thinking to me is as easy as breathing. i do not have to think about it.
i can not imagine being awake without being in a state of thought.
even when i am kind of blank in the early mornings when i rest my elbows on my podium and look out at my sunlit yard in a reverie, i still am thinking. i note the butterflies that are fluttering there and i keep track of them all and i think about the lives of butterflies.
i am usually alone, and when i am not engaged in thinking for my work, i think in a semi narrative way about everything i see and every notion that occurs to me.
in my head, it is like i am doing an interview with a reporter who asks few questions, and just lets me state my ideas in a free form way. i internally verbalize what i am thinking usually (except for certain mathematical ideas which are non verbal).
there is no effort required in thinking for me. but there is no amount of effort i can exert on my mind to "hush" it of all thoughts.
once i met a buddhist monk at a tavern where i was eating, and he took an interest in me.
as he was talking to me, he said my mind was all revved up with irrelevant thoughts.
i disagreed and i said my thoughts were appropriate to what was in my attention.
he decided to give me a task to do. he asked me to think about nothing when i got home. think about nothing for 1 hour. he wanted to see me the next day to see what i learned from the experience.
when i got home, i thought about nothing, and i realized that "nothing" does not exist.
so how can i think about "nothing" when "nothing" is not real.
only "things" exist, and "no thing" is the absence of all things.
so because there are only "things" in the universe, then the concept of "nothing" is a fallacy.
i thought i had learned an important lesson, and i was eager to report it to the monk the next day.
but he was disappointed, because he said he wanted me to not think about "anything".
well i did not think about "anything", i thought very hard about "nothing", which is what he told me to think about.
afterward, the confusion was cleared when someone else said that he meant i should just "not think" for 1 hour.
that is impossible.
i could do it in n.e.m sleep, but i would forget it entirely, and it would not do me any good if i could not remember the experience of not thinking. no memories are retained from a state of "non-thought".