Many thanks for your admirably detailed letter. The attitude you speak of, that of cursing the world and oneself, is, in a sense, the beginning of wisdom. Revolt is the first reaction of an intelligent man when he begins to understand the desperate nature of his situation in the world; and it is probably true to say that nothing great has ever been achieved except by a man in revolt against his situation. But revolt alone is not enough—it eventually contradicts itself. A man in blind revolt is like someone in a railway compartment trying to stop the train by pushing against the opposite seat with his feet: he may be strong enough to damage the compartment, but the damaged compartment will nevertheless continue to move with the train. Except for the arahat, we are all in this train of samsāra, and the problem is to stop the train whilst still travelling in it. Direct action, direct revolt, won't do; but something, certainly, must be done. That it is, in fact, possible to stop the train from within we know from the Buddha, who has himself done it:

I, monks, being myself subject to birth, decay, and death, having seen the misery of subjection to birth, decay, and death, went in search of the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction (nibbāna), and I reached the unborn, undecaying, undying, uttermost quietus of extinction.
Revolt by all means, but let the weapons be intelligence and patience, not disorder and violence; and the first thing to do is to find out exactly what it is that you are revolting against. Perhaps you will come to see that what you are revolting against is avijjā.

Conceptual thinking

Thank you for Huxley's article. Generally speaking, a concept, an idea, and a thought, are much the same thing, and can be described as an imaginary picture representing some real state of affairs. But this 'representation' is not simply a photographic reproduction (in the mind) of the real state of affairs in question. In a very simple case, if I now imagine or think of some absent object, the image that I have bears some sort of resemblance to the absent object.

But suppose I want to think about something like 'the British Constitution'. I cannot simply produce an imaginary picture 'looking like' the British Constitution, because the B.C. does not 'look like' anything. What happens is that, over the years, I have built up a complex image, partly visual, partly verbal, and perhaps also with elements from other senses; and this complex image has an internal structure that corresponds to that of the B.C., at least in so far as I have correctly understood it. If, in my studies of the British Constitution I have consulted faulty authorities, or omitted part of it, these faults or omissions will be represented in this complex image. Whenever I wish to think about the B.C. (or even whenever anybody mentions it) this complex image comes to my mind, and it is with reference to it that I (for example) answer questions about the B.C. This complex image is a concept—it is my concept of the B.C. With luck, it may correspond fairly closely with the original thing, but most probably it is a very misleading representation. (Note that, since the essence of the concept is in the structure of the complex image, and not in the individual images that make up the complex image, it is quite possible to have a number of different complex images, but all with the same structure, to represent the real state of affairs in question. Here, the concept remains the same, though the image is different. Thus, in the world of art, it is possible to express the same idea either in music or in painting.)

Now all conceptual thinking is abstract; that is to say, the thought or concept is entirely divorced from reality, it is removed from existence and is (in Kierkegaard's phrase) sub specie aeterni. Concrete thinking, on the other hand, thinks the object while the object is present, and this, in the strict sense of the words, is reflexion or mindfulness. One is mindful of what one is doing, of what one is seeing, while one is actually doing (or seeing) it. This, naturally, is very much more difficult than abstract thinking; but it has a very obvious advantage: if one is thinking (or being mindful) of something while it is actually present, no mistake is possible, and one is directly in touch with reality; but in abstract thinking there is every chance of a mistake, since, as I pointed out above, the concepts with which we think are composite affairs, built up of an arbitrary lot of individual experiences (books, conversations, past observations, and so on).
What Huxley is getting at, then, is simply this. As a result of our education, our books, radios, cinemas, televisions, and so on, we tend to build up artificial concepts of what life is, and these concepts are grossly misleading and are no satisfactory guide at all to real life. (How many people, especially in the West, derive all their ideas about love from the cinema or T.V.—no wonder they run into difficulties when they begin to meet it as it is in reality!) Huxley is advocating a training in mindfulness (or awareness), satisampajañña—in thinking about life as it is actually taking place—instead of (or, at least, as well as) the present training in purely abstract thinking. In this way, so he maintains—and of course he is quite right—, people will be better fitted for dealing with life as it really is. Does this answer your question?
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