The Foolish...

"The foolish reject what they see, not what they think;
the wise reject what they think, not what they see."

-- Huang Po

Thoughts are great tools. Just don't believe a one of them. A person is walking towards you on the street. The person is tall and male and black. He has a scowl on his face and is carrying a large piece of wood in his hand. That is what you see. What do you think?

What you think depends on so many factors, among them the location of the encounter, your past experiences, your likes and dislikes, your desires, your physical characteristics, race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Whether you think the person is about to beat you to death with a club, or is a good Samaritan picking up trash on the street, or is headed for a neighborhood softball game, is irrelevant. What we're interested in here is not the content of your story but your story-making capacity.

You see, that's alot of what thinking is -- the making up of stories. We make them up so regularly, so fast and furiously, that most of the time, we don't even realize we're doing it. Huang Po's point, and my premise, is that we'd all be a whole lot better off sticking with perception and jettisoning cognition.

But, wait a minute, you say, what if the guy is about to attack me, wouldn't it help me to realize that? Sure it would. And you'll realize it sooner if you pay attention to what's really going on in the physical world rather than spend your time and energy spinning yarns in your noggin!

"Bare attention" the Buddhists call it. Attending only to what is, rather than your thoughts and judgments about what is. Try it for awhile today. Everytime you catch yourself going beyond perception to interpretation, throw out the thoughts and return to bare attention. See what happens. Both to yourself and the world. Hmmm....