[Image: “IM,” graphic by user “L.e.e.” on Flickr. The descriptive text below the work there says, FYI, I actually know 3 languages. This is the 3rd one =).]
From whiskey river:
We can set up a certain environment in which we have an agreement to suspend the rules — that is to say to meditate, to stop thinking for a while, to stop making formulations.
This means, essentially, to stop talking to yourself. That is the meaning of the word in Japanese — munen — that is ordinarily translated as “no thought.” To meditate is to stop talking to yourself!
We say, “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness,” but we don’t follow our own advice. We’re talking to ourselves most of the time — and if you talk all the time you’ve got nothing else to talk about but your own talking! You never listen to what anybody else has to say, without a running commentary of your own talking. And if all you ever listen to is talking — be it your own or other people’s — you have nothing to talk about but talk.
You have to stop talking in order to have something to talk about!
(Alan Watts, What Is Zen? [source])
…and:
The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and timepieces. There’s thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once. It is a complete FM waveband — and some of those stations aren’t reputable, they’re outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with limbic lyrics.
(Terry Pratchett [source])
