On Thought

We all have thoughts. In fact without thoughts and ideas we will cease to function. All the knowledge of our civilization constitutes of thoughts. It is thoughts that have occurred to us and our forefathers define our civilization. What is now an airplane was at some time a thought in someone's head. All the arts and sciences we have acquired are results of our thinking. If humans would not have thought we would not have houses, agriculture, social institutions, music, literature, various arts and sciences. So, it is safe to say that who we are is a product of what we have thought. Even in our lives, a person becomes what he or she thinks. Those who value money most have their thoughts turned towards money and concern themselves with it. For them the end of life becomes money. For the scientist his aim becomes the exploration of physical laws and his mind is turned towards that. For the musician it is music and so on. Now if you were to put a scientist and average person on the street together chances are that they won't be able to relate to each other's preoccupations. They live in their own separate mental worlds each with their peculiar concerns. Thus thought plays a crucial role in our lives.

This being the case it is necessary for us to inquire whether thought has any limitations. Does it constitute an inviolable basis for action? Does action based on thought the right way to act? To understand this let's take an example. Suppose I am walking alone in a forest and have heard that there are wild animals in the forest. Now as soon as I start walking the thought of a tiger flashes in my mind. The leaves rustle a bit and immediately I get alarmed. I look all around and see nothing. The thought of the tiger has made me fearful and I cannot enjoy my walk anymore even though I haven't seen a tiger. To take another example, I go to write an exam and my mind starts thinking that the paper is very tough I might fail, and as a result I get tensed and am not able to focus on the exam thus I fail to perform well. These are common scenarios where thought creates imaginary dangers. Thus it is clear that thought breeds fear.


To go deeper our thoughts about an object is never the object itself. It is just a model or representation of the object. However very commonly we mistake the thought to be the object itself. For example we have thoughts about people. Some people we think as nice and some people not nice. However, many times a nice person speaks or acts in a harmful way or a not so nice person does something really beautiful. How do we account for such situations? Thus it is clear that our thought about the person don't describe the person accurately. Any thought or description of a person or object however useful cannot describe the object fully or accurately. There will always be different perspectives. However, more often than not we take our thoughts to be the real description of the object and our perspectives to be final. Thought is just a convenient representation of an object colored by our conditionings, prejudices, biases or in short our knowledge. Many times the same physical object or situation evokes different thoughts or reactions in different people. Seeing a snake will make an ordinary person fearful but to the snake charmer it is a sign of luck. The communist thinks something as great and the capitalist thinks it to be bad. So, based upon their thought they are in conflict with each other. All the hatred and the violence in the world can be attributed to the process of thought.

This being so the question arises, what is the real place of thought in our lives? On the one hand we see that our civilization and we ourselves couldn't function without thought. On the other hand, thought alone breeds fear, insecurity, conflict and one sided view of things. Is there a different basis for action when we realize the limitations of thought? When we see that our thoughts about a situation are merely a product of our mind and may not have any real correspondence with the situation itself, we won’t be tied to our thoughts. Perhaps, there is an action based upon the direct perception of the situation rather than on the basis of thought?