Consider this exercise from MCTB:
MCTB:
In the last exercise, I take on the thoughts directly. I know that the sensations that make up thoughts can reveal the truth of the Three Characteristics to me, so I have no fear of them; instead I regard them as more glorious opportunities for insight. Again, sitting quietly in a quiet place with my eyes closed, I turn the mind to the thought stream. However, rather than paying attention to the content like I usually do, I pay attention to the ultimate nature of the numerous sensations that make up thoughts: impermanence. I may even make the thoughts in my head more and more intense just to get a good look at them.
It is absolutely essential to try to figure out how you experience thoughts, otherwise you will simply flounder in content. What do thoughts feel like? Where do they occur? How big are they? What do they look like, smell like, taste like, sound like? How long do they last? Where are their edges? Only take on this practice if you are willing to try to work on this level, the level that tries to figure out what thoughts actually are rather than what they mean or imply.
If my thoughts are somewhat auditory, I begin by trying to perceive each syllable of the current thought and then each syllable’s beginning and ending. If they are somewhat visual, I try to perceive every instant in which a mental image presents itself. If they seem somewhat physical, such as the memory of a movement or feeling, I try to perceive exactly how long each little sensation of this memory lasts. This sort of investigation can actually be fairly easy to do and yet is quite powerful. Things can also get a bit odd quickly when doing this sort of practice, but I don’t worry about that. Sometimes thoughts can begin to sound like the auditory strobing section of the song “Crimson and Clover,” where it sounds like they are standing at a spinning microphone. Sometimes the images in our head can begin to flash and flicker. Sometimes our very sense of attention can begin to strobe. This is the point! The sensations that imply a mind and mental processes are discontinuous, impermanent.
Again, this practice requires steadiness and determination, as well as precision. When I am really engaged with this, there is no time to be lost in the content of the thoughts, as I am trying too hard to be clear about the beginning and ending of each little flicker, squawk and pulse which makes up thought. This can be an especially fun practice when difficult thoughts are distracting me from a physical sensation. I can turn on them, break them down into meaningless little blips, little vibrations of suchness, and then they don’t have the power to cause me any trouble. They just scatter like confetti. They are seen as they are: small, quick and harmless. They have a message to convey, but then they are gone.
Suppose a Spanish-speaking person keeps thinking the thought "quiero queso". How will they approach this situation during meditation? Following this advice, and supposing the thought is auditory, one would try to perceive "QUIE-ro QUE-so, QUIE-ro QUE-so" or something like that. If done well, one might manage to perceive the thought sound-by-sound: "Q-U-I-E-R-O-Q-U-E-S-O, Q-U-I-E-R-O-Q-U-E-S-O". One is approaching a perception of the thought as "meaningless little blips, little vibrations of suchness".
One theoretical difficulty with this approach is that it isn't exactly asking the meditator to ignore "content"; more specifically, it's asking the meditator to pay attention to the auditory sense that makes up the experience, and to ignore the mind sense that makes up the experience. A Spanish-speaking person continually thinking "quiero queso" in an auditory way isn't merely hearing a bunch of syllables, but is hearing syllables that are
meaningful. A non-Spanish-speaker, by contrast, only hears "QUIE-ro QUE-so", and does not experience any of the meaning associated with the syllables. Should the meditator ignore the mind sense involved in their experience? Is it a universally good meditation technique to reduce a meaningful thought in a language one comprehends to a string of sounds as heard by someone who doesn't speak that language?
It's possible to sketch out three variant practices at this point:
1) The meditator follows the practice outlined above, noticing the auditory sense, ignoring the mental sense, and not being swept away into unmindfulness by the ignored mental sense. The meditator continues to mindfully experience a variety of other sensory phenomena.
2) The meditator experiences the thought, engages discursively with the mental sense, and possibly gets swept away by the content of the mental sense.
3) The meditator experiences the thought, notices the auditory sense, and also pays attention to the mental sense, thinking: "Yes, I want cheese." By doing this, they may come to realize: "Yes, I am
hungry." And perhaps further: "Yes, I am
angry that, at this retreat, food is not available as I desire it, but only on a schedule.", i.e. observes many things in their experience, both in the mind sense and in other senses, which they could not observe before. They may also continue to mindfully experience a variety of other sensory phenomena.
The first is MCTB-style practice, or the "hardcore" style practice generally. The second is a kind of practice which is often associated, rightly or wrongly, with "IMS-style" practice or "psychotherapy-style" practice. But what is the third? To me it seems like a way to engage with high-level issues (what the meditator wants, what the meditator believes, what the meditator feels) while continuing to engage with low-level sensory experience, and all that's required to do it is
not to ignore the mental component of experience.
Indeed, I would guess that, rather than being shockingly benighted, the IMS folks and the rest of the "psychologized" Buddhist world would count the third approach as a commendable high-level practice, and the second as a transitional step towards something else. Theoretically, the advantages of this third approach are that all the MCTB attainments (and more) are made available by it,
and a great number of psychological and therapeutic understandings are likely to be attained as well (the kinds of understandings and therapeutic results prized by psychologically-minded people, from psychotherapy patients to actualists).
Speaking from experience, I can say that there is a great deal of mental experience which happens moment-to-moment, which is normally hidden, and which can be made visible by very sharp mindfulness along with an open attitude and attention to whichever mental sensory experiences happen to present themselves. Powerful concentration can also reveal some or all (?) of it, but powerful concentration is hard to attain, whereas basic mindfulness, an open attitude, and engagement with the mental sense should be fairly easy for any serious meditator. Drugs can also reveal some or all (?) of it, but there are many downsides to drug use, and it's unclear whether they would reliably result in any sort of permanent beneficial mental change anyway.
Practically-speaking, I would suggest this technique: sit and observe sensations in the body for awhile (as one has done previously), and then change one's attitude towards discursive thoughts; any discursive thoughts that come up are now interesting, and instead of ignoring them or noting them, one should ask an interested question such as: "Why do I feel that way?", "What do I think / how do I feel about that?", "What does that remind me of?", etc. as appropriate. As more discursive thoughts occur, simply keep following them with one investigatory question in mind or other, without censoring them. If you start having a "first-person" relationship towards them, that's fine, but don't let your awareness get too mucked up. Keep body sensations in awareness as much as is practical. After awhile (generally with stronger concentration, or after getting "deeper" into things) it may be possible to drop the interested questions, and merely have an interested attitude. I found it best to assume that the point of engagement with discursive thoughts is to bring subconscious material into consciousness, so according to that assumption, there's no need to build any grand theories, or employ too much grand theorizing about what one "really" thinks, unless enough hidden material has been revealed to make some psychological truth or other about oneself blatantly obvious (and in this case, the grand theorizing may just be epiphenomenal to the therapeutic effect).
I can write in more detail if anyone wants, but just messing around with this intersection of meditation and psychology is probably more helpful than reading about it. The key points are an interest in one's "stuff", openness, a modicum of concentration, and (maybe?) traditional mindfulness of the body.
(NB I don't actually know what "quiero queso" means, I relied on the internet for a translation.)