The curse of thought

Being a lover of philosophy, I find that I love to think (and being unemployed, I find that I have the time to do it). But, one should beware of the lethargic effects of contemplation and thought. Some thoughts that people have had on this topic:

"Self-contemplation is a curse
That makes an old confusion worse."
-Theodore Roethke

"How can you know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Hunger is the foremost illness;
Sankharas* the foremost suffering.
For one who knows this as it really is,
Nirvana is the foremost happiness."
- The Dhammapada, verse 203, Ch 15, Trans. by Gil Fronsdal
* "Sankharas refers either to all compounded, fabricated things or, more specifically, to the mental world of dispositions, intentions, memories, and thought." - Gil Fronsdal, pg. 129 "The Dhammapada".

People of the slower, more thoughtful ilk find themselves contemplating ideas, thinking about their character, thinking about fate, and a million other subjects offered up by the world. But these contemplations give rise to confusions, sadness, and a lethargy of spirit oh so easily. There comes a point at which thought becomes too encompassing, and we find ourselves sliding into the make-believe world of ideas, a slide which happens so easily that one doesn't know it is happening at all. Thoughts and ideas are wonderful blessings, but all wonderful things in this world have a dark side as well, at least in my view of the world. In any case I find the curse of thought brings both great and terrible things, to be dramatic about it. On the more practical and less dramatic side - stop reading this silly blog (which is all just a bunch of bologna anyway) and get moving along. Maybe I'll even take my own advice and get moving along towards a job.

Thought of the day

My random thought for today:

“I like the vivid possibilities of questions over the stale finality of answers.”

-jbh

On fear...

On fear: when making the career change, how much do we acknowledge fear before putting it on the back burner, and letting it go? Certainly acknowledge it enough to give one a healthy sense of caution, but not enough to paralyze our actions. Where is that balance? It seems like where we put that balance is very much informed by our childhoods... where else do we really learn, firsthand, where our pain thresholds are when our caution doesn't hold us back enough from getting hurt? Or the joys we obtain when our risk ends up in a successful outcome. Or, yet a third option, when we learn what we can get away with and achieve, without getting caught? What we learn in our childhoods, then, heavily informs how much weight we give to our fears as adults. How much weight, honor, respect, and possibly fear, we should give to our fears. Or at least so it seems... I would need to get a good psychology text to really dig into the matter 'officially.' Of course, how much weight do we put on that official explanation of our lives? The more textbook abstractions we get, the farther from truth we go, or so it feels to me. Textbook abstractions are a good framework for understanding our lives, but a poor substitute for understanding our selves. (whatever those selves may be). Again, though, just ramblings off the top of my head which seem to be the state of things as I see them this evening. All thoughts subject to change without prior warning. Void where prohibited. Contact local Balogna Factory for details.