conceptual sausages

Apprentice I will try not to let concept consciousness get the better of me all the time.

Lama Shardröl There’s nothing wrong with concept, per se. It’s just that we use it to filter all our other senses and categorise our experience so that we’re not usually dealing with our actual experience but with a ‘version’ of it that we’ve created with our array of concepts.

Apprentice This is a tall order for me!

Lama Shardröl And for most of the rest of us as well. It’s a common human habit.

Apprentice I love to think...

Lama Shardröl Nothing wrong with thinking. I’m not advocating becoming a brainless amoeba. Rather, the idea is not to let thinking dominate your other senses & mediate your experience.

Apprentice ...and think and think! About everything! Over and over!

Lama Shardröl Knock yourself out. It’s important not to get the idea that there is something terribly bad and wrong about thought. The problem is not thought itself but our addiction to funnelling all our experience into it and churning out conceptual sausages rather than experiencing direct perception. And, of course, our addiction to bolstering our sense of existence with conceptual reference points. Other than that, it’s no problem.