Thoughts and Actions
I recently read
a book my mom had bought, What Is Karma?,
by Eknath Easwaran and I remember these lines right at the beginning of the
book:
“What we do, say, and even think has
consequences. Words and thoughts are included, for they cause things to
happen.”
That inclusion
of “words and thoughts” is such a fundamental difference between East and West:
it’s why most Eastern societies don’t consider freedom of speech sacrosanct the
way the Western societies do (Remember that famous line, “I disapprove of what
you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”? Depending on
which site you look up, the source is either Evelyn Beatrice
Hall, or
Voltaire).
When one thinks
of Vincent van Gogh, many things come to the mind. Great artist.
Post-impressionism. Night Watch. Sunflowers. Self portraits. Suicide. And
of course, the chopped off ear.
The one thing I
didn’t associate with van Gogh was well thought out and well articulated views!
So it was a surprise to read these lines from a letter he wrote to his brother
on the topic
of thoughts v/s actions:
“My view on this is as follows: the
result must be an action, not an abstract idea. I think
principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds.”
While
acknowledging that:
“it’s good to reflect and to try to be
conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and
turns the various actions into a whole”
van Gogh then
states the reason why so many people don’t equate words and thoughts with
action:
“The great doesn’t happen through impulse
alone.”
Nothing new so
far. But it’s what he wrote next that surprised me:
“Whether originally deeds lead to
principles in a person or principles lead to deeds is something that seems to
me as unanswerable and as little worth answering as the question of which came
first, the chicken or the egg.”
Very well put
indeed! It’s such a, well, rational take on the whole topic. I never associated
rationality with artists: I always felt that rationality was like a poison to
creativity.
van Gogh did
have frequent bouts of mental illness…who knows, maybe the strain of having two
contradictory attributes (rationality and creativity) contributed to that?
Your blog on this subject had a big surprise for me. I didn't know about this side of the great artist van Gogh till I read your blog.
ReplyDeleteThe saying by van Gogh, that is, “Whether originally deeds lead to principles in a person or principles lead to deeds is something that seems to me as unanswerable and as little worth answering as the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.”, is the one that I had to contemplate in stillness.
As to your, "I never associated rationality with artists: I always felt that rationality was like a poison to creativity", I am not surprised by your view. So, I would like to draw your attention to your -shall I say- limitlessness in imagining that statements like the one I picked up for discussion is not all about rationality. Nor rationality need to breath life into profundity. Profundity and rationality need not always go hand in hand. Even in Western sciences which are today ingrained in rationality with full commitment are not able to escape some details emerging which challenge rationality. Sometimes the assault on rationality gets overcome with more intricate ways of bringing the new found challenge under the domain of rationality. Only to await the next challenge.
What I am driving at is this. You should consider that rationality is not the totality in the scheme of our understanding, and can never be so. That day we deal with rational ideas and those which confound our rationality with challenges (I am not discussing silly superstitions and low class opinions which are far from being rational) are two sides of the same coin on the great Mother Nature.