Thoughts arise, memories return

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life - Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

What is most thought-provoking in these thought-provoking times is that we are still not thinking.

I suppose that this might have been the reason why my late father used to often say that 'ninety percent of mankind does not think at all, the other ten percent think that they think'.

When one reflects upon the situation today in this resplendent and serendipitous of a land called Sri Lanka, one tends to appreciate the truth in such statements - provided that the populace is vested with the capacity and capability to think and realize the accuracy of the statement.

"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination. Thought underlies almost all human actions and interactions. Thinking allows beings to make sense of or model the world in different ways, and to represent or interpret it in ways that are significant to them, or which accord with their needs, attachments, objectives, plans, commitments, ends and desires.

Thought

However, what causes thought to arise is a puzzle that has confronted epistemologists (a person who investigates critically the nature, grounds, limits, and criteria, or validity, of human knowledge) and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes.

Our ability to be aware of, or sense something - known as perceptual experience - depend on stimuli which arrive at our various sensory organs from the external world and these stimuli cause changes in our mental state, ultimately causing us to feel a sensation, which may be pleasant or unpleasant. For instance, someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants.

The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter which we call the brain and which is endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties.

After all, it is the Neurons in our body which respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the central nervous system, which processes that information and sends responses to other parts of the body for action.

That is the biological response of our body to our thought.

If so, from where do thoughts originate and what gives rise to thought? Buddhists know that from thought arises desire and from desire arise action.

But what triggers a thought? A related problem is to explain how someone's beliefs and desires can cause that individual's neurons to fire and his muscles to contract in exactly the correct manner.

We are aware that the most difficult human action is to keep a mind still.

Memories

The purpose of meditation is to train the mind to remain thoughtless though the word 'meditation' has been used to designate a variety of practices that differ enough from one another.

As is with still waters, a mind that has been trained to remain stationary could be called profound. However, many of us find that memories flood our mind most of the time. Memory is nothing more than our ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences.

However, memories inundate our minds very often when the mind is idling. In fact, I would say that memories are the only real possession of any man.

For, in nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

I think it was Jane Austen who said in her novel Mansfield Park: if any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences.

The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannical, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Memories are not a bad thing to be with. We all have happy memories, sad memories, indifferent memories and memories best forgotten.

Memories enter our thoughts at the most unexpected moments and believe it or not, the memories that enter thus are invariably those that we wish best forgotten.

They come to taunt us even if we do not will it. This is the only proof that we have that man has to ultimately be answerable to his conscience whether he likes it or not.

The closer one gets nearer to the end of our visit to planet earth, the more tormenting our memories - those that we thought best forgotten - become. So dear brethren, beware, memories return; whether one likes it or not.See you this day next week.

Until then, keep thinking, keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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