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about other than the thoughts themselves, thus losing contact with reality and is destined to live in a world of illusions.”.

*References: Dogen Quotations
Questions to a zen master

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