What makes thoughts problematic for most of us is that we are compulsively prone to believing in their contents – their stories and value-judgements – so maintaining any kind of real objectivity with thought, as we might be able to do with other sense objects like sight or sound or smell or taste or touch, seems like an impossibility. Thought seems to be in a totally different category, although in truth it’s not. With time and the skilful development of meditation, we might well be able to learn to focus and calm the mind to the point where conceptual thought stops altogether. I would see this as a pleasant bonus rather than a final goal. More useful is to aspire and practise to see thought as transparent, insubstantial. In this way, when thought is there – whether deliberate or not – there is no sense of cluttering or entangling within the heart and mind. Its presence is just like a fragrance or a physical feeling, a visual image or a sound – it embellishes the silence and stillness of the mind, rather than occluding or corrupting it.

Ajan Amaro, Finding the Missing Peace