I was hanging out with a friend this weekend and she asked me why I practice Buddhism. I thought about it for a moment, and answered that it helps me stop telling myself so many stories. My friend replied “that’s the first answer I’ve ever heard that makes it sound appealing.” She said other friends have talked about peace of mind or calmness, but they had seemed detached from life. She couldn’t see the appeal of living without emotions. Stopping stories, on the other hand, caught her interest.

Telling fewer stories is a relatively new answer for me, and it’s been a powerful one. A lot of American Buddhist teachers and writers present meditation and mindfulness as stopping thought. They teach borrowed Hindu meditation focusing techniques like gazing or holding objects in ones mind. Mindfulness is taught as becoming aware of thoughts, and shifting to a focus like the breath or music. I practiced this way for a long time and it did have some benefit. My state of mind improved, I became less reactive, and I was generally calmer and more content.

The problem with stopping thought

Unfortunately, stopping thought is the “fast food” of Buddhism. It skips over the hard work of looking at and learning about our egos from our internal discourse. I think of my ego as the protective part of myself that tries to keep my true self safe by maintaining attachments. When a stimulus appears that could signal a threat or loss, my ego smoothly and automatically engages. It produces a stream of discursive thoughts or “stories,” dragging me into the past or future to defend my attachment. For example, checking the time of a meeting today has made me nervous. Some of this client company’s staff are aggressive and unprofessional. I can’t help but wonder what the week’s unpleasantness will be. I start worrying about who will attend, and what irrational demands they will make. Next I mentally move on to preparing to defend my work, even though I’m a seasoned expert in my field.

I snap back to the present, realizing that I can’t control the situation. In the past I’d have used a focusing strategy like putting on music or stepping outside to disengage my ego. However, now I know that this type of thought stopping is merely escapism. It will not help me tell myself fewer stories like this one. Instead I try to sit with the apprehension and look at the story. Why does this situation bother me so much? What is the attachment I’m defending?

If I can find the root cause, I won’t need to retell the tale on a later date. That means one fewer story I tell myself.