by Gil Fronsdal
(Note: this essay continues the theme of the naturalistic focus in the Buddha’s teaching, begun in the Summer 2025 IMC newsletter article titled Natural Dharma Growth.)
Growing what is wholesome and natural lies at the heart of the Buddha’s message. In his teachings, the simplicity of naturally grown wisdom and wholesome character stands in stark contrast to the preoccupations of a reactive mind with its artificial constructs. Supporting our natural inner growth is the Buddha’s wholesome path to happiness and peace. In contrast, fueling the misunderstandings and attachments of the fabricating mind is the path to stress and suffering.
To better understand this difference, we can borrow the modern concept of operating systems, which manage all the processes of a computer. It is as if the Buddha understood that we have two operating systems governing our lives: one wholesome, the other unwholesome. The general term he used for these influential systems is “mental activities” (manasikara).
The naturalness of the wholesome operating system is emphasized by calling it “mental activity from the source of life” (yoniso manasikara). “The source of life” translates yoni, a word referring to the origin of any animate life; for humans, it specifically refers to the womb. Just as the womb is something biological deep within a woman’s body, yoniso manasikarais a profound form of mental activity.
Translator Bhikkhu Bodhi renders this as “careful attention.” However, because the Buddha used this Pali expression to refer to his own deep contemplation of suffering, I prefer to translate it as “profound contemplation.” Yoniso manasikarais profound thinking by the deep mind that fosters careful attention.
The unwholesome operating system is called “mental activity not from the source of life” (ayoniso manasikara). Since it does not arise from a profound, natural source within, we can translate it as “shallow thinking.” Bhikkhu Bodhi translates this as “careless attention.” This is reactive thinking where desires, aversions, and fears form stories, conclusions, and biases without access to the truth-telling of our most profound source of wisdom and love.
Being caught up in shallow, careless thinking makes it difficult to connect with our profound, caring source of understanding, reflection, and sensitivity. A key function of meditation practice is to slow down and quiet the reactive, distracted mind, allowing our deeper mind to guide our thinking, motivation, and behavior.
For the Buddha, the difference is stark: shallow thinking leads to significant harm, while deep thinking leads to great benefit. The shallow mind leads to mistaken views, whereas the deep mind leads to right view. Profound contemplation develops mindfulness, discernment, vitality, joy, calm, concentration, and equanimity. Shallow thinking promotes sensual craving, ill-will, torpor, agitation, and indecision.
The natural functioning of the profound operating system doesn’t manufacture spiritual maturation—it grows wisdom and a healthy inner life. In this way, spiritual growth is not something learned from an external source; it is a natural capacity that we develop through careful attention.
More commonly, the Buddha referred to shallow thinking as sankhara— “mental fabrication.” In using this word, he employs an ancient Indian term which means, among other things, constructing a ritual. From a Buddhist perspective, ritual is a product of human creation, in contrast to what occurs naturally, independent of human activity and imagination.
For the Buddha, sankhara does not refer to all forms of constructive thinking, but to the synthetic and unhealthy mental products of the shallow mind that makes things up. Sankhara includes what is reactively put together by the mental tension of clinging, and contrasts with what is naturally grown by the deeper generative mental processes free of tension and clinging.
Through its clinging, the reactive mind accumulates its mental fabrications, and these become material to build ever more elaborate constructs. With the assistance of imagination, our desires, aversions, and fears can contribute to constructing vast mental worlds that are only loosely connected to reality. The resulting fantasies and delusions can become more real than the happiness, intelligence, and care that the deep mind has to offer.
When others share the same delusions, it becomes easy to view these delusions as truth and what is true as delusions. Collective involvement with the reactive, fabricating mind can all too easily distance us from the deep, satisfying feeling of wholeness and wholesomeness coming from the deep mind.
Some of the most powerful fabrications that create this distance are the ideas of me, myself, and mine. As natural as these concepts may feel, they are often constructs of the mind and collective mental fabrications of our society. Combined with clinging, ideas of self generate self-preoccupation, alienating ourselves from our fundamental organic wholeness.
For the Buddha, the clinging mind creates limiting ideas of “me, myself, and mine” concerning our appearances, feelings, concepts, stories, and modes of cognition. The accumulation of these five modes of clinging is referred to as “bundles of clinging” (also known as “clinging aggregates”; upadanakkhandha). Because of all the painful clinging these involve, the Buddha described them as fragile, as burdens, as fires, and as suffering. This negative evaluation contrasts with the positive orientation the Buddha had toward what grows naturally in the non-clinging of the deep operating system.
The Buddha described how his awakening resulted from his capacity for profound contemplation. The manifestation of this deep mental activity was his careful questioning of his own suffering. By asking where this suffering comes from, he was able to use his quiet, peaceful mind to see beneath its surface and observe the contributing mental processes by which clinging gives rise to great suffering.
Rather than building up more constructs and reactions, the Buddha used his capacity to think deeply and see clearly to deconstruct the clinging that brought him suffering. As a result, he was able to let go of all his clinging.
One significant result of the Buddha’s awakening was understanding how one can cultivate wholesome mental, verbal, and bodily behavior through profound contemplation. For example, he described the growth of wholesome factors of the Eightfold Path as supported by profound contemplation.
One reason for this is that when one recognizes the deep mind, one also—consciously or unconsciously—recognizes the freedom of non-clinging that is inherent in this deep mental activity. The Eightfold Path is a natural expression of this non-clinging freedom. Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration manifest and express this inner freedom. They are all natural actions born from the deep mind.
Understanding the distinction between the Buddha’s two operating systems provides valuable support for practicing mindfulness and meditation. Knowing this difference, one can orient oneself to allow mindfulness and meditative states to arise naturally from our depths, rather than willfully engaging the surface mind to construct what we want, expect, or imagine should be the consequence of practice.
To be sensitive to the deep mind, we need to be willing to be quiet and still enough to hear or feel it. Rumination, chatter, and preoccupation with figuring things out interfere with this careful and caring attention to our heart’s deepest wisdom. When the surface mind ceases its artifices, the profound mind can grow all that we need to feel at peace and be happy with ourselves. This, in turn, gives birth to both a direct vision of freedom and to profound, natural actions for living in the light of this vision.