Any suttas addressing the delight or pleasure of thinking

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 :sleeping: it would be apparent.

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