Welcome to The PATH — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights. This week, we are searching for ancient lessons for modern life in the paradoxes of life (Thinking, Silence, and Knowing Yourself).
1. Thinking
The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, “The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling.” Simply put, one could think of a paradox as a counterintuitive or seemingly contradictory insight. For example, Mother Teresa observed, "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
Thinking (or being lost in thought) can cause us to experience suffering. But the curious paradox is that thinking (by way of contemplation) can help us to find peace. In the new book Beyond Distraction, author and teacher Shaila Catherine (an upcoming podcast guest) writes, “Thinking is certainly useful, but the untrained mind may tend toward repeating distressing patterns.”
In the Buddha’s Words, editor Bhikkhu Bodhi writes,
The teaching begins by calling upon us to develop a faculty of careful attention. To stop drifting thoughtlessly through our lives and instead pay careful attention to simple truths that are everywhere.
Contemplation is the opposite of “drifting thoughtlessly,” it is the act of looking thoughtfully at something for an extended period. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle concluded the activity of wisdom is contemplation; therefore, “contemplation is the highest activity of human life.”
According to Catherine, the training to move beyond distracted thinking begins by recognizing that a thought is just that — a thought, a creation of our own minds. From this recognition, we distinguish what is skillful and unskillful.
2. Silence
Strangely, silence is a difficult skill to cultivate. The late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh stressed, “What you need, what we all need, is silence.” Stranger still, silence is essential in everything — even music. The theologian Thomas Merton noted,
“Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm.”
Yet, few of us focus our efforts on cultivating the practice of silence. A previous post titled Looking at Life without Words quoted the writer Alan Watts: “To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, only through silence can one discover something new to talk about.”
Silence creates connection as well. Listening is a way to invite strangers to become friends, observed the writer and theologian Henri Nouwen, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.
3. Knowing Yourself
The maxim “Know Thyself” was inscribed at the Oracle at Delphi, where Socrates was proclaimed the wisest in Athens. But is it possible to honestly know ourselves? How does one know if they have actually found themselves?
I asked Skye Cleary (in a recent podcast episode), the author of How to Be Authentic, “Is it possible to know ourselves?” Cleary responded,
“I think this relates to the idea of being a nothingness. Maybe if we define ourselves by one particular label, then we can know ourselves. But that's not what human reality is. Human reality is always stretching, there's always shifting. I'm a philosopher today, maybe not tomorrow. So how do I become? How do I know myself? If I'm just sticking to the label of a philosopher? It's important to understand who were becoming, it's important to understand our past so we can see ourselves in that arc…. What is the self that we're trying to try to be aware of, that's always in flux that's always changing.”
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asked: “How can we “find ourselves” again? How can man “know himself”? He is a thing obscure and veiled. If the hare has seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven skins and not be able to say: “Here you truly are; there is skin no more.”
The paradox of knowing yourself is that one is never finished. The whole endeavor is infinite, but that does not mean it should be abandoned. Just as living an utterly virtuous life is not realistic, one still strives to walk the path. Like many worthwhile endeavors, knowing yourself is a pursuit with no end.
—
Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,