When thought stops “for awhile” it’s only a pause, a glitch, a glimpse of silence. If thought were to actually stop, so would the would-be thinker, so who/what would know that thought has stopped?
Yes, that’s our problem. We don’t know what we’re actually doing because we’ve been doing if for so long it’s unthinkable that we could be as seriously mistaken and misled as we are by our own duplicity.
Yes and as I read K, that situation has to be “perceived’ and with that perception, seen that “freedom is essential “. And with that perception, “freedom is born “.
The seeing is the doing but we don’t see that the house is burning?
We stay ‘tethered’ our whole life, without realizing it…that’s the calamity.
Thought does seem to stop only for brief periods of time when we are awake. It usually keeps streaming along like a river. But it does (seem to) be able to stop.
The question who or what knows thought stops is tricky. By definition thought can’t know it has stopped. But it may be able to know when it is falling into absence and reemerging from it either intuitively or by inference. It may also be that, even if thought has stopped, the brain keeps recording what’s going on.
These are all quite easy to test out in the Lab of Self. 
I’m not sure what exactly we are trying to get at in this enquiry, but I think we probably can agree on the following :
Does thought stop?
Yes, there can be pauses between thoughts.
Can there be awareness of that (thoughts and pauses)?
Yes, awareness is not dependant on thought.
And maybe I can add that freedom from the known does not depend on thoughts stopping forever. (or even on the necessity of not having silly thoughts)
The problem of confusion and suffering is not due to the above - but more to do with the complete authority of thought. We feel that what we think is urgent and true, is undeniably urgent and true - it is what we experience as a reality that must be obeyed, cannot be denied.
When @DanMcD says that insight into self and suffering, has no lasting effect on the brain, on our behaviour, on our experience, its because we have not really seen, or somehow managed to shrug off the full implications of suffering (ie.self-centered concern) as the whole of our existence.
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It may be that “we don’t see that the house is burning” because there’s no seeing when there’s no silence. If this is true, thought ends when awareness of thought’s activity is complete; when no movement of thought is hidden.
Thought can acknowledge being at a loss for words, imagery, etc., but it can’t acknowledge unconsciousness until consciousness is restored.
Who said anything about “thoughts stopping forever”? Thought is necessary…we can’t do anything technical or practical without it. When we talk about the ending of thought, we mean psychological thought…don’t we?
We feel that what we think is urgent and true, is undeniably urgent and true - it is what we experience as a reality that must be obeyed, cannot be denied.
Speak for yourself. I know my thoughts, urgent or not, are not always “true”. I know as well that thought serves to prevent silence no less than to serve practical necessity.
As long as one believes in oneself, it is practical to sustain the illusion of self, and the only way to do that is for thought to be constant, incessant - not only as need requires its use.
This ‘believing in oneself’ is different than believing in God or in Santa Claus isn’t it? There is no ‘believer’ who can ‘stop’ believing. The believer IS the belief. The comings and goings of Santa seem more and more improbable as thought considers it and the ‘belief’ dissolves. Not so it seems with the belief in oneself. The very movement of thought for or against its existence fortifies its illusory existence!…that brings it back to ‘silence’ as being the only possible ‘approach’?
That is the silence of non-identification.
Believing in the existence of a supernatural being greater and more powerful than myself is pretending I am not the supernatural being, i.e., the chooser.
My self is my belief that I can choose, decide what is true, in spite of what choiceless awareness reveals at every moment. No matter how devoutly I may claim to believe in this or that God, Choosing is God.
Yes when it rains there can be an awareness of it , its sound, smell, its wetness…there can be a delight in it. I can’t start it and I can’t stop it etc. there is no identification with it. It is not me. Can there be an awareness of this material process of thought/thinking in the same way? I can’t start it and I can’t stop it. It is not me. When I look at the clouds or the tree, I can not change the form they have. I can look at them in silence. They are not me.
Is it the conditioned identification with the body, feelings, thoughts that is the ‘tether’? Can the identification with thought, ‘things’, come to an end?
What I’m calling “our problem” you’re calling “the tether”, which is more specific, more descriptive, and I know I don’t know our problem well enough to call it anything more than a problem. And for all I know, “problem” may not be the word for it because we haven’t solved it. So all we can honestly say is that it’s the human condition, the long-standing effect of our conditioning.
Since we can’t blame the human condition on anyone but ourselves, can we observe it in action, from moment to moment as it determines what we think, what we do or choose not to do?
I would say ‘mistake’ rather than blame. It was humanity ‘taking a ‘wrong’ turn’ many years ago. An innocent mistake? As Bohm said, we did because we could.
This idea of the “ending of thought” doesn’t speak to me - its not personally a useful image.
The only way I can grok it is to see it as the ending of the “train of thought” - or the ending of my narrative of reality.
What I believe to be real, seems really really real to me. And my reality is built upon a train of related experiences going way back in time : each experience, experienced as reality, gives birth to the next.
When the self dies, thought is no longer dependant on that old train of reality. That old train has ended.
What about the non-identification with thinking? There is thinking going on but no ‘you’ doing it. It just happens. Like the breeze in the branches? No ‘you’ observing it, just the observation of it. Of course thought will ‘take this over’ but it feels as if there is art to this. A possibility?
I can listen to your thoughts without identifying with them, Can I listen to ‘my own’ without identifying with them?
Can there be awareness of the train of thought without identification with it?
Does the difference matter if the mistake goes uncorrected?
The ending of thought is the end, as you say, of the train of continuous thought, unremitting thought, but not the end of intermittent practical thought, as is needed.
When the self dies, thought is no longer dependant on that old train of reality. That old train has ended.
Thought doesn’t depend on anything because its not alive. It’s just a mechanism employed by the brain.
Yes, there is no “you” doing thought (unless you are the brain).
Keep in mind that there are too distinctly different kinds of thought: practical and psychological. Practical thought is used consciously and specifically for practical necessities. Psychological thought, however, operates constantly as noise preventing the silence that reveals the non-actuality, the illusion of I, me, mine. So until/unless the brain sees the illusory nature of self, it can’t bring an end to unremitting psychological thought.
When there is awareness of what must be done to survive, practical thought responds to that awareness with practical solutions. But is it practical to sustain and perpetuate the belief that I is real? Practical thought can acknowledge the mistake of perpetuating this delusion, and knows the practical thing to do is to allow for silence. But thought can’t change anything but the way it thinks…it can’t stop thinking.
We have no problem identifying with thought when its practical, necessary, but we don’t identify with the persistent mindless thought that precludes silence, so we are conflicted.
There is a violence built into this separation of ‘myself’ from everything and everyone else, isn’t there? It’s one thing if the body is attacked, it will fight back or run…but this imaginary ‘me’ is always seeking an imaginary security in ideas, in friends, in sex, drugs, in money, status etc. its reality is imaginary and always under potential threat. It is always seeking an ultimate solution to an imaginary ‘problem’. The problem is itself, isn’t it?