Thought is not only the defining characteristic of our modern age, it is central to our very human existence. It is the tool with which we make sense of our surroundings, adapt to changing circumstances, and anticipate threats. It is also the basis for our relationships with other human beings, giving us the ability to understand the experiences and feelings of those around us. If we could not think, we would have no way to piece together the events of our lives. The world would be unintelligible. Without this extraordinary and essential tool, our species would never have evolved at all. As a species, we have relied on thought—together with language and the ability to communicate and record our thoughts—to frame the accumulated experience of our past, describe the dimensions of our future, and lay the foundation for our progress in all the innumerable fields of human endeavor. In a world of incessant flux, concepts lend a sense of constancy and predictability. Fixed and unambiguous, they transform chaotic and potentially overwhelming sensory input into a relatively consistent model of our world.

Thought may be indispensable to our existence in the world, but the efficiency with which it symbolically organizes that existence comes at a steep price. We communicate in words that condense experience into concepts, but when we forget that those concepts are arbitrary and begin to substitute our conceptual version of reality for actual experience of it, we lose contact with what is real. Confusing mental partitions with real divisions, we find ourselves in a world of racial stereotypes, religious fundamentalism, and nationalistic fervor, at odds with those who stand on the opposite side of any mental divide. It is like the leaves on one side of a tree attempting to annihilate their counterparts on the other, missing the fundamental oneness they all share. The living, breathing suchness of our world, the very ground of our being, is lost in translation to the language of thought. We take the map for the territory and can no longer see what is.

The function of thought can be compared to the process of collecting butterflies. If an entomologist catches one of these colorful insects and pins its motionless husk on a board, he may admire the beautiful pattern on the wings and label the unique characteristics of its physical form, but he cannot apprehend its being anymore; that essence is lost. There is little in the display box that suggests the magic of its flight and the way it once fluttered from one flower to the next. Thought and its labels cannot communicate the ineffable. Like the butterfly, much of life resists the classifications and definitions we depend on to figure things out; it can be understood only by actual experience, by being and feeling, not through abstract thought. We know what green beans taste like, but to convey in words the experience of eating them is impossible. Likewise, when we think of the music of Bach, words cannot convey our own listening experience to someone who has never heard his music. Can a mother express in words the experience of giving birth to her first child? Life is in the living.