What philosophy, in the end, demands of us, is concentration – but concentration of a different kind from that which enables us to formulate, or follow, a complex argument. To think ‘Being is’, or even to really think about the nature of mind (including the mind that’s currently thinking), or to think about thought, requires the kind of discipline we associate with mystics. And this is something that pretty well everything in our life militates against, as we surf our attractions and distractions. According to Heidegger, the “most thought-provoking feature of our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” (What Is Thinking? [sic]) This paradoxical claim certainly seems true when our cogitations are measured against Heidegger’s notion of what it is truly to think philosophically: “to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky.”

¶ 3:22 PM