Some of you may be wondering why I spend so much time reading books. What is my motive?
Until just recently my motive could be summarized by this teaching of the Dhammapada:
We are what we think,
All that we are arises with our thoughts,
With our thoughts we make the world,
So speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you.
Basically I wanted to guard my thoughts and be happy. Due to some past scandals and controversies when I was young I did not have much of a career or social life. I was voluntarily unemployed and had lots of time on my hands. So I read and read and read. I approached all books as one would a novel and just skimmed through them. This is no way to treat a serious philosophical or spiritual book.
But now after reading some good advice I have decided to limit my reading spiritual and philosophical books. I may reread the books that I want to be guided by but I will not read that which is not useful. I want now to spend more time on contemplation and meditation instead of reading mindlessly without forethought or afterthought.
What is the advice I am referring to you may ask? It is as under:
One piece of advice is from Rumi. The sentence is as under:
Ibn Khafif was being taught the importance of having his own experience of the unseen, and not fret so much about the forms of greeting people, hearing wisdom and what we should be doing.
So the takeaway here is don’t go all out overboard in order to hear wisdom. There are wiser ways to spend your time. Put what you have learnt to action instead of just reading and doing nothing with what you have learnt.
The other quote that impressed me was from Paul Brunton. But first I will summarize his message. The takeaway I got from the quote below is that you need to approach spiritual teachings while being absorbed in deep silence. That is the way to digest the teaching and make it part of your being.
The way to use a philosophic book is to not expect to understand all of it at the first trial and consequently not to get disheartened when failure to understand is frequent. Using this cautionary approach he should carefully note each phrase or paragraph that brings an intuitive response in his heart’s deep feeling (not to be confused with an intellectual acquiescence in the head’s logical working). As soon as and every time this happens he should stop his reading, put the book momentarily aside and surrender himself to the activating words alone. Let them work upon him in their own way. He is merely to be quiet and receptive. For it is out of such a response that he may eventually find that a door opens to his inner being and a light shines where there was none before. When he passes through that doorway and steps into that light the rest of the book will be easy to understand.
This is excellent advice. I wrote a blog with some similar advice from Bob Proctor in 2019. Link is below:
https://insightsandexperiences.com/a-hodgepodge-of-thoughts/
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