About thinking

Here is an interesting way of looking at meditation:

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.

-- Alan Watts

I would hasten to add here, that this does not mean we can (or should) make our mind "go blank". What Watts is saying here is that we can choose not to indulge or chase after the discursive thoughts that arise in the mind during meditaiton. If we are reasonably consistent in bringing the mind back to the meditative support when such thoughts make their appearance then, yes, we are, in effect, suspending verbal and symbolic thinking.
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