the sense of urgency

  After the meditation this morning, someone in the group had raised a question: what happens when a thought comes up that seems to require attention? This person observed that at times, when her body and mind were most relaxed, the thoughts of what needed doing would come out stronger than in a non-meditative state. I think her question was coming from the perspective: is it more compassionate and wise to take care of the thought by reflecting on it, or is it important not to engage the thought at all and let go of it?
    I have been thinking since then that most thought carry with them a sense of urgency. It's very rare that my thoughts will say something to the effect of "I'm not that important, you can take me or leave me." In fact, thoughts, like advertisements, seem designed to entice people to attend to them. Perhaps it's the evolutionary function of thoughts that they need to be fancy and enticing for people to pay attention to them and perpetuate their existence. I have even heard of the phrase "meme", coined by Richard Dawkins, to describe the way in which thoughts survive over time by having a kind of mental attraction over us.
    I believe that one of the functions of meditation practice is to give people practice in not always having to engage every thought that comes to mind even if it seems attractive or enticing in some way. Without the practice of non-discursive awareness, how is it possible to discern a thought that needs tending and one which does not? Without practice in non-discursive, meditative practice, we may be continually following endless trains of thoughts, and becoming exhausted in the process. And there is no ability to simply rest the mind from thinking altogether.
   I have also found meditative practice helpful in my research and reading practice. Without meditation as a tool for daily life, I often find myself getting either over-enthused by an idea I read about, or put off altogether: almost a kind of all-or-nothing mentality toward ideas. Rather than seeing an idea as 'just an idea', I might get so emotionally attached to promoting or disputing that idea that I am not able to clearly see its benefits and disadvantages. Through meditation, I have come to see a couple of tendencies. One is that ideas are never permanent: they come and go, like the weather, even when they appear to be good ideas. The other is that clinging to thoughts can create all kinds of vexations, especially when we are engaged in judging them as good or bad. So when I abide in awareness, I can start to see that ideas are neither absolutely good nor bad, but can be used according to the needs of the moment.