View of No Vexations

      In Chan and Enlightenment, Master Sheng Yen remarks, "Practitioners need not fear having vexations, wandering thoughts, or erroneous thoughts. With our self as the center that takes control, when we become aware of erroneous thoughts, the erroneous thoughts do not exist anymore" (p.233). As I am reading this passage, I am wondering, what is it about awareness that has this power to extinguish erroneous thoughts? I think I have a clue about this in the later sentence, "Vexations definitely have their objects, which are either 'you' or 'them'. No matter whether the 'you' and 'them' are things or people, if there are no 'you' or 'them', it is impossible for us to have vexations."
    Normally, when there is a thought that is upsetting me, I can get easily drawn into its power. At that point, I lose my sense of the real origin of that thought, assuming that the thought is an object with a life of its own. At that point, I try to find ways to defend myself against the invading thought. I think what Master Sheng Yen is saying here is that all of it is mind, and therefore we can almost say that all of it is 'mine'. Knowing this, it would not serve me to try to fight the thought. In this sense, if I know that the thought is just part of awareness and not a separate object, then it's impossible for those vexations to exist.
  I think that getting to the point of 'impossible to have no vexations'  takes practice. It takes an awareness of thoughts arising, rather than focusing only on the content of thoughts. But without that awareness, all I am doing is trying to replace one thought with another, which can be an endless task. As soon as a thought appears in awareness, it's the tail end of the thought. But I am in so much of a habit of trying to replace 'thoughts I dislike' with 'thoughts I like'. This is what one does when she or he daydreams, or wanders off into the events of the day, or projects into the future. And it looks as though I make progress through this approach, only to find that the 'objects' of vexations return again.
   To use a simple example, a depressed person often has the thought, "I am not loveable or likeable", and that person uses the thought to judge her or himself. In psychology books, we find that one useful technique is to replace the thought "I am not loveable" to "I am loveable". The depressed person then disputes the negative thinking with the positive statements, with evidence that she or he is loveable. She or he takes one bad thought and replaces it with ten  good ones.Over time, it is hoped that the feelings of not being loveable will be replaced with other thoughts.
   These psychological ways of changing one's outlook have been known to work with people by creating new habits of thought. But one potential drawback with this approach is that all thoughts are impermanent. What works for me today may not apply tomorrow, when I am faced with other situations. Another is that thoughts don't really 'act on' other thoughts. The idea that thoughts connect together is a kind of illusion, similar to taking a flame and swinging it in a circle to create a ring. I may think I am acting on a thought to change it, but that in itself  is a new thought.
   A more direct approach might be to suggest that all thoughts are coming from the same source. Whether I have the thought, "I am unlovable" or "I am great", they are ultimately only thoughts. They don't really connect with who one is deep inside, and they don't make conclusions which capture true nature of mind. In fact, mind is neither unlovable nor great. Mind is the essence of thought but cannot be defined by the content of thoughts.
     I think it's useful to investigate: can anyone ever 'live' in a thought, the way a snail lives in a shell? I think it's worth it to try this way: try to have one thought for an entire half hour, and see what happens? Is it the same thought I have for that entire  half hour? Is it a new thought?  But in order to investigate this question, one cannot 'use' thinking to do so. One must create a space that is beyond thinking, which is why one needs to sit with the question and relax with it, rather than using another thought to answer it.