It’s thought that’s making a comparison. Thought does so because, to it, there seems to be a problem with your present life. It becomes preoccupied with making judgments and avoiding the present by concocting a future and pursuing it. But for the comparisons that thought makes there is no problem with our life as it is; and there is no other life. It is precisely our thought of a better state that prevents us from coming to terms with our life as it is.
It can be negative for the peace that comes from accepting one’s life exactly the way it is. The ‘seeing’ is the illusion.
When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn’t there anymore, you are not in conflict with yourself. If you are not in conflict with yourself, you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself, it is not possible for you to be at peace with others.
When you stand on your own two feet, everything is gone and nothing is put in its place. Reading, studying and trying to understand cannot help you in any way because they are only forms of entertainment for you. You don’t worry about mysteries of the mind and controlling thought because you are touching life at a place never touched before.
If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.
Well philosophy is a process. to use a common cliche, it’s about the journey, not the destination.
As philosophy is essentially about questioning and reasoning, there can never be an “end”, since there will be questions arising from answers, and even questions.
Doesn’t philosophy seek to understand the nature of things and phenomena?
Isn’t it an ongoing process, which can have no rational endpoint? Should humans in the near future discover the creation of meat via in vitro, thus making raring beef, pork, chicken, etc. redundant, doesn’t this lend to philosophy concerning what to do with literally millions of livestock (leave them be in the wild, cull them, etc)?
What if in centuries’ time, humans discover nuclear fusion, or establish colonies on Mars or the Moon? This may lead to new philosophical questions.
In this particular time frame, all events are independent, and there is no continuity among them. Each event is an independent frame, but we link up all these frames and try to channel the movement of human life in a particular direction for ulterior motives. But actually there is no way of controlling the events. They are outside of us. All we can do is establish a relationship with particular events, or put them all together and create a tremendous structure of thought and philosophy.
It may be that nature is using the human species to destroy everything that it has created. Everything that is born out of thought is a self-protecting mechanism. Every discovery we have made so far is used for destructive purposes. Every invention of ours, every discovery of ours is pushing us in that direction of total annihilation of the human species.
No. Understanding the nature of things and phenomena are branches of philosophy–ontology, epistemology, science. Philosophy is, rather and to me, a love of wisdom. Does knowledge lead, necessarily, to wisdom? That’s really debatable, isn’t it.
Interesting you should say that and maybe you didn’t mean it this way but each new generation starts afresh with few resources if we don’t tell them everything.
To the ones who think that the future belongs to the young generation, I’d ask what the hell they’re talking about? Why do you want them to prepare to face their future? We have made a mess of this world so far and you want to pass this mess on to the younger generation. Leave them alone. If they make a mess of the whole thing, they will pay the price. Why is it your problem today? They are more intelligent than us. Our children are more intelligent than us. First of all, we are not ready to face that situation. So we force them into this mold. But it doesn’t help them.
What is there to understand? To understand anything we have to use the same instrument that is used to understand this mechanical computer that is there before me. Its workings can be understood through repeatedly trying to learn or operate it. You try again and again. If it doesn’t work, there is someone who can tell you how to operate it, take it apart and put it together. You yourself will learn through a repetitive process—how to change this, improve this, modify this and so on and so forth.
This instrument thought which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time we are using it we are sharpening it. Someone may ask, ‘What is Philosophy? How does it help me in my day-to-day existence?’ It doesn’t help you in any way except that it sharpens the intellect. It doesn’t in any way help you to understand life. If that thought is not the instrument and if there is no other instrument then is there anything to understand?
