Is it true, or is it a story you're telling yourself?
Why we need to notice papañca
👋 This is Georgia, the founder of Out of Hours: the place for creative people who want to be fulfilled and make the most of their hours on this planet.
Big thanks to West London Buddhist centre - who inspired this post.
Hey everyone!
Have you ever caught yourself spiralling, or in a web of thoughts?
As we prepare for another week ahead, I wanted to share a note on ‘papañca’ (papancha). What is it? Why does it get in the way of meaningful work? And why we need to start noticing it more?
What is papañca?
Papañca is a Pali word, which loosely translates as “mental proliferation”.
It happens when our mind has snowballed so far away from what’s in front of us, that our ‘monkey mind’ ends up thinking about something else entirely. You might notice this sensation as ‘spiralling thoughts’ or as an automatic over-analysing a situation - and it can cause a lot of mental distress.
An example of papañca might be: you see a cyclist ride very fast and overtake you on the road. This creates a ‘feeling’ - maybe a positive or negative feeling. If you are not aware of this automatic response you can end up spiralling. If you spiral, you might be carried away by a series of thoughts and emotions (‘Why do cyclists always overtake?’ ‘Cyclists overtake because they’re selfish’ etc etc). If we don’t stop to pause, these thoughts then become a form of understanding how the world ‘really is’ when really they are created by our own minds. This can cause suffering.
Why does it matter?
The issue with papañca is that we end up losing sight of what we were actually feeling or responding to in the first place. We get caught up in a web of thoughts and theories instead of grounded in the everyday. Instead of being useful, mental elaboration adds a miserable layer on top of how we perceive the world most naturally - through our senses.
When mindful, we might be happily painting or writing, but if we find ourselves experiencing papañca we might find ourselves asking ‘Will anyone care about this? Should I make money out of this? Artists never make money’ - and so on.
Instead of helping us, or making us feel good, it actually ends up distracting us. These thoughts are often illusory, repetitive and they block mental clarity. Bhikkhu Bodhi, calls papañca:
“the propensity of the worldling’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition” (note 229 in Majjkima Nikaya)
Why am I tell you about this now?
When it comes to creative work, it is easy to get distracted by thoughts. It is easy to obfuscate joy or intrinsic interest and to get lost in a spiral of ‘what ifs’ and layers of fears or stories that don’t align with what you’re experiencing right now.
There is a difference between calm reflection and rumination, and there is a difference between action-oriented thoughts and thoughts-for-the-sake-of-thoughts. When you experience papañca, try to welcome the thoughts, check in with yourself and ask:
Is this true or could this be a story I’m telling myself?
Is this leading to productive action, or is it a distraction?
Is this making me feel grounded or agitated?
Meditation is also a great tool for building awareness of papañca.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you have any helpful tools for noticing papañca.
Have a great week!
Georgia