From prapanca to insight
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
“Why do you always have to comment on everything?” This is Ivan, my bonus son, aged around 12. We’re on holiday and my wife and I are providing a running commentary on everything we pass in our hire car. It’s a good point. Why do we have to comment on everything?
Some years later here we are on holiday again, driving around the south of Sweden, “It’s a good job Ivan’s not here”, I say as we continue our running commentary and critique of everything we see.
In Buddhism, this tendency to comment continually on life has a name, it’s prapanca, and it’s the theme of the Dharma Bundle for the next three months.
Like many Sanskrit words, prapanca has a few different translations into English. It’s generally known as conceptual proliferation, where one thought leads to another. Perhaps you’ve experienced it yourself?
I liked this trio of translations - proliferation, complication and distortion, each gives a different flavour.
Proliferation
Proliferation is a rapid multiplication, in this case of thoughts. When we slow things down, we can see how proliferation gets started. There’s direct sense perception. We see colour, shape, form. We then recognise it as a building, a cafe, a bicycle. At this stage, it is all very simple and harmless (the skandhas). But then thinking kicks in (vitakka and vicāra).
“Do you think it’s safe to ride a bike on these roads?” I ask as we are driving around the south of Sweden. “Maybe we should get one of those bikes we saw in Christiana, with the box on the front. One of those plus an ordinary bike. Or an electric bike. I wonder what happened to my old bike. Is it still in the bike room? Funny how they didn’t wear helmets in Copenhagen. It’s like that in Amsterdam, seems crazy. We’d need to buy a car that the bikes could fit in so we could take them to the coast. Have you noticed that you see a lot more Berlingos and Caddy type cars down here than you do in Stockholm? They must be country cars, farmer’s cars. Maybe it’s better to buy a car down here, when we get here?”
Prapanca, a stream of associations, memories, likes, dislikes, opinions and speculations.
Complication
Complication points to what happens as soon as we stray from the facts. I once lived in a community where we ate dinner together every night. One night, we decided we’d each come up with the dinner talk we least enjoyed. I don’t remember them all, but I know one person wasn’t fond of ‘celebrity gossip’ and another didn’t like to talk about the food we were eating and how it was made. Mine was speculation.
“Where’s Jane? I thought she was arriving today?” That dinner time nobody knew where Jane was. She was supposed to have arrived but hadn’t. That should have been the end of the conversation, but no! Half an hour later we’re still taking about what might have happened to Jane. It is literally a waste of time. We simply didn’t know where she was.
It may sound boring, but the facts are a wonderful thing. Sticking to the facts cuts through speculation and complication. And the facts are a refuge from any tendency to catastrophise.
Distortion
Distortion comes in when we only focus on certain things and not others. It distorts our view of life. We tend to focus on problems, on open loops, on things that need to be solved. We seem wired this way. It’s what accounts for our love of puzzle books and crime dramas. But at any moment, there is so much that is completely fine. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Why do we not lie awake at night thinking about the things that are fine?
Another way we distort life is through self-referential thinking. Again, we are hard wired to experience ourselves as the centre of the universe. Everything that happens is happening in relation to us. It’s happening to us, or not happening to us. It’s going our way, or not going our way. In this view of the world, there can only ever be one person at the centre, therefore there’s an inherent loneliness to it, a sense of isolation from everything that revolves around us.
The good news is that it’s our thoughts that are proliferating. They are complicating and distorting our world, but we can change the way we think.
Thinking about prapanca got me wondering it’s opposite:
Prapanca becomes a quietening of the mind.
Instead of complicating, we simplify.
Instead of distorting, we begin to clarify things for ourselves.
What if there is nothing really there to obsess over?
Soen Roshi used to tell the story of how in London, as he was about to enter a bathroom, someone informed him it was occupied. As Zen teacher and author Peter Matthiessen tells it in his book Nine-Headed Dragon River:
The roshi waited there politely for a long time before he became concerned, after which he knocked, then opened the door.
“Nobody there!” he laughed delightedly. “Wait as long as you like! Never anybody there! From the beginning!”
In the Honey Ball Sutra, the Buddha’s disciples ask him how a person can be free of mental conflict? He explains that when you notice this activity of prapanca, see that there is nothing really there for you to obsess over. See the emptiness of what you are constructing, the emptiness of self, the emptiness of other.
There’s nothing there. Amazing! It’s like the relief of waking from a dream and realising it was a dream. Or waking from a night of prapanca, obsessive thinking, and wondering, ‘what was all that about?’ The issue literally dissolving with the light of dawn.
Mirror-like Mind, from confusion to clarity
This is the theme of the new Dharma Bundle.
A month is nowhere near long enough to transform our thinking, so we are going to dedicate 3 whole months to our new theme -
September: Understanding thoughts
October: How to think more creatively
November: Disarming difficult thoughts
Each month will consist of:
A live workshop - recording available afterwards.
One or two short videos on the theme.
A guided audio meditation or inquiry.
One assignment.
There’s also a community space on Discord which we can use to connect with one another but also, for these three months, do some inquiry into the nature of thoughts.
We’ll be looking directly at the mind, but also at how other aspects of our lives affect our thinking. Our physical environment, the way we consume information, and the people we surround ourselves with. The mind creates its world, but the world we inhabit also creates our mind states.
Find out more about the Dharma Bundle here or sign up below ↓
A ‘bundle’ of dharma resources, thoughtfully made and beautifully packaged.
