Thought is what I use to speak and write, but what do we know about thought? I don't want to just define thought but look at how it works, within the mind. This is observation rather than analysis. So first of all I have to be clear what I am doing. To observe thought the observer watches and listens to the inner voice. You can hear your inner thinking, planning, speculating, reflecting, wondering, worrying, imagining, and so on. Listening to this there are perhaps quite familiar thoughts, perhaps repetitive thoughts. It might be interesting to listen to these. You might discover something about what you are thinking.

Unfortunately it is not always a comfortable situation. You might be trying to get some sleep but the thoughts are keeping you awake. They might be so bothersome that you are feeling anxious, even depressed, and can't escape their affect on you. So now your thoughts have become a consuming force, where you feel compelled to listen, and to become deeper involved in the thinking. The thinking is uncontrolled, giving way to a flow of thoughts, and to an unstoppable mechanism. I can stop reading, writing, talking, turn off the TV, put down a tool, but I can't stop thinking. It seems all that happens at different times is I am less aware of it, or more distracted away from it. Or that the thinking mechanism is a constant but not always in verbal terms.

This thinking mechanism, experienced as an un-relentless, self-consuming activity, a movement of thought, in the mind, where there is no free will, no I in control, you are struck by despair. The self, I, which is given an illusionary reality through thought, and is characterised by thinking, is now apparently consumed in the movement of thought and powerless. The observing is indistinguishable from the action; the observer is the observed. So the mind looks away from this focus. It becomes aware of the body, the feelings, the sounds around you, and sees the disturbing movement of thought, from a whole view of the situation, and all things, experiences, are but parts of that whole. This does not really change anything. The whole view of parts shows there is a fragmented condition of which thought is a part. But it does not relieve us of that obsessed thinking. In fact all thinking is obsessed, in that it is moving. Obsessed meaning away from place, stasis. The movement away from and to something creates time and space. It is a mechanical function of the mind.

To take action is not new.

Living life is a torment. There is lying, cheating, hate. These affect us personally. There are also rules, regulations, custom, tradition. They have always been there. Our daily lives are a mix of obedience and rebellion, pleasure and pain. We endure these because for us to to get what we want, to do what we want to do, there is a complex personal involvement. For us just to live our normal, ordinary lives, we learn to behave and act in certain ways. We do this without much understanding. We may rebel, but we don't know why. It seems unreasonable. We may get upset, disappointed, and only know this to be personal. Something to get over. To accept. We might disagree but this is just being argumentative, or disobedient . We might find causes and principles, but they are just something you read in a book. Theories and ideals.

You might be lucky enough to make something of all that confusion, complexity. To see the duplicity. The exploitation. You might even get an insight into human nature, your own part in this corrupt affair. Aware of your responsibility in a divided world you see you are acting with a fragmented mind. You see that for the most part nothing intelligent is being done to address this state of affairs. That the family, work, career, community, society, business, politics, religion, continue to endorse this confusion and corruption. Children, youths, students, teachers, workers, professionals, officials, do not discuss this and don't know how to question or enquire into the matter. There is in fact a tendency, a habit of endurance, a commitment, an obligation, to ignore all of this, to get on with the job and to make a worthwhile contribution. You have to ask yourself, is it I who mislead and confuse? Of course it is perplexing and that's why we don't look at this matter any closer.

Not a political issue.

Do we accept that we know such and such, rightly or wrongly, and that questioning begins from there? When we ask a question we assume we are looking at thought within the mind; that we are trying to improve upon the knowledge in our heads. I am not suggesting one can claim absolution from responsibility by denying knowledge. It is just that questioning in terms of verbal responses is a perception framed by thought, not fact. Questioning actually begins from not knowing, or in fact the absence of knowledge. Which is what the mind is actually doing, automatically. My point is rather than polemic discussion, and the assumptions we make, we have to be careful and doubt the process of thought provides any resolution. Take it a bit further, and look at what might be our condition of looking at things, and then seeing what we think, internally, about that. It is an actual condition to deal with, observe, which might turn out to be a "delusion".

From this observation I learn, rather than delude myself with some hypothesis, which I would test with the confused mind. Noticing what the mind is actually doing, the thoughts, and all of that, when it looks at things, and reporting that, is quite unlike forming ideas about an abstract impression, a concept, we might want to trade in discussion. That is called the dialectic isn't it? I think we can go further than that with very little effort and any cost to the individual is superficial. What is it that is being doubted, questioned? It is the affected self, isn't it? Is what the sensate self generates relevant? We of course argue on one hand that feelings and emotions are an issue, and on the other hand there is knowledge. That is the polemic.

I am going to try to answer your question. But you have already done a lot of that for me when you say there isn't an answer I can give without just really looking at the matter directly, and so it might be not what you expect. It is this looking directly that is interesting since hardly anyone seems to do it. There seems to be, under the superficiality, the day to day affairs, a lot of worry, depression, anxiety. I spend a lot of time listening and watching and I find I am always accompanied by my thoughts, my busy mind. I can enjoy activities, and get on with my own life, but what is the relationship with me and my mind? Am I looking clearly, directly, when there is this process of thought taking place? I can say that these are merely questions raised by the mind, and that the mind is a natural function of living. So I have a division of reality, action, mind, being, seeing.