Chapter 6: I’m Thinking

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I’m thinking.”

Thinking about what? Hard to say. Just now I was thinking about tomorrow’s meeting, and thinking about it I came to a person who’ll be at the meeting, to something he said last time, then to another thing that remark reminded me of, and in the end, somehow, to the tree outside the door of the house I grew up in. A whole circle, and I don’t know myself how I wandered there.

In Chinese, “I’m thinking” is wo zai xiang, and that zai in the middle is the most ordinary of words and also the most important. Wo zai xiang: I am now thinking; at this moment, here, the thinking of this thing is happening. People can hardly speak without this zai: I’m eating, I’m in a meeting, I’m on my way, I’m waiting for you. Put zai in, and a thing becomes the one time it is going on, right now.

Yet when people think, they often feel they are not in this moment. Thinking of the past, it is as if they had gone back to that year; thinking of tomorrow, as if they were already there. Thinking and thinking, people lose track of where they are.

Why do people think, and why can’t they stop?

You lie down at night, the light goes off, and the mind switches on. Was that thing I said today wrong? What did that look of his mean? What if tomorrow goes badly? Will there be enough money next month? One after another, round and round. You know thinking now is useless, but you can’t stop. As if, so long as you keep thinking, these things stay gripped in your hand; stop, and something will go wrong with them.

Worry is one kind of thinking. What if? What if he doesn’t come back, what if the test results are bad, what if something happens to the child out there. The mind plays the worst scene through once, and again. Playing it does nothing, but it seems that if you have rehearsed it, when it really comes you won’t be caught off guard. Worry is trying to stand sentry for tomorrow.

Regret is another kind. If only I hadn’t gone to that city that year, if only I hadn’t said that thing that day, if only I had listened to him. Thinking it over and over, as if, thought about enough, the past could be changed a little; as if, so long as you are still thinking, the thing isn’t settled yet.

There is another kind of thinking: making plans. Tomorrow, next month, next year, arranged square by square and written in a notebook, and the fuller the squares, the steadier you feel. Once arranged, it is as if the future were already in hand. The day the plan is upset, panic comes, far more than the thing itself warrants.

Even when free, people seldom let themselves really be free. Three minutes waiting for the bus: out comes the phone. Ten minutes eating: out comes the phone. On the toilet, the phone too. Not because there is anything you must see, but because once there is a gap, something inside gets flustered. With nothing turning in the mind, it is as if a person were leaking air.

Someone asks: What are you thinking about? You answer: Nothing, my mind’s a blank. Saying it, you feel a little embarrassed, as if an empty mind were something shameful, a sign you are not on form, not online.

And there is a kind of thinking people take for themselves: that’s just how I think. That’s my view. Someone objects, and it is like being shoved; your face goes red. As if, should those few views be overturned, a part of this person would cave in.

These kinds of thinking—worry, regret, planning, not stopping, not daring to be empty—many of them are useful; but when they can’t stop, it is often because of the same thing: fear of emptiness.

Deep down people assume that thinking is the hand of the “I.” With this hand they grip the past, grip tomorrow, grip every place where something might go wrong; gripping, I am, I am safe. Let go, let the mind empty, and it seems I am gone, the days will slip through my fingers, and stopping would mean falling into a place where there is nothing at all.

So people would rather be tired and keep thinking. The midnight chewing over, the phone at the bus stop, finding something to do the moment there is free time: all of it to keep that hand from being empty.

Where does thinking come from, really?

Try it: for the next ten seconds, think only of one thing, nothing else at all.

It’s hard. In ten seconds, something else will most likely come up: a line of a song, someone’s face, a twinge of worry, the very thought “am I thinking of something else?” Try again: before the next thought comes up, know first what it is going to be. You can’t. Only when a thought comes up do you know it has come up; as only on hearing the door do you know someone is knocking.

Thoughts are not made one by one by the “I.” They come up like bubbles in water, one after another, some big, some small, some bursting the moment they appear, some joining into a string, string after string rising. “I’m thinking” is less I doing something than thinking happening in this place; the “I” is the voice that follows, claims the string, and says: this is what I thought.

This is not to say people can’t think. Of course they can: they can do sums, make plans, go through a matter from start to finish and sort it out. All this is real and has its uses. Only, when doing it, there is no craftsman sitting outside the thoughts using them as material; it is thinking itself, going forward step by step, making a road as it goes.

That “hand gripping everything” turns out to be unable to grip itself: when it reaches out, how far, what it grips, is not all up to it.

Thinking has another peculiar feature: it seems able to take people elsewhere. Remembering childhood, it is as if you were back in that summer; thinking of tomorrow’s meeting, as if you were already sitting in the meeting room; thinking of someone far away, as if you were by his side. So people often say: I wasn’t here just now, I was thinking about something else. Absent-minded.

Is the mind really absent?

The moment of remembering childhood: when is it? Now. The moment of planning tomorrow? Now too. Missing that person far away: the missing is here, at this moment, in this chair. The past can only be remembered now; tomorrow can only be hoped for now; far away can only be missed from here. From birth to this moment, a person has not left now for a single moment, has not left here for a single moment.

“Absent-minded” does not mean the mind has gone somewhere else. It means the mind is here, thinking about somewhere else. When your attention wanders, being has not wandered off at all; what wanders off is only what is thought about.

The circling worries at midnight are like this too. They speak of tomorrow, but it is now, on this bed, that they go round and round. Worry has not gone to tomorrow to stand sentry for anyone; it is right here, tonight, in this place, turning, warm.

Then is worry no use at all? Not that either. Thinking tomorrow through can sometimes really produce a plan: take an umbrella, leave ten minutes early, phone that person first. Thinking changes what comes after. Only, what changes what comes after is this present time of thinking; it does not first run off to tomorrow, occupy it, and come back to report. Tonight has not lived ahead into tomorrow; but when tomorrow comes, it carries the changes tonight left. So however far you think, you have not left by a single step; however much you think, you have not got hold in advance of something that hasn’t come.

Then what is now?

People have a very familiar picture: time is a line, drawn from past to future; now is a small point moving forward along the line, and a person stands on the point. Clocks, calendars, train timetables all rely on this picture.

Look for now with this picture, and you won’t find it. If now is a point on the line, how long is it? No length at all; then at this point nothing has time to happen: a note has no time to sound, a step no time to be taken, a heartbeat no time to finish. Yet now is plainly where everything happens. If it has some length, however short, then it has a first half and a second half; to the second half, the first is already past; to the first half, the second hasn’t come yet; within this short stretch a past and a future split open again, and look for the true now inside it, and it is the same problem again.

Try to catch now: say “now” to yourself. In Chinese the word is two syllables, xian-zai. As you say xian, zai has not come out; once zai has come out, xian is gone. No speed will help.

You can’t catch it for a single moment; yet you have never left it for a single moment.

The trouble is with the picture. Now is not a position on a line. Look at the Chinese word itself. Xian means to appear, to show: the moon xian, shows, from behind the clouds; a smile xian, shows on a face. Xianzai, now, is being, showing. Xian also comes in a homelier word: xiancheng, ready-made. Xiancheng fan is a ready meal, nothing to cook, pick it up and eat. Xianzai can be read as ready-made being too: nothing to make, nothing to fix; it is already there, warm.

Now can’t be caught, because it is not a thing to be held; it is being showing itself, moment by moment. Now can’t be left, because whatever it shows as, it is what is showing. This moment it shows as a bird calling outside the window, this moment as a hand turning a page, this moment as a thought coming up and sinking again. Being, moment after moment, seen from inside, is called now.

That hand which wants to grip everything can’t grip it, because now was never meant to be gripped. But it doesn’t need to grip: let go, and now won’t run away, because now has never left it.

Listening to a song shows this best.

A song is sung one note after another. If one note stopped there and kept sounding and wouldn’t move on, it would not be a song but a long, piercing whine. You hear a melody because every note keeps moving, sounding and at once giving way to the next; yet none moves on for nothing: the earlier notes have not vanished somewhere else; they live on in the flavor of this note now; the later notes haven’t sounded yet, but this note is already leaning toward them.

No single instant of a song is the whole song, yet every instant is the song.

Now is like this too. It is always passing, so it is alive; it is always coming, so no one has ever left it. No moment can pin it down, and at no moment has it ever gone out. No moment can stop, and so there is no moment that is not this one time, happening.

So every moment is new. Days seem always to repeat: the same bed, the same road, the same cup on the same table. But no moment is a photocopy of the last. This morning’s light falls on the rim of the cup at a slightly different angle from yesterday’s; yesterday’s cup of water was drunk long ago and has become part of the body; the hand holding the cup is a day older. “The same again” is people saving effort by gathering several similar moments into one sentence. Every moment, when it comes, comes for the first time, and for the last.

Things that can’t think are always in now too.

A river never turns back. The water that has flowed past doesn’t stop to recall which bridges it just went under; the water ahead doesn’t run off to the sea first to have a look. It is just this stretch flowing now; yet the rain upstream has fallen into it, and the sea downstream is waiting ahead of it; past and future are both in its flowing now. It doesn’t grip at all, and misses nothing.

At night you look up at a star. That point of light may have set out from it many years ago, traveled a very long way, and only tonight fallen into your eye; whether the star is still there now, no one can say. The light is old; the seeing is new. A star’s now and a person’s now, so many years apart, meet in this moment. Now is not one and the same point on a line; the now of every place is that place, showing itself.

In autumn a flock of wild geese flies south. They have no calendar, no schedule, and they don’t worry whether the south will be cold this year. When the weather cools, a pull in their bodies leans southward, and they take off. On the way they stop and go, settling to rest wherever there is water. They are not flying only in order to reach the south; every stretch of the flight is their flying now.

A cat lies on a windowsill watching a leaf fall outside, its eyes following the leaf; the leaf reaches the ground, its eyes pause, then go to something else. It isn’t thinking about that leaf, nor waiting for the next. It is watching. Done watching, it yawns and goes to sleep.

These things have their “past” too: the riverbed was carved out over many years, the geese know the route of years before, the cat remembers who will feed it. They have their “future” too: the river heading for the sea, the geese heading south, the cat, when hungry, going to find its bowl. But this past and future grow within how they are now, not somewhere else. They need no hand to grip anything, and now has never left them for a moment.

Where people differ from them is that people think: remember, hope, worry, plan. This is a remarkable ability that has grown in this place called a person; with it, people built houses, grew grain, recorded what happened many years ago. But this ability also happens now; the moment of thinking of the past, the moment of thinking of the future, are in the same now as the moment the river flows, the geese fly past, the cat watches the leaf fall: just as new, just as full.

Now, that fear of emptiness again.

People fear the mind going empty, as if, once empty, they would fall into a place where there is nothing at all.

Yet there have been times like this: sitting by a river, or at a window, thinking nothing, just sitting there, not knowing for how long. Coming back to yourself, you say: I was miles away for a bit. In that while the mind was empty; in that while, was anything missing? The water flowed, the wind blew, someone walked past outside the window, the sunlight moved from this floor tile to that one. Breath in, breath out. That while was full.

When thinking stops, being does not stop. When the mind is empty, being is not empty. “A blank” is not nothing at all; it is thinking resting for a while, and everything else going on happening. That while is not a bit more being than when you are thinking, nor a bit less.

When that hand lets go, nothing slips through; when it was gripping, in fact it had gripped nothing.

Thinking is not a bad thing either, and doesn’t need driving away. Some thinking is like doing sums, entry by entry, perfectly clear; some is like dreaming, a phrase here, a phrase there, drifting you know not where; some bursts the moment it comes up; some has been tangled for many years, and the moment it comes to mind, the heart tightens; and some, as you think, becomes an idea, a decision, a thing done. Fast or slow, useful or useless, clear or muddled, all are being happening in this place.

Thinking also runs ahead: once I…

Once I’m through this busy spell. Once I’ve paid off the mortgage. Once the children are grown. Once I retire. Once I’ve worked it out, then I’ll live properly. After “once I…” there is always a better time waiting up ahead; this stretch now is lived only to get there, so make do for the moment.

But the future has never once come by itself. What comes is always now: sometimes showing as something to look forward to, sometimes as a plan, sometimes as a fear. Thinking of opening a little shop next year, you lie in bed at night and picture the shop over and over: what to hang by the door, where the counter goes, what to sell on the first day. The shop doesn’t exist yet; that night’s thinking is a real, vivid now.

What is thought of has not happened just because it was thought of; what has not happened need not be called happened. Hoping someone will come back: the hope is real; that he hasn’t come back is real too. Being does not erase this difference. It only says: this night of hoping is not borrowed, not a night to be counted only after the shop has opened. It is here now, fully.

People also often say: live in the present. The meaning is good. But a small misunderstanding is hidden in it: as if the present were a little room you had to squeeze into with effort, and the moment your attention wandered you were squeezed out and must hurry to squeeze back in. So some have learned a new kind of tiredness, reminding themselves at every mouthful: focus, be present, I’ve wandered again.

Where is the moment of wandering? It wanders in the present. Where is the moment of regretting yesterday? It regrets in the present. The present has no door, and no one has ever been shut out of it. Living in the present needs no learning; people have always lived in the present, and have never for a moment lived anywhere else.

Then why do people always feel they are not in the present? Because the heart picked long ago: the focused one is me, the clear-headed one is me, the one with a clear mind who knows what he’s doing is me. The wandering one doesn’t count; the one with stray thoughts doesn’t count; the one going round and round at midnight, unable to stop, “that’s not me, that’s just my mind running wild.” The moment he won’t own it, there is a split: on this side a me who ought to be in the present, on that side a me who has run off, and between them a stretch of road to be run back along. The vexed “I’ve wandered again” is that stretch of road.

But in that moment of wandering, the wandering is you. It is not that you went out and left your mind at home running wild; it is that this moment, this drifting, is you: drifting from tomorrow’s meeting to that person, from that person to a tree, all that drifts along the way is you. The night of worry, the worry is you; the moment of regret, the regret is you; when you are miles away, being miles away is you; when the sums come out perfectly clear, that clarity is you too. There is no you more in the present standing alongside, finding this one not focused enough. So there is no need to return to the present, nor any way to: to return, there would first have to be someone who went out; no one has ever gone out of this place; this time of wandering just now doesn’t owe a more-present you its owning either; the moment it is called not counting, that stretch of road appears, and the one chasing appears with it.

That circle of thinking, from tomorrow’s meeting to the tree outside the childhood door, went a long way round. Going round, I thought I had been to many places.

In fact I never left this chair by a single step.

That tree shows itself now in thinking, its leaves green, and under it a stone sat on until it shone. Whether the tree is still there, I don’t know; perhaps it was cut down long ago. But this moment of remembering it is now, here, new.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking.”

Thinking is. When not thinking, it is too.