The basic thesis of Buddhist philosophy is that the sufferings, the agonies of mankind—especially the psychological ones—derive almost entirely from false problems: from bothering our heads over questions that are not real questions at all. And when these problems are solved, when it is seen that we were asking the wrong question, then one gets this astonishing sensation of seeing that problems exist only, as it were, in a mental sphere—they exist as a result of thought—whereas the world which is not thought, the world which simply is, is entirely free from problems.
We think the physical world is full of problems, and we have thought as a valuable instrument to enable us to solve them. And it’s true: thought is a valuable instrument. But valuable (we might ask) for whom? Valuable for those who can use it. But not so valuable for those who are used by it; those who, in other words, are hoodwinked by thinking into problems which would not exist otherwise, and which really have no reason to exist.
Thought is, as it were, a system of symbols that stands apart from life and represents it, just as words stand apart from things and represent them—they don’t really stand apart from them; words and noises and thoughts are sensations or images, and they only apparently stand apart. Well, as we identify ourselves to so large an extent with our thinking process, we naturally come to feel that we, too, stand apart from life. And as a result of this we have the customary feeling that, when we’re not distracted with thought, we have a curious feeling of emptiness, of having no time, of being very… well, just being evaporating histories. But, of course, if you stand apart from life, you’re dead. But we don’t really stand apart. But we think we do.