2022-08-16 Thinking

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, “The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling.” Simply put, one could think of a paradox as a counterintuitive or seemingly contradictory insight. For example, Mother Teresa observed, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

Thinking (or being lost in thought) can cause us to experience suffering. But the curious paradox is that thinking (by way of contemplation) can help us to find peace. In the new book Beyond Distraction writes, “Thinking is certainly useful, but the untrained mind may tend toward repeating distressing patterns.”

In the Buddha’s Words, editor Bhikkhu Bodhi writes,

The teaching begins by calling upon us to develop a faculty of careful attention. To stop drifting thoughtlessly through our lives and instead pay careful attention to simple truths that are everywhere.

Contemplation is the opposite of “drifting thoughtlessly,” it is the act of looking thoughtfully at something for an extended period. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle concluded the activity of wisdom is contemplation; therefore, “contemplation is the highest activity of human life.”

According to Catherine, the training to move beyond distracted thinking begins by recognizing that a thought is just that — a thought, a creation of our own minds. From this recognition, we distinguish what is skillful and unskillful.