Leave it alone! Let The Mind Chatter

Meditation as a tool to uncover how the mind creates the world

Apr 26, 2025

Meditation is often misunderstood as an attempt to silence the mind completely. This misconception— treating thought as the enemy that should be disciplined, overlooks the richer purpose of meditation across wisdom traditions. In Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, phenomenology, cognitive science and Christian Mysticism, the value of meditation doesn’t get it’s strength in forcibly blanking out the mind. Instead, I would assert that its value is in changing our relationship to thoughts and by so doing uncovering the true nature of the Self and reality(however we define reality).

Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing author, and St. John of the Cross emphasized that union with the Divine does not occur through the intellect’s domination of thought, but through releasing attachment to mental images and concepts. For them, the way to God was never in perfecting the mind's activity, which we culturally tend to care more about. For these mystics, it was more about passing through a "dark night" where all familiar mental structures are surrendered, allowing pure awareness—described as the spark of the soul or the naked being of the spirit—to recognize its source in God, as God. In The Cloud of Unknowing, the anonymous author instructs the reader to "cover the cloud of forgetting" over all created things, including one’s own thoughts by letting them pass ungrasped, so that the soul may rest in the "cloud of unknowing"—pure presence before God.

Similarly, across multiple faith traditions and modern cognitive and quantum science perspectives, it is by allowing the mind to operate naturally without clinging that the illusory construction of a separate “self” is revealed. Examining consciousness, especially through phenomenology, shows that experience itself is generated by the mind—a subjective appearance rather than the “ultimate reality”. Recognizing this allows us to uncover a ‘relaxation’ into one’s true nature: the awareness behind all phenomena. Allowing the mind to operate naturally (without clinging or aversion) is what reveals the illusory construction of a separate “self.” And there are practical implications to this recognition of oneself as the awareness behind experience. For one, one can fully participate in life and its ‘ups and downs’, engaging with phenomena without mistaking them for any form of “ultimate truth”. I intend to articulate these thoughts, analyzing this point of view using themes integrated from Advaita Vedanta (with a slight emphasis), Buddhism, phenomenology, and cognitive science.

Meditation and the Myth of a Silent Mind

One of the most persistent myths is that the goal of meditation is to stop all thoughts and attain a perfectly silent mind. In reality, contemplative traditions teach that the mind’s very nature is to generate thoughts – and that this is not a problem. As a Zen teaching puts it, “the function of the mind is to secrete thoughts,” just as ears hear sounds and eyes see sights1. From this Buddhist perspective, trying to suppress thinking is as futile as trying to stop the ears from hearing; instead, meditation is(I swear it can’t get easier than this) to let thoughts be “just thoughts,” allowing them to arise and pass without being carried away. In other words, the aim is not to extinguish mental activity, but to change our relationship to it. We learn to rest in an open awareness that witnesses thoughts without judgment or attachment. The moment judgement is introduced, that’s yet another thought rising up against another thought. Simple, isn’t it?

Importantly, what meditation does seek to diminish is not thinking per se, but an observation of our habit of clinging to thoughts and feeding them with obsessive interest(the property of obsessive interest too, is the thought). We normally tend to get entangled in the content of our mind—chasing after pleasant ideas and wrestling with unpleasant ones. Meditation trains us to recognize thoughts as just another transient phenomenon arising in consciousness. In doing so, we “stop our belief in the solidity of our interpretation of our thoughts—our ‘story’—and the emotional patterns and judgments that often come with it”. Thoughts become like clouds passing through the sky of the mind, observed without grasping. This gentle allowing can actually lead to a quieter mind as a byproduct, but the crucial point is that stillness comes from non-interference, not brute force. As one teacher quipped, we should give our busy mind “a large, spacious meadow” in which to roam freely, rather than constantly trying to corral it. Paradoxically, when we stop fighting our thoughts, the mind naturally settles down. So, the myth of “silencing the mind” is replaced by a more nuanced understanding: meditation cultivates an aware indifference to mental chatter, which is far more sustainable than any attempted suppression of thinking. Not like anyone can truly suppress thinking. The more and more one engages in this tool, the more natural it is to embrace the indifference.

The mind cannot be permanently forced into silence. Advaita meditation techniques and centering prayer(for those more attuned to the Christian faith tradition) often involve observing the “fluctuations” of mind to create a space of deeper self-awareness2 . The goal is not empty mind for its own sake, but to direct attention toward the “essence of consciousness” that underlies mental noise. By turning inwardly, the practitioner may experience what it is that’s referred to as the true Self (Atman) beyond the ego, which in Christian Mysticism, is truly refered to as God, and in the Kaballah is referred to as Ein Sof. In Vedanta, thoughts are part of the natural activity of the mind (often called manas), and what needs to be silenced is our identification with those thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Ramana Maharshi, a renowned Advaita sage, taught that the very first thought the mind produces is the “I-thought,” the notion of a separate self, and that this I-thought is the root from which all other thoughts sprout3. Trying to forcibly stop all thoughts is less effective than tracing them back to the implicit “I” behind them. When one inquires into who is thinking (“Who am I?”), the mental agitation naturally subsides and awareness of the true Self dawns. The quieting of mind is a means to transforming one’s understanding of thoughts and self, rather than an end goal of perpetual thoughtlessness.

Observing the Mind to Reveal the Illusory Self

Why is it so valuable to allow thoughts to arise and be witnessed? Because in doing so, we begin to discern how our sense of an independent, separate “self” is constructed by those very thoughts. The everyday ego or individual identity (the jiva) is seen as a product of the mind, sustained by the stream of thoughts, memories, and identifications that we habitually entertain. When we sit in meditation and observe the mind’s natural activity, we start to notice that the feeling of “I, me, mine” is nothing more than a thought pattern, an idea that continuously arises but has no substance of its own. As the author Sukhdev Virdee4 explains, by “observing thoughts and sensations without attachment” in meditation, one can literally “see through the illusion of the personal self” – realizing that the separate ego was never real to begin with. In other words, when thoughts are allowed to play out without clinging, they reveal their own origin: the witnessing awareness that is our true Self. It’s kind of a backward realization, if you will. Like when you notice there’s light, you can trace your way back to the source of the light, the flashlight. The incessant self-talk and mind-chatter that normally dominate our attention begin to be seen as scaffolding that props up a false sense of “I.” Dismantle this scaffolding (or simply stop identifying with it), and the illusion of a separate self collapses.

Buddhism arrives at a complementary insight through a different route. The Buddha’s doctrine of anattā (no-self) directly asserts that what we call a personal self is not an enduring, independent entity, but a collection of impermanent constituents (the five skandhas: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness) that are in constant flux. By letting the mind reveal itself in meditation – observing sensations, thoughts, and feelings as they come and go – Buddhist practice helps one realize that no stable “I” can be found in any of these phenomena. Everything we take to be “me” is a dependently originated process, not an unchanging soul or ego. In fact, nothing exists independently at all. The notion of a separate self is thus an imputation on a flow of experiences, a kind of story the mind tells itself. Modern Buddhist teachers often emphasize that thoughts think themselves; there is thinking, but no thinker to be found. This aligns with the Zen saying that the mind “does its thing” and our practice is simply to let thoughts arise without believing there is a solid “me” behind them. When we carefully watch the mind, we may notice, for example, a thought say, “I am anxious.” Upon investigation, there is just the sensation of anxiety and a thought labeling it – the “I” is merely another thought accompanying the feeling. Such introspective observation verifies the anattā doctrine: the persistent sense of self is a kind of cognitive illusion, a narrative overlay that isn’t backed by any permanent essence.

Phenomenology, the philosophical study of consciousness championed by thinkers like Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, involves paying close attention to how phenomena appear to us. It reveals that much of what we assume to be “out there” or “in here” is actually a product of consciousness organizing experience. The self, in phenomenological terms, is not a pre-given thing but is constituted in the act of experience. We find that the sense of self co-arises with the world as we perceive and interpret it. Husserl, for instance, spoke of the “transcendental ego” – not an individual personality, but the witnessing center of consciousness that constitutes the unity of experience. Phenomenological inquiry “brackets” the assumption of a separate ego and finds that what we call “I” is intricately bound up with the stream of consciousness itself. In everyday life, we normally live through the ego as an unquestioned subject, but when we reflect phenomenologically, we instead see the ego as an object of inquiry – as something that appears in consciousness and can be examined. This shift bears remarkable similarity to what happens in meditation when one begins to observe the mind. The act of witnessing one’s thoughts already implies a distinction between the true observer (pure awareness) and the observed contents (including the thought of “I”). In newer cognitive research, the idea is reinforced that shows how the brain actively fabricates our sense of self. It suggests that the brain creates a “narrative self” by knitting together memories, perceptions, and intentions into a seemingly coherent story. Yet this story can be experimentally disrupted or altered, indicating that it is indeed a construction. Psychologist Bruce Hood, for example, describes5 the self as an illusion generated by the brain – a subjective experience that is not what it seems. “Most of us have an experience of a self… an autonomous individual with a coherent identity… But that experience is an illusion — it does not exist independently…and it is certainly not what it seems”. According to Hood, both our momentary sense of being an “I” and our more narrative sense of being a personal identity (“me”) are “ever-changing narratives” spun by neural processes. The self is useful in organizing behavior, just as an illusion can be functional, but it has no standalone reality apart from the mind’s activities. The brain’s default mode network – a network active when our mind wanders – is heavily involved in self-referential thinking. When the mind is left to itself (e.g. in meditation, once focused attention is relaxed), it often drifts into thoughts about “me” (past regrets, future plans, etc.), showing how the self-concept perpetuates itself through mind-wandering. However, advanced meditators demonstrate changes in these brain networks, correlating with a quieter self-narrative and more present-centered awareness. This suggests that by observing the mind and not habitually feeding the ego narrative, the brain can actually reduce the dominance of the self-construct. In short, cognitive science concurs: the sense of a separate self is a mental construct, one that meditation can loosen or even temporarily dissolve. By letting the mind be and watching it without attachment, we give ourselves the chance to see this construct in action and realize we are not bound to it.

Mind-Made Experience vs. Ultimate Reality

Allowing the mind to operate naturally not only exposes the illusory self, but also highlights a startling fact: our entire experience of the world is a mind-made phenomenon. We normally take for granted that what we perceive isn’t reality as we think it is, but both ancient wisdom and modern science suggest that what we perceive is more like a map or model that our mind creates – one that may only loosely correspond to any ultimate reality (if such a reality even can be known). An analogy often used is that of a movie playing on a screen: the images and stories are visible (and can even be engaging or frightening), but their reality is entirely dependent on the unchanging screen beneath. When, through inquiry and meditation, this ignorance is dispelled, one realizes that the world of separate forms was a kind of mental superimposition upon the unitary consciousness. The world is then seen “like a dream” or a mirage – appearing real until one wakes up to what is real.

What about “ultimate reality” then? The weird thing is this: as soon as we talk about reality, we are already in the realm of our experience and interpretation – a ding an sich (thing-in-itself) beyond all experience is not something we can ever perceive, by definition. Speculatively, one could argue that the ultimate reality – whether called Brahman or Emptiness – is obscured by the mind’s constructions, and that all these paths agree on the need to see through appearances. In everyday terms, both science and spirituality are telling us: don’t trust your mind’s picture of reality to be the final word. There is more to truth than what our ordinary perception reveals. Our experiences are mind-dependent representations, and recognizing this opens the door to seeking what, if anything, lies beyond those representations.

Awareness: The Self Beyond Experience

If the personal self is an illusion and our perceived world a mental construct, what then are we in the deepest sense? Across many contemplative traditions, the answer is that we are the Awareness in which experience happens. There is a ground of consciousness that is not itself a thought or perception, but the illuminator of all thoughts and perceptions. Even putting it this way, for the untrained mind, is yet another object to hold, to imagine, to grasp etc. Due to ignorance, we typically misidentify with the body-mind complex and its ego, and overlook our nature as pure awareness. The process of meditation and self-inquiry is meant to shift this identification: from seeing oneself as the protagonist in the mind’s story, to being the impartial witnessing consciousness of that story. When that shift is stabilized, one realizes “I am not the mind, not the body; I am That which knows the mind and body.” At this point, the false self is seen through, and the non-dual Self alone is known as real.

Now, what does it mean in practice to realize oneself as this awareness behind all experience? Does one become detached or dissociated from life? Counterintuitively, the opposite tends to happen: one becomes fully present and engaged with life, but with freedom from the usual anxieties and fixations. When you know yourself as the open sky rather than the passing clouds, you can allow each cloud to take its natural course without fear or craving. This translates to a life of participation without attachment. One beautiful Zen6 saying encapsulates it: “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” Outwardly, nothing may change – you still perform your ordinary tasks (work, relationships, chores, etc.) – but inwardly, there is a change in perspective. The tasks are no longer seen as contributing to or detracting from a fragile ego identity; they are simply happenings in the great glorious dance. The sage Shankara used the analogy of an actor in a drama: before self-realization, we are like an actor who has forgotten he is acting and has become the character, suffering the character’s trials. After realization, the actor regains his true identity – he can still play the role on stage with full gusto, but he never loses the knowledge that it is a role. Similarly, living as the awareness behind experience means one can love, work, create, and even experience sorrow or pain, fully, yet simultaneously know that none of these phenomena defines or limits the true Self. They are like waves arising in the ocean of consciousness: the waves are real as waves, but the true nature of all of them is water. The practical upshot is a kind of unshakeable peace and freedom. Joy and pain come and go, but one abides in what is called in advaita, satchitananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss), the inherent bliss of pure being. And I always say this: this does not lead to apathy or indifference towards others—quite the contrary. Without the distortion of ego-centered perception, one can experience natural compassion and empathy. If the Atman (Self) is Brahman, and Brahman is equally present in all beings, then loving others becomes as intuitive as loving oneself (in fact, the distinction drops away).

Fully participating in life after realizing one’s true nature often means one is more available to life. Every experience is approached wholeheartedly, but with the understanding that it is a transient form of the ultimate reality. One can enjoy the play without clinging to any part of it. Achieving goals or facing losses does not alter the silent fulfillment of simply being. In the phenomenological sense, one lives in the “now” of direct experience more often, rather than in abstractions. In fact, research has shown that people are often most content when fully absorbed in what they are doing (“flow” states), which aligns with the idea that freedom comes when we drop the self-narrative and merge awareness with the activity of the moment. In spiritual terms, that merging is just the non-dual state – the doer, the doing, and the done are one process happening.

General speaking, ancient scripture, modern laboratory, sciences, well respected traditions all suggest that the ordinary way we run after a silent mind or a solid self is misguided. Meditation is not about muting the mind, but about understanding it; enlightenment is not about vanishing from the world, but about seeing the world as it is. When thoughts are allowed to freely arise in the light of mindful awareness, they reveal themselves as fleeting arisings with no owner – and the separate self they seemed to consolidate vanishes like a mirage. What remains is the open sky of consciousness, in which the personal identity is seen as a cloud formation: beautiful, perhaps useful, but ultimately insubstantial.

Realizing this is not an escape from life. It truly feels like an invitation to live more fully. Freed from the illusion of being a small, isolated self, one can embrace the flow of existence with clarity and grace. As the Zen kōan teaches, one still chops wood and carries water – one still tends to responsibilities, relationships, and the ebb and flow of human experience – but now each act is done without attachment and with deep presence.
The practical teachings of vendanta remain as relevant as ever: don’t fight your mind – know it, know yourself as more than it, and live life fully aware that what you perceive is not all that is. In doing so, one may find the peace that surpasses understanding, right in the heart of everyday existence.

Keiryu Liên Shutt, Lion’s Roar: Meditation isn’t about stopping thoughts; the mind naturally “secretes” thoughts, and we learn to let them be (Am I Supposed to Stop Thinking? | Lion’s Roar) (Am I Supposed to Stop Thinking? | Lion’s Roar).

Sukhdev Virdee, Advaita Vedanta Meditation: By observing thoughts without attachment, one sees through “the illusion of the self” and experiences the pure consciousness behind it (The Role of Meditation in Advaita Vedanta: A Path to Self-Realization).

Ramana Maharshi (via Richard Clarke), Who Am I?: The first thought in the mind is the “I”-thought, which spawns all other thoughts (Ramana Maharshi Satsang Para 10 The I thought is the first thought | Living in the Embrace of Arunachala). This indicates the centrality of the ego-thought in mental activity.

Bruce Hood, The Self Illusion (Psychology Today interview): The sense of being an autonomous, coherent self is an illusion “generated by the brain” — it’s not what it seems and has no independent existence (What Is the Self Illusion? | Psychology Today). Both the “I” (present awareness) and “me” (personal narrative) are “ever-changing narratives” created by the brain (What Is the Self Illusion? | Psychology Today).

Zen proverb (Layman Pang / koan): “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Life goes on externally the same, but one’s relationship to it is transformed (Enlightenment: 3 Meanings of Chop Wood, Carry Water | Sloww). This emphasizes full engagement with ordinary tasks, now done with awareness and without attachment.

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