Are you saying every thought you’ve ever had is a logical consequence of all prior thoughts with a definite traceable lineage? (Assuming your mind was too dumb as some point and a thought emerged that originated all future thoughts)
1. Most people (including Buddhists) think that their internal monologue comprises their thoughts, in majority or even in total.
2. Can't conceive of the possibility of a thought existing other than expressed in their spoken language
3. Find it difficult or impossible to suppress their inner monologue.
4. When successful at suppressing it believe that their thoughts have ceased.
5. Are apparently unaware of the paradox that belief entails... if they are no longer thinking, how is the decision made to initiate thinking once more? That's a conscious decision, or else successful Buddhists would turn into vegetables and die of starvation in their little meditation pose.
This isn't a matter of speculation anymore. We can see inside the brain, non-invasively, while these things occur. Any mystical element is an artifact of people poorly defining words, or being completely ignorant of how a brain must operate in principle. You're all very confused.
This looks like AI-buddhism, a "fork" of buddhism rewritten by an uber-LLM of the future, in which it will discard everything it cannot relate to. To such an AI, the only internal process is a sequence of words, and nothing is thinkable outside such a sequence.
However, we can imagine images, shapes and sounds, indescribable in words, and even higher there are abstract ideas that can't be expressed with images or sounds, let along with words.
The "thoughts from without" may appear for a multitude of reasons, because our minds aren't isolated systems. The source may be some sensory input that triggered a memory, and I wouldn't even reject the possibility, that brains can react to background electromagnetic noise and form thoughts based on it.
> Are apparently unaware of the paradox that belief entails... if they are no longer thinking, how is the decision made to initiate thinking once more?
It doesn't need to be, and isn't, a conscious decision.
I would say you’re completely wrong and we have thousands of years of Buddhist experience that contradicts everything you said, including that Buddhist think their inner monologue comprises their inner thoughts.
First, not everyone even has an inner monologue. Just like many people can’t close their eyes and see things while others can, many people don’t think in words.
Second, you absolutely can suspend your thoughts. I do regularly. In fact the entire point of Buddhist meditation is to practice the act of suspending observable thoughts entirely in a controlled environment to carry the practice over into every day life. I like you didn’t think it was possible until after several years of practice I could. With that I lost my anxiety and depression, and found a way to be generally happy. I still think, but it’s in service towards a goal. Otherwise I let myself simply live. In so, I have a happy marriage and a successful career. Much more so than before.
I don’t feel compelled to convince you I’m not lying or otherwise deluded if you choose to not believe me.
Now, how do you choose to begin thinking again? The fact is you’re always thinking when you are conscious and aware, but it’s happening in an aspect of your mind you can’t perceive directly. While I’m not thinking I still make decisions and take actions and initiate things, even carry on conversations and form intentions. But they aren’t thoughts that are articulating in my mind like we typically think of as thinking. I usually drop into thinking when I need to analyze something rationally or methodically plan, particularly if it has to be verbalized or written in some way, or recorded on a schedule or something. How do I begin that? I can’t observe the process and isolate it as that’s just the way things are. I’m definitely aware of my intentions, but I’m not thinking about them or articulating some thoughts in my mind. They just flow naturally from the present. When my mind needs to think, it does. Because, my thinking facilities in my mind are merely a tool of my mind - the crucial insight is that we are not our tools.
I don’t think any of this is mystical in the least. I think people who think their thoughts are really important are the mystical thinkers. We are meat brains, and our thinking facility is a late evolutionary feature that we’ve become ensnared in much to our own suffering as it distracts us from our more natural states of being because they’re so seductive in its constructs. I think Buddhism in its most raw form is almost entirely devoid of mystical thinking and most mysticism associated with it is an accretion of animistic and ancestor worship indigenous societies where it developed.
