Thought for the Day - EE

A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran

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Reason is like an officer when the King appears.

The officer then loses his power and hides himself.

Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

 - Jalaluddin Rumi

Thinking, however useful it may be at times, is not the highest human faculty; it is only a stage in development. If, for example, in the throes of evolution we had stopped with instinct, saying, "This is the highest possible mode of knowing," our human future would have been stunted: I would not be seated here writing these words, nor would you be reading them.

Like instinct, reason is only a way station. When friends and I go to Berkeley to see a play, we sometimes stop halfway along to stretch our legs. But we don't get so involved in stretching legs that we forget to go on to the theater. Thought is a useful but temporary stopping station; it should not be considered a permanent solution to the problems of living.  Just as we were able to rise above instinct and to develop reason, the mystics say we must one day pass beyond discursive thinking and enter into a higher mode of knowing.

The Buddha said that we cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. We cannot solve our problems by thinking about them, analyzing them, talking about them. In meditation, we often simply leave personal problems behind -- we move out of the neighborhood where they live.

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>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997) http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Makes one think, eh? But wait a second, isn’t that - Think - what we are not supposed to overdo!  :)