On the Active and the Contemplative Life

 

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.