You might spend
time reading, thinking and feeling. Others are more active: walking, running,
talking and sharing. You could be thinking about your feelings or feeling about
your thinkings. This takes up a lot of space. (You could be listening to
music). You might be solving it by walking, running into nature, speaking into
others. (You could be making music). You should be making mistakes, or
differences.
Activity most
likely intends accomplishment. Do things have to be finished to be worthwhile?
Or are many actions as cousins to the arts, which revise, extend and refine
continually? Passivity perhaps absorbs. An
intellectual understanding is not understanding; you can talk yourself into
anything. Or is what is passively absorbed transformed: by alchemy, philosophy,
chemistry, into knowingness or wisdom?
On being asked “How
did you feel about this?” one who replies “I felt I had to do something about
it” is living the active life. The test then is what you do. One who answers, “I
felt I should study it” is contemplating. The test then is what you inspire in
others.
Act contemplatively;
contemplate actively. What matters is the end you have in mind. This will
situate your direction, and your meditation.
