Memory And Thoughts

[Psychonaut]

Is there a correlation between how much you think and how much you remember?

I feel like my mind has become more lightweight, less thoughts arising and also less things remembered.

I wonder if memory is just thoughts repeating itself. If the thought is not repeated again it is forgotten. 

[jjer94]

Is there even a difference between thinking and memory? Is there even such a thing as a mind? Take a look-see in direct experience. Actually look before reading the text below:

You'll only find thoughts arising one-at-a-time. Memory is a thought that arises (in the present moment) and says "I remember" and mind is a thought that says "There is a mind and I am that mind". 

[David1]

@Psychonaut I don't think so. I think there is a much greater correlation between experience and memory. I don't remember what i was thinking a few hours ago. But i sure do remember that time when i fell into a bunch of nettles when i was a kid.

[Prabhaker]

Too much memory is not a good sign; it simply says that you have a very mechanical mind. It is not a sign of intelligence. Hence you hear so many stories of absent-mindedness about great scientists, philosophers. They are people of great memory, and great intelligence has nothing to do with great memory. Memory is mechanical, intelligence is non-mechanical -- they are totally different.
So don't be worried. It is good. The memory is relaxing, many things will disappear, space will be created in you. And in that space you will be able to become more brilliant, more intelligent, more understanding. Intelligence means understanding; memory means a quality, a mechanical quality of repetition. Parrots have good memories. Don't be worried about your memory. In the beginning it happens: you have accumulated much rubbish and when you meditate that rubbish starts disappearing, falling away.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Prabhaker

[David1]

@Prabhaker It depends on what your definition of intelligence is. Let's look at IQ tests...intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns and to predict how a pattern will evolve in the future. And ofcourse, adjust your behaviour according to that prediction.

With that definition, intelligence is also very 'mechanical'. You need to remember how a pattern evolved in the past to make a prediction about the future.

[Prabhaker]

@David1

People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar; hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence – they call it intellect.

Intellect is only a mental game. It cannot be creative.

Intelligence creates a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven. Intelligence is a totally different dimension.

[David1]

@Prabhaker

I agree, but then you're talking about creativity. Picasso, Beethoven etc. were very creative. That doesn't mean they were very intelligent. A computer can be very intelligent, but at the same time it's not creative at all.

To pick back up on what psychonaut said...

"I wonder if memory is just thoughts repeating itself. If the thought is not repeated again it is forgotten. "

No, memory is not thoughts repeating itself. Memory is about experience. I only fell in the nettles once. And i almost never think about it, but still i remember it vividly. But if you ask me...'what were you thinking last saturday at 2pm?' i can't remember.

Edited September 2, 2016 by David1

[Prabhaker]

@David1 To be intellectual is to be phony; it is a pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours; it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge, it has something to do with meditativeness. An intelligent person does not function out of his past experience; he functions in the present. He does not react, he responds. Hence he is always unpredictable; one can never be certain what he is going to do.

 

A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were talking to a friend who said he had just been given six months to live.
"What would you do," he asked the Catholic, "if your doctor gave you six months to live?"
"Ah!" said the Catholic. "I would give all my belongings to the Church, take communion every Sunday, and say my 'Hail Marys' regularly."
"And you?" he asked the Protestant.
"I would sell up everything and go on a world cruise and have a great time!"
"And you?" he said to the Jew.
"Me? I would see another doctor."

That is intelligence!

 

[David1]

@Prabhaker

Yes, i understand perfectly what you mean. It's just a matter of using the correct term. Intelligence, knowledge, creativity are all very different concepts. Knowledge is very mechanical, yet it is important. For example, it is important to know about history so we can learn about it. An intelligent society will not make the same mistakes its predecessors have made in the past. It can recognize patterns and, because of the knowledge of history, adapt in order not to make the same mistake over and over again. How it adapts however, can be very creative. It can find a radical new, efficient solution to a problem that others, in the past, failed to come up with.

An intelligent person who has no knowledge, risks trying to invent the wheel all over again.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Isaac Newton.

[Prabhaker]

@David1

Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Now there is no need for everybody to discover it again and again and again. That would be foolish.

 Inner growth is a totally different phenomenon. A Gautam Buddha may become enlightened, but that does not mean that everybody else becomes enlightened. Each individual has to find the truth by himself. So whatsoever happens on the outside goes on accumulating, piling up; all scientific progress goes on piling up. Each scientist is standing on the shoulders of other scientists. But the evolution of consciousness does not follow the same law. Each individual has to discover it by himself; he cannot stand upon the shoulders of somebody else.

[David1]

@Prabhaker

By that reasoning, all the Buddha's teachings would be obsolete. All meditation techniques worthless. Buddhism would have no reason to exist.

[Prabhaker]

@David1 The last words of Gautama the Buddha on the earth were: Be a light unto yourself. Do not follow others, do not imitate, because imitation, following, creates stupidity. You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. 

You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique. Nobody has there been ever who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you.

By following others you can cultivate a beautiful character, but you cannot have a beautiful consciousness, and unless you have a beautiful consciousness you can never be free. You can go on changing your prisons, you can go on changing your bondages, your slaveries. You can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Buddhist -- that is not going to help you. To be a Buddhist  means to follow Buddha as the model. Now, there is nobody who is like Buddha  or ever can be. Following Buddha you will become a false entity. You will lose all reality, you will lose all sincerity, you will be untrue to yourself. You will become artificial, unnatural, and to be artificial, to be unnatural, is the way of the mediocre, the stupid, the fool.