“’This is said, and that is said…’
— Swami Vivekananda
‘What do you say, my friend?’‘
I say nothing.’ [He quotes] everybody else’s thought; but he thinks nothing. If this is education, what is lunacy? Look at all the men who wrote! … Those modern writers, not two sentences their own. All quotations…”
Albert Einstein once said: “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into the lazy habit of thinking.”
Replace “reads too much” with “uses the phone too much” and pretty it much summarizes the way things are today.
Einstein wasn’t opposed to thinking; he was opposed to thinking that pulls us away from action.
Don’t be a talker, be a doer. Learn, not to show off, but to understand, apply, and become better. Let books and resources guide you, let them wipe out your ignorance. But let action and reflection be your true teachers.
Svadhayaya (study of self) is the only vaccine to the pandemic of ignorance and inertia (tamas) today.