When a man says he is thinking it is a polite word for saying he is being, right now, absent minded.
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| The Forgetful Professor, Per Lindroth (1878-1933), via Wikimedia Commons |
As a student walks to the classroom he is thinking of the lecturer and lecture and the boredom or of the home work he has not done. He is not looking at the trees, the flowers, the beautiful sky or the birds - for these he must go to Kashmir or see the TV. At last he reaches the classroom. There he sits restless, bored, thinking of the diner date with his friend or of the quarrel he had on the hostel.
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| Kokernag Botanical Garden, Kashmir - sandeepachetan.com travel photography |
One lad sits in a chair, hunched, with head in hands and says, "I am thinking what to do, man. Examinations are coming near and I have not read a page!" He has not read a hundred pages and so the great man is thinking what to do while time is ticking by. He does not get up and at least read one page. His beautiful, serious thoughts tell him that because he has not read 100 pages, the best way of correcting this defect is not reading even one page in the time available.
Clear seeing and hearing can often help relieving the fatigue of so-called thinking. The effect of this type of thinking is to shut the windows of the mind leading to poor ventilation and suffocation. When fatigued like this, just turning the eye to a tree or the sky or just getting up and doing one concrete action has great effect in relieving this futile, self-perpetuating fatigue.
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| Perumalnadar, from Wikimedia Commons |
It is not that thinking is bad or good. It is the type of harmful, self-defeating responses which one should become aware of and deal with. One's own dashboard must become increasingly sensitive to the very beginnings of these negative responses. The very perception of the negative or harmful nature of what is happening often induces or provokes a corrective response. But such clear perception is corrupted by a learnt behaviour which makes respectable, average response of thinking as the goal, thinking which corrupts perception instead of being guided by perception.
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