What Most Are Thinking

If you think I am good thinker,
I thank you for your kindness,
But I do not think I am a good thinker,
Because I am not a quick one,
But very slow, if not,
Why has it taken me seventy years,
To come up with truths that should be obvious
To nearly everyone?
But I find it is not the rapidity with which you think,
But the subject you think about that matters.

Most think about what is not worth thinking about,
Over and over, like waves of selfish craving,
Repeating in a sea.
Their minds as an ocean are,
Made up of endless waves of mindless selfishness,
That soon fall back to nothingness.
Few ideas worth having can be seen,
To violate the emptiness on their horizons.

My view is since the mind will think,
As waves will rise,
Why not think on something worth thought about?
Besides sex and money and self-enhancement
And if the E that equals Mc squared will form an energy,
To make a bomb or rocket that will make hell,
For those sillier fools than us, but like us,
Who are for a brief span our present enemies.

So my suggestion is, learn how to think,
But more, what to think about,
Yes, there’s the thing,
Something that catches the eternal eye.

Explanatory Notes;
Teacher’s Guide

The poet is told by someone he is a good thinker. He says
he thinks not because quickness is part of his definition of
good thinking, and he is not quick. He sees himself as a
slow thinker. Otherwise why has it taken him nearly seventy
years to come up with spiritual truths that he feels ought to
be obvious to almost anybody?

However, he adds, it is not so much the speed
with which you think, but what you are thinking about.
He finds most don’t think about anything worth thought about.
It doesn’t matter how good a thinker you are when you have
nothing worthwhile to think about.

The poet compares thoughts to ocean waves of selfish craving
that appear over and over as waves repeating the same
selfish thoughts and cravings endlessly. He suggests that since
minds are comparable to oceans where the waves are going to
appear regularly, why not give minds better subjects to
dwell on than the usual common thoughts most people repeat over
and over. These thoughts are largely: sex, money, self-enhancement
and some new method to pulverize someone else or other peoples.

So the minister suggests not only learning how to think, but
learning what to think about. He advises thoughts that will
“catch the eternal eye.”