Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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then see the impossibility of the situation? Can thought silence itself?
If thought is conditioned how can it produce an unconditioned
response to a challenge?
Obviously, thought cannot do so, for every action is one of furthering
the purpose of its existence: the growth of the ‘I’. But there
is a possible intelligence which does not come from thought, not
through will or desire, but which is simple awareness, a perception
of the incapacity of thought. When this perception takes over, there
is no logical deduction, no verbalisation, no purposeful striving, no
image-making projection, no falling back on memory, no groping
for security and gratification—all of which belong to thought. Intelligence
sees the process, and in perceiving thought in action, and
thought not finding an escape, thought falls silent. How there is no
conflict of division between memory and ideal, past and future, fear
and desire. In that present moment of perceiving, which has not
been brought about, and which is therefore unconditioned, there is
that moment of truth which gives freedom to act as an intelligent
response to the challenge.
As an act of deliberate, concentrated thinking, thought is an
act of reference to some previous experience, accumulated knowledge
and memory of the past, all of which is engraved, engraved
in the brain-cells as on a recording tape. Therefore, thought is a
response to the past and not a response to a challenge in the immediate
present. When one has to respond to an unknown experience,
the first reaction is that of thumbing through a dictionary to find
a many-lettered word to fit the clue of a cross-word puzzle. But
all that is knowledge of the past which is being recalled to fit the
present situation. And so, all thought is thoroughly conditioned and
functions only in the field of the known, of the past, dependent in
its arising and cessation on factors which are equally conditioned
(saṅkhārā paccayā viññāṇaṁ).
Is it possible to bring this conditioning to an end? For, in that
state there would be an immediate confrontation with an actual