“Your soul is often a battleground upon which your reason and judgment wage war against your passion and appetite.”
— Khalil Gibran
Are you guided by reason or passion?
It is a complicated question. As it turns out, philosophers and spiritual traditions have contemplated this question for thousands of years. (Read more on desires and aversions in How to Be Free — Like Epictetus).
In the Happiness Hypothesis (one of the best books on the subject I’ve found), psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains, “Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new or complex concepts about things we already know.” Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider to help us understand reason and passion. However, Haidt is not the first to develop a metaphor around the mind's inner workings.
The Buddha, for example, compared the mind to a wild elephant:
In days gone by, this mind of mine used to stray wherever selfish desire or lust or pleasure would lead it. Today this mind does not stray and is under the harmony of control, even as a wild elephant is controlled by the trainer.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Perennial Meditations to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.