In the past I have spent some time reflecting on the problem that thought presents in the spiritual life. It is a common problem presented in all the spiritual writers and Fathers of the Church from the Cappadocians to the ascetical fathers of Sinai. Thought is such a problem because, according to the beliefs of the fathers, of it propensity to be demon-controlled. It is an even more common perception among the spiritual traditions across religious lines that it is difficult for us human beings to distinguish between thought and what should be the background of thought—the mind. We have all experienced it, the mind is never empty but jumps from thought to thought without pause. One thought leads to another thought, in a seamless way, so that often we wonder how we got to a particular thought that we, eventually, advert to. These end to end seamless series of thoughts are, more often than not, not apparent to us. The background noise of the mind is the "normal" that we are used to.
As we have seen before, St. John Climacus and the other ascetical fathers of Sinai advocated a type of concentration/awareness that allowed them to discern the difference between individual thoughts, watch them come and go, and be detached from them so as to effectively accept or reject them. Climacus called this discipline "going up into the tower." The image is of the owner of a vineyard, who is aware that the vineyard is under attack, so he withdraws into the tower in order to observe his enemies approaching. This concentration/awareness of thought in Climacus is not yet prayer, but in Climacus and in the Sinaite school in general, it is closely associated with the practice of the Jesus Prayer (the Prayer of the Heart), and may have been practiced simultaneously, or successively.
Across spiritual traditions, there is a concern about thought being automatic and uncontrolled. In contemporary life, we often hear in common speech the results of this type of automation. We hear the expression, for example, "He made me so angry." The implication is that thought is an irresistible force, like a locomotive on train tracks, which inevitably reaches its goal once it starts long its path. In this example, the subject was not capable of discerning the difference between the thoughts (and their attached passion: anger) and the mind, which is supposed to be the observer and arbiter of thought. Rather than observing the presence of anger, and then simply letting it go, the mind allows itself to be carried along by the runaway locomotive.
We are using here the name "mind" as the background, the observer and arbiter of thought. Buddhism, of course, promotes a belief that is referred to as "the theory of No-Mind." In Buddhism, the mind is said not to exist, not because Buddhism believes that thought has no arbiter/observer, but because nothing can be said or known about this arbiter/observer. This is, of course, true. There is nothing at all that can be known or said about the arbiter and observer of thought (the mind) in itself. It is completely ineffable on account of the fact that any knowledge or statement concerning it would have to proceed by means of thought. This very ineffability has very deep implications, and it is that that I will take up next.
