Thoughts?

When one sits down to meditate, one of the things they must learn to deal with is the constant stream of thoughts going through the mind. While there is no shortage of advice about how to deal with them, what I am interested in in this thread is your thoughts about those thoughts.

If one can quite the mind for just a moment, they will see that the thoughts inevitably and spontaneously arise again. From where are these thoughts arising? How did they get to where they are arising from in the first place? Are these your thoughts, or did you just borrow/adopt them from others in your life? Are there more of these thoughts going on beneath what our conscious mind is aware of?

How does one define thought? If there were no languages, what would these thoughts consist of? Do animals think?

We seem to complete any number of routine actions without any conscious thought at all... e.g. driving, riding my bike, eating, etc....
Is it possible to exist without any "thoughts" at all, and what would that be like..... you may want to try to answer that for yourself first, with and without thinking about it.