All that we are is the result of what we have thought. ~the Buddha
If the Buddha is right, then if I like the way I am, or hate the way I am it is linked to my thinking. The problem, for me is this: You can’t believe everything you think. That’s an odd thing to think about. Thinking about thinking is like a mirror reflecting a mirror. One of the problems with our thinking is that we think a lot. While we can’t believe everything we think, we also will never believe something we have never thought. As I surfed the Internet I found some statistics that said our brains have a minimum of 60,000 thoughts each day, which works out to being a thought per second, and that unnamed Internet writer said that we are consciously aware of less than 1000 of them. Whether you buy the statistics or not, few of us would deny that our thoughts are coming fast and, of course, furious, and that each of those thoughts tumble through our vast mental atmosphere is individual snowflakes in a blizzard. Many of our thoughts bump into other thoughts and the connections are made as one thought melts into another, but so much of this is happening simultaneously, that we are aware of only a few of them. Our thoughts form drifts in our brains. There is so much thinking piled upon thinking it is impossible to know if these 60,000 thoughts are unique or not. Could be that most of what we think today is similar (if not identical) to what we thought yesterday. Obviously we do think things that we have thought before. When it comes to thoughts, they are not like snowflakes at all, because each one is not unique.
But do we really have 60,000 thoughts per day? How would someone count the thoughts? If you think something and then think ONE, did you just have ONE thought, or was that TWO? If someone figured out a way to count thoughts, did they count the thoughts in one minute and then use math to count the number of minutes in a day and that way they came up with a number? That might not work because you could conceivably have more thoughts one minute than another minute earlier in the day.
Statistics are interesting, but they are not the truth. Statistics can be compelling, but they can never be facts.
Even if we could accept the statistics as being based on something other than imagination, it is still a shaky endeavor. Statistics are averages of facts rather than the facts themselves. Statistically:
The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale
I found it interesting that the Internet statistics were cited by an unnamed writer, and there were no footnotes, no resources cited. This reminds me of a quote:
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. ~Rex Stout, Death of a Doxy
If the Buddha is right, then if I like the way I am, or hate the way I am it is linked to my thinking. The problem, for me is this: You can’t believe everything you think. That’s an odd thing to think about. Thinking about thinking is like a mirror reflecting a mirror. One of the problems with our thinking is that we think a lot. While we can’t believe everything we think, we also will never believe something we have never thought. As I surfed the Internet I found some statistics that said our brains have a minimum of 60,000 thoughts each day, which works out to being a thought per second, and that unnamed Internet writer said that we are consciously aware of less than 1000 of them. Whether you buy the statistics or not, few of us would deny that our thoughts are coming fast and, of course, furious, and that each of those thoughts tumble through our vast mental atmosphere is individual snowflakes in a blizzard. Many of our thoughts bump into other thoughts and the connections are made as one thought melts into another, but so much of this is happening simultaneously, that we are aware of only a few of them. Our thoughts form drifts in our brains. There is so much thinking piled upon thinking it is impossible to know if these 60,000 thoughts are unique or not. Could be that most of what we think today is similar (if not identical) to what we thought yesterday. Obviously we do think things that we have thought before. When it comes to thoughts, they are not like snowflakes at all, because each one is not unique.
But do we really have 60,000 thoughts per day? How would someone count the thoughts? If you think something and then think ONE, did you just have ONE thought, or was that TWO? If someone figured out a way to count thoughts, did they count the thoughts in one minute and then use math to count the number of minutes in a day and that way they came up with a number? That might not work because you could conceivably have more thoughts one minute than another minute earlier in the day.
Statistics are interesting, but they are not the truth. Statistics can be compelling, but they can never be facts.
Even if we could accept the statistics as being based on something other than imagination, it is still a shaky endeavor. Statistics are averages of facts rather than the facts themselves. Statistically:
The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale
I found it interesting that the Internet statistics were cited by an unnamed writer, and there were no footnotes, no resources cited. This reminds me of a quote:
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. ~Rex Stout, Death of a Doxy
There is a third kind of statistic: the made up kind that you look up. That’s what I did here.
I am curious about the mind. I want to know how much I think. I wish there were a way to count the thoughts. I wish I could figure out how to understand thinking with thinking I can trust.
Actually, there is a way. You see, I believe there are two general kinds of thinking. The first is casual, ordinary, day-dreamy, stream of consciousness, willy-nilly thinking. The mind is on automatic pilot; your brain is on defective cruise control. Then there is a second sort of thinking called Critical Thinking. Critical Thinking is a sort of intentional thinking that passes through steps to rain in some of the wild-hair thoughts common to all of us.
So my next article is going to be on how to implement Critical Thinking in your own head.
No comments:
Post a Comment