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I'm probably wrong about this, or, let's say, understand it incompletely (though I think the same point was addressed in the article in the part in which the th
by gglitch 9y ago
I'm probably wrong about this, or, let's say, understand it incompletely (though I think the same point was addressed in the article in the part in which the therapist relates the need to understand the world to the formation of the ego), but a relevant insight might be that you interrupt the process by trying to understand. Like, at all. That part of the problem is your mind compulsively mapping things out, and then obsessing over its own map, rather than the territory.
- aaimnr 9y agoThere are things that one _should_ understand intellectually. You need some kind of a map, even very general. There are three types of knowledge in Buddhist tradition - information you acquired from others, information you intellectually grasped and finally information from direct experience, insight. Each requires some amount of the previous kind to form. You're right that we are not in direct control of our minds and we don't understand it directly as much as we think we do, but we can understand some important general causal principles which allow to learn how to influence the mind through the right causes. So it's not about not thinking at all, it's about right kind of thinking. We need thoughts, right constructs, to point the mind in the right direction. As in the raft simile - only on the other shore we can let these skillful constructs go.