Yes, I was thinking of MN20 myself, in relation to appropriate and inappropriate attention.
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Many Thanks to everybody for the thoughtful input (pun intended) 
I just realised that I was supposed to tick the solution - The solution is shared by you all .
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My experience has been that the problem is thought arising from the five hindrances, or as in MN20 above, craving, aversion and delusion. Thoughts arise wisdom compassion etc (or from the broader non-craving, non-aversion and non-delusion) too and tend to be calm and not a disruption to a calm mind. Thoughts per se can be wholesome or unwholesome as can sankhara and I think fall into the category of sankhara; more specifically vaci-sankhara/verbal fabrications are vitakka vicara. Note that suttas dealing with the five hindrances are dealing with thoughts.
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Many Thanks @Mat
I suppose the closest to what I was enquiring about is the resources about restraint. The brain does what the brain does - reacts to contact from the senses. But becoming enamoured in the intellectual process, becoming delighted and indulging in intellect and ones own thinking process, is certainly a danger in todays society - where this is usually seen as a sign of superiority and status. As such seeing it for the ‘danger’ it is and applying restraint as per
Is what I was looking for in particular
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Ah, you mean the delight of intellectual thought! Yes, thinkers often think ‘I think therefore I am’!
“Mendicants, there are these five grasping aggregates. What five? The grasping aggregates of form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. These are the five grasping aggregates.
To give up these five grasping aggregates you should develop the four kinds of mindfulness meditation. …”
Its said that sometimes some practitioners don’t become arahanths as they still have delight in the dhamma, as per Satipatthana sutta.
I find that it’s a hindrance to meditation, when mindfulness is overcome by discursive thought, pleasant or otherwise.
We could look at the drawbacks of intellectual thought. People identify with their ability to think and this can lead to conceit and looking down on others, and it becomes a obstacle to the path but equally being able to reflect is a great boon to the path, when it is ‘wise reflection’. Mindfulness is lost and we are reminded not to think too much about what we are being mindful of (as per Bahiya sutta). I find we also develop aversion to others of a lesser intellectual bent. Vitakka vicara is leads to distraction and dispersion of the mind of samadhi, and and results in a weakening of the ability to absorb insights from mindfulness.
Noble silence has always been recommended or the ten types of talk that lead to silencing of the mind, thought and eventually all phenomena.
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It’s an interesting question but, it gives rise to new questions.
In order to answer the question, whether the answer comes from a Sutta or, somewhere else, we will still be thinking.
The answer must lie in not-thinking. However, to read about how to stop thinking is just more of the same?
Thinking is stressful but, so is not-thinking if we are still worldlings. If our not-thinking/discursive breaks were perfectly satisfying we would be reluctant to think as much as we do?
No ‘answers’ from any book or Sutta is gonna stop us from thinking - is it?
But it’s uncanny as a bhikkhuni just shared this with me:
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A further complication IMO is that thinking is usually symptomatic of an underlying mood or mind-state, and quite often related to one of the hindrances, directly or directly. So for example, if I’m in an anxious mood I will probably be having anxious thoughts, which in turn compound and prolong the mood.
I find that practising the third frame of satipatthana is helpful in this context.
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I have a question about the third frame of MN10. When I listen mindfully to DN33 is it “constricted mind”? Because when my mind wanders it is definitely “scattered mind.”
They know constricted mind as ‘constricted mind,’ and scattered mind as ‘scattered mind.’
How do you address this phrase in your own practice? I.e., how does “constricted mind” present itself to you? As translated I flash on constipated mind and somehow that doesn’t quite fit.
(…some time later…)
Actually it does fit. The root word is saṅkhitta and a telling translation from SN51.20 provides another use of saṅkhitta:
22.1And what is inquiry that’s constricted internally?
Katamā ca, bhikkhave, ajjhattaṃ saṅkhittā vīmaṃsā?
22.2It’s when inquiry is combined with dullness and drowsiness.
Yā, bhikkhave, vīmaṃsā thinamiddhasahagatā thinamiddhasampayuttā—
Therefore constricted/scattered are both bad extremes as they would be with…erm…the product of digestion.
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Something I notice is a difference between “small” mind and “enlarged” mind. Small mind feels self-centred, while enlarged mind feels spacious and open ( I work with the space element sometimes, which seems to have an effect ). I have the sense that with a more spacious mind, thoughts and feelings seem smaller, and less significant.
From MN10:
“When the mind is enlarged, he discerns that the mind is enlarged. When the mind is not enlarged, he discerns that the mind is not enlarged.”
More generally I think it’s useful to distinguish between mind-states and mental objects. I think of the mind as a space in which stuff arises.
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Wow! Thanks for sharing that insight. I also am working with space and had never noticed what you mentioned. For me space is formless but encompasses the infinite possibility of all forms. This becomes painfully evident when walking with eyes closed through a strange room. One gets smacked by reality. Literally, to your point on “stuff arises”, pain arises.
Now that you mention it, I also find that when sitting with eyes closed, thoughts and feelings seem smaller and less significant in that vast space.
When walkng with eyes closed, it is much harder to find such equanimity–yet it is there to be found after the terror is dealt with. Terror is such a … useful teacher. Terror is the scream of identity. 
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Terror is the scream of identity… being destroyed 
What emerges afterwards is lighter, easier, happier and freer 
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I find that one can shift focus from thoughts arising and ceasing to feelings arising and ceasing. They happen in quick succession and feedback on each other. eg specific thought > anxious feeling > another ‘anxiety arousing’ thought etc.
a causal loop. and then focusing on the gaps between cause and effect, one can interrupt the process. Or to begin with one can set off the process which is easier.
EG calling up a thought (eg the moment my dog died) and watching as the sad feeling arises as a result… then one can increase the repertoire and ‘watch’ this process take place (not being self). As a result one must become removed from ownership or identity… as the fact that it is a conditioned process becomes clear.
Maybe a little weird but I’ve always loved this stuff… mind analyses, training and ‘control’ 
Thank-you past kamma 
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It is indeed. … And writing can’t be done without thinking. … It seems that if we stop reading and writing this forum will naturally fall away and allow us to be silent.
There’s food for thought there !
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Oooops! I just can’t stop thinking … How about you?
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A though just came up and, here it is:
I was once waiting for a Dhamma-interview with ‘Ayya Khema’ a few days into a retreat. A friend was also waiting and I asked him what he was going to report. He said: he had this dumb song going round and round in his mind and, he was going to ask for help to help him let it go.
It seemed that he had got annoyed with it happening and, the annoyance hadn’t made it go away. Instead, of relaxing and, letting things be, he had gone into crisis-mode.
I am not sure that problematising thought is all that useful. I don’t see how we would feed ourselves or, land on the cushion to meditate if we were completely thought-free. Sure, thinking is not satisfying, like pretty much everything else that happens as a worldling.
It’s a great opportunity to apprehend the three characteristics in real-time. Seeing that thoughts are thinking themselves is a liberating insight that can make a difference in our lives but, we need to have thoughts before we can make that discovery.
I was actually commenting on my pun. … But seriously, I think it’s good to practice writing less, because writing doesn’t help us let go.
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There are different ways we can write, there are different ways we can read, there are different ways we can sit still, there are different ways we can walk, eat etc.
There are different ways we can think. I don’t mean thinking about different things.
There are skillful and unskillful ‘ways’ to think. There are skillful and unskillful ways to not think.
It’s not that thinking is inskillful and not thinking is skillful. That would make a cabbage more skillful than a human being.
It’s not just whether we think or not or, how much it happens. What’s more important is our relationship to thought. That can be healthy or, unhealthy.
To not be mindful of thinking is not helpful. To know that thoughts are thinking themselves is an immediate revelation. It gives rise to insight, a direct seeing of the not-self characteristic.
Thinking may not be a bad thing in the right context if, we can turn it into practice. “Everything is teaching us.” - Ajahn Chah
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Yes, it’s fascinating, knowing you can recreate a certain feeling or mood just by thinking of a particular thing. Right Effort seems relevant here.
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I have a question about the third frame of MN10. When I listen mindfully to DN33 is it “constricted mind”? Because when my mind wanders it is definitely “scattered mind.”
How do you address this phrase in your own practice? I.e., how does “constricted mind” present itself to you? As translated I flash on constipated mind and somehow that doesn’t quite fit.
My experience of what I understand that to mean is partially an almost physical experience of tightening around a particular set of mental formations, a limited set of thoughts/desires/volitions/emotions/etc., and the capture of my mind by those. So, to me, I call it a “scattered mind” when my mind is just wandering without a lot of direction or an underlying attractor, whereas I call it “constricted mind” when it’s obsessing over a particular thing or set of things. In that case, it’s distracted, but not scattered, because it’s getting stuck on something (usually because there’s some underlying clinging).
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As I understand it constricted here is about feelings of reduced or impaired focus when feeling sleepiness but not falling asleep or sleeping yet. If someone was struggling to be awake while falling asleep 
it would be apparent.
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