Sangharakshita Quotes

"You have to do quite a lot of strenuous thinking and I think the majority of people nowadays, especially those who get into anything like Eastern religions, Eastern mysticism, are trying to avoid anything of the nature of strenuous thinking. Their thinking is appallingly weak, a sort of vague meandering, dream-like, semi-speculative excursus [Laughter]. A sort of science fictional without the science, sort of attitude, if you know what I mean, is regarded as adequate. The thinking is left to the scholars of course who are despised anyway." 

"When you are in contact with external reality you are as much in contact with ultimate reality as when you are in contact with subjective reality."

"...it is the responsibility of thinking that so many people don’t want. Whereas if you retreat into the subjective, into your feeling, you don’t have to think, you don’t have to test your thought against the objective reality. It’s just like people avoid saying, ‘I think’ and they say, ‘I feel’, because that can’t be challenged. ‘I feel he’s no good’, ‘What makes you think that?’ ‘Oh, I just feel it.’ Well, you see, this is supposed to be conclusive - that you feel it. If you say that you think it then you are obliged to give reasons why you think it, but no one expects you to give reasons why you feel it. So if you actually think it by saying that you feel it you exempt yourself from all rational discussion and it may be that rational discussion is what you are afraid of." 

"So I think within the FWBO, broadly speaking, there is very little actual thinking goes on."