https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/art-of-meditation/

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By “thoughts” I mean specifically chatter in the skull: perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning and calculating. I’m not saying that thinking is bad—like everything else, it’s useful in moderation: a good servant but a bad master. And all so-called civilized peoples have increasingly become crazy and self-destructive because, through excessive thinking, they have lost touch with reality. That’s to say: we confuse signs, words, numbers, symbols, and ideas with the real world. Most of us would have rather money than tangible wealth. And a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed, and to read about it the next day in the newspaper is oddly more fun for us than the original event.

一个时刻都在思考的人，除了思考别无他事，因此他会与现实脱节，生活在幻觉的世界里。我所说的“思考”，特指头脑中的喋喋不休：无休止且强迫性的言语重复、计算和考量。我并非认为思考是坏事——如同其他事物，适度思考是有益的：它是好仆人，却非良主。所有所谓的文明民族正变得越来越疯狂和自我毁灭，正是因为过度思考，他们与现实失去了联系。也就是说：我们混淆了符号、文字、数字、象征和观念与真实世界。我们大多数人宁愿选择金钱而非实质财富。而一场盛大的场合若未被拍摄下来，对我们来说似乎就失去了些许光彩，次日从报纸上读到相关报道，其乐趣竟奇异地超过了亲身经历的原始事件。