Buddhist Monks’ View on Overthinking

Everybody has problems, some small and unimportant, but others almost unsolvable. Nevertheless, whatever difficulties you might be facing, it is a fact that people think about their problems. They try to solve them and are concerned whether it will yield results.

Although, there are times when people cannot stop thinking. However, provided we would like to do something in our lives and live right now, we would have to figure out how to quit thinking. But this is difficult to do, and when you try to do it, you get more entangled in thinking.

So, the main question is: how can you solve this problem?

Old spiritual teachings recommend that the best way is to learn to accept things and also to let go. Further in the text, you will have the chance to read advice from the modern Indian guru Osho, about the methods that could be used to calm your mind.

How Can You Stop Thinking?

In the words of Osho, the most important thing that people should understand is that they can’t quit thinking. It can stop only if you don’t bother your mind.

According to him thinking can stop voluntarily. No-mind is a state that does not occur by ceasing to think. At the point when there is no more thinking, then there is no-mind. If you try to stop, that will only make more tension, it will make struggle, it will make you to divide. You will be in a chaos inside all the time. This wouldn’t help, he says.

Nonetheless, Osho concedes that in case somebody attempts to cease thinking forcefully, it is possible that they make it. However, in this way, they will not have true calmness of the mind.

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He adds that, regardless of whether you manage to cease it by force for a couple of minutes, that is no accomplishment  at all— since during those couple of minutes you will be dead, you won’t live. In such cases one may feel a kind of calmness, however not quietness, since a forced quietness isn’t quietness. Bellow that, somewhere down in the unconscious, the repressed mind continues working. Thus, there is no possibility to cease the mind. However, the mind ceases — that is a fact. It ceases voluntarily.

Rather, Osho recommends that it is significantly more helpful to exercise acceptance and just watch as your mind works.

Observe and don’t attempt to cease. It is not necessary at all to do any action against the mind. In any case, who will do it? It will be the mind battling against itself. In this way you will only separate your mind into two; one that is attempting to rule — attempting to murder the other self, which is a paradox. It is a silly play. It can make you insane. Do not to attempt to cease the brain or the thinking — simply watch it, permit it. Give it a chance to keep running as fast as it needs. Don’t attempt to control it. Simply be an observer. It is lovely!

Osho says that after some time, you will start to divide between yourself as the witness and your mid, which he calls “a taste of Zen”.

The more profound your alertness gets, the more profound your awareness gets, and gaps begin emerging, interims. One thought passes, and another one has not appeared, and there is a gap. In these interims, you will have the possibility to experience no-mind, Zen, or Tao, or Yoga. Then, all of a sudden the sky is unclouded and bright. It seems that there are so many mysteries in the world since there are no more blockades. There is unveiled view of the world.

According to Osho, in this manner, one will acquire more control over the mind.

This technique is the best approach to stop it without using force. When you begin appreciating those happy minutes, you develop an ability to keep them for longer periods. In the end, one day, you become master. Then you learn to use thinking only when you want.

Osho disapproves using medications to make your mind silent.

The modern mind rushes a lot and likes fast techniques for ceasing the mind. That is why many turn to drugs. They can be used to cease the mind, however they makes you aggressive. It is bad and destructive. That will not make you a master. That will only make drugs controlling you. Just your master was changed, but not for the good.

Osho recommends meditation as the best technique to control your brain, since then, one is just sitting and watching the mind, without attempting to battle against it.

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One does not fight the mind in meditation, but it uses it to understand the mind. It is a caring method for observing the mind — however, understandably, one must be exceptionally persistent. Our mind has developed over a very long time and has within itself the entire experience of humankind — and not just of mankind: of animals, birds, of plants, of rocks. You have gone through all those experiences.

Everything that has so far, has occurred in you too. In a little nutshell, you have within yourself the entire experience of life. In other words, your mind is collective, and we all share it.