About Opinions

Translation of a section from "Het is Mogelijk" (It is Possible), preliminary exercise and preparatory study for the Gospel of Thomas, 
www.mogelijk.info

While 

" Sokrates named opinions of men voracious monsters, bugaboos to children" (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)

people are of the opinion that having an opinion is a very important thing. At the time they were still quite little kids and didn't were aware of all those strange ideas of those grown-ups, they hadn't yet, as the phrase goes, an own opinion. But what people are of opinion it is their own opinion is only a product brewed to their own measure, constructed from the pulp of prejudices they acquired and that serves their self-interests. Man thinks, because he repeats thoughts of other people, because he borrows of history and plagiarizes from the ideas of his teachers. Man thinks, because he is influenced and he puts his mind on the thoughts poured in his head by exchange with others. Man thinks because he formulates thoughts of others in a little modified form and that he calls his "own opinion". 

"Therefore nothing is in agreement with his fellows, nothing, neither philosophy nor types of medicine nor types of rhetoric nor types of music nor types of logic, but they are opinions and theories"( Tripartite Tractate).

For scholars have become learned, because they learned so much others thought out for them, because they poured so many opinions, theories and considerations of others in their heads and that they have mixed with a sauce of their education and individual interests, By that they have originated a new brewage and they are very proud of it. Really it is poignant if you see and hear all those important, honoured and famous men of this society displaying on radio and TV, in news-papers, magazines and books their own prejudices and ignorance shameless. 

" Ignorance one would better keep concealed "(Heraclite)

but 

"Scholars are not wise, and wise men are not learned'(Lao Tzu)

and so wise men never are heard. Discussions are merely tournaments wherein opponents defend their "own" opinion with sharp-witted arguments and a brainy knowledge of facts and the smartest wins. 

"This is named the dead-end road of opinions, the cleft of opinions, the bramble-bush of opinions, the brush-wood of opinions, the web of opinions. Opinions, oh followers, are an illness, the opinion is a tumour, the opinion is an ulcer. He who has overcome all opinions, oh followers, we name one who knows"(Majjhima Nikata)

People have an "own" opinion for they have to use and defend it to justify their way of living. And so everywhere there are differences of opinions between opinions equally untrue and yet for everybody only the opinion of the other is untrue. Holding an opinion is a tiring employment and first you have no more opinion, you don't need to defend anything. Only people without opinions can agree wholly with each other and they stay long and happily alive.

To conclude 

" As long as man bears time and space and number and opinion within, he is not found again and God stays far and strange to him"( Meister Eckehart)