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Talk: 2013-06_28 Retreat Closing.json Start_time: 00:45:38 Display_question: You mention that believing our thoughts is not beneficial. Is there any place where you can really trust thinking? Keyword_search: thinking, convention, language, spiritual traditions, twilight language, poetry, music, art, shamata-vipassana Question_content: Questioner: You’ve been talking a lot this week about thoughts, and how you have to be… how they can be dangerous. Is there any place where you can really trust thinking? Larry: Let me link that to this framework. Each situation, what is correct action? So as the mind gets clearer, it's more able to know what is correct. Sometimes correct action is, thinking. If you're filling out your income tax, I hope that one plus one equals two. Do you see what I... but also, let's say what I'm doing now. I'm using thinking. Now, I know that thinking, is a convention. We made it up. I know it can't... it's about what we're all doing here. I know it isn't what we're doing here. It's about what we're doing here. And I'm doing my best to use language, to get as close as I can, knowing full well how limited it is, even like words like shamata-vipassana, the way we create a problem with the language. I'm doing Vipassana now. What is it? Well, I'm paying attention. Break_line: So, understanding what is called for, as Doug mentioned, is extremely important. But in talking, I'm using language. And I'm really doing my very best to use language, knowing full well its limitations. But it's also necessary. In a lot of spiritual traditions, there's something called, a twilight language. It's usually poetry. In other words, it's language, that better than what I'm doing here. Dips into what is beyond language, with its feet in language. In other words, in emptiness, and in poetry. And sometimes art can do a better job, or music. But finally, only the experience is what it is. If you're a mathematician, that's thinking. So many of the most extraordinary things in the world, have come from thinking. Break_line: So let's not mistake, how could business go on if there wasn't clear thinking? But if we understand that there's more to a human being than thinking, we've put all our marbles into this realm that created largely, by thinking. And we've created a little world, an enclosure, which is me, and we're protecting it. We get hurt by it, we defend it, we believe in it. In the meantime, there's a vastness in back of us. We want to call it spiritual; we want to call it sacred. Whatever you want, that is unexplored. Even the brain, we now know much of it, is not used. It's atrophying. So, I would say the issue is, when is thought necessary, and useful? And then if you have a clear mind that thinks straight, you're fortunate. So it's created civilization, what created this center, thinking. And then there are times when you don't need it. And we don't know those times, because it's not part of our education. So, we're learning it. There's a whole realm that is beyond thinking, that is very precious. It's not to exclude thinking, it's to know how to use them both. Okay. End_time: 00:50:33
