In a famous sutra called The Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving, the Buddha says that a “mind object”—a category that includes thoughts—is just like a taste or a smell: whether a person is “tasting a flavor with the tongue” or “smelling an odor with the nose” or “cognizing a mind object with the mind,” the person “lusts after it if it is pleasing” and “dislikes it if it is unpleasing.”
