In part of our practice, we would like to just not think, but another part of the practice is that we use thinking in order to develop Wisdom. So initially, in the regular retreat, we teach the awareness of the breathing, and the walking in order to let go of thought. The reason we teach the first 48 hours in that way is that most people, especially in the West, don't know how to let go of thoughts. We're trained how to think, and we're very good at it, but we're not always good at what we think about. So, we spend the first 2 days of the regular retreat letting go of thought, so people learn how to do it. Then on the evening of Day 3, for the new people, they're going to learn the Compassion/ Lovingkindness meditation, and that's when we start to use the thought process, in order to develop wisdom.
Now, when you think about it, as I say in the regular retreat, "there's 3 things you can do with your mind: you can think wisely; you can think unwisely; or you can simply let go of thought". So, the thinking unwisely is where we get all of our Dukkha; letting go of thought and developing wise thought are the 2 ways that we end Dukkha. So we have to learn both ways.
With the reflection meditation techniques, and the not-reflecting techniques, for a lot of people we say, in the beginning, balance them 50/50, and see what happens for your own practice. Some people may like to do more of the reflective side, so it may be 60 percent of that; some other people may like to do a little less. Some people, when they get interested in the reflections a lot, they start doing 80/90 percent of it, but actually that becomes too much, because then they're always in their head.
So we have to learn how to let go of that as well. You have to be careful not to get too much into the reflections that you lose the basic awareness practice, especially mindfulness of the body throughout the day, i.e. grabbing doors; washing your dishes, brushing your teeth, putting on and off your clothes, and so on. This helps greatly in letting go, letting go, letting go of thoughts, and at the same time you're letting go of desires; you're letting go of fears; you're letting go of worries, and everything else. So the "letting go" is a very important part of the process.
But unless we know how to think wisely, then letting go of our thoughts doesn't actually work because the thoughts that come later will still be the unwise thoughts coming up from our past conditioning and wrong views. So we can get very good at letting go of unwise thoughts, but if we don't transform the wrong view that creates them and increase Right View, then the unwise thoughts will continue to arise.
That's very important in what's called the difference between "Vipassana" meditation, and "Samatha" meditation. "Samatha" is where a person works to develop strong concentration, usually suppressing thoughts. They could think of it as "letting go of thoughts", but actually, if a person doesn't develop Wisdom at the same time, then in this type of "Samatha" practice, the only thoughts you are going to be left with are simply more unwise thoughts. This is why we have to develop wisdom which strengthens our Right View; we have to develop wise thinking. In the Pali language, "Yonisomanasikara": developing wisdom with our thought process, that's a very important part of the practice.