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re: you can be too intelligent

Buddy1Buddy1
edited December 2004 in 'One Who Knows Does Not Think, Speak Or Write...'
This puts me in mind of Emily Dickinson, who seldom if ever left her house, but wrote such wonderful poems relevant to the whole human experience. The only zen you find on a mountaintop is the zen you take up there. If you cant find peace where you are, wherever that may be, you wont find it anywhere.

Comments

  • Buddy1Buddy1
    edited December 1969
    oh, and how! the most frustrating people i've encountered are those educated beyong their intelligence. the ones who over intellectualize. I think i'm fairly smart, or at least aware of a lot of things, but reading these boards, the letters and such, i'm having to recognize for the first time in along time that I know nothing.
    This is why children are the wisest of us all-no preconceived notions, no expectations, no sense of how things should be intellectually, no sense that they know best. I always listen to my kid, get input from him. I'm not so egotistic or insecure that I wont take advice from a ten year old, though even at that age it's a battle to keep his mind pure from outside forces or others ideas, especially mine.
  • CarlCarl
    edited December 1969
    I praise your attempt to protect the mind of your child. Taoism can certainly help you be a bit more [chref=15]tentative and hesitant[/chref] in how true you believe your 'truths' to be, which I found helped me avoid projecting my own agenda onto them. Of course, one could accuse me of trying to instill my Taoist agenda on them... but then that's a bit oxymoronic, no? ... They know that [chref=1] the way that can be spoken of, is not the constant way[/chref]. So they know that they need not take any of my babbling seriously.

    I've tried to 'teach' my kids to distrust all thought, i.e., thought as being based on language. The world holds such a vast repertoire of hypocrisy and wishful thinking, i.e., beliefs. I just point these out when ever I can and encourage them to look for the same. So far it seems to be working. Fortunately we can do home schooling which helps slow the cultural indoctrination into this era's politically correct 'group think'. It's ironic how education presents itself as a mind opening process, where in fact it tends to be a mind closing or a mind narrowing process.
  • Buddy1Buddy1
    edited December 1969
    'Mind closing' indeed! and more so all the time! I 'm just starting the process of gathering info about homeschooling for my kid next year-I KNOW I can do a better job than this pitiful school district can, if I can convince his Mother of it. At least, like you, I'm more open to letting him think for himself rather than follow some set cirriculum. I detest a hypocrite, and to me this 'no child left behind act' just smacks of hypocrisy...and dont even get me started on 'political correctness'...
    Your kids seem very sharp-quite funny, too, which i've always taken as a sign of intelligence. Overly serious people are often idiots.
    What first attracted me to buddhism was it seemed to have a sense of humor. The world needs to laugh more-I seem to recall reading that your guest 'Mom' described your taoist meeting as 'entertaining' or some such-thats the right spirit.
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