When Trungpa Rinpoche spoke about the importance of joining intellect and intuition, he was referring to combining learning and study with the practice of meditation  •  the practice of meditation helps us to overcome the chaos of conflicting emotions, while learning or sharpening the intellect leads to gentleness  •  the idea of learning in this case isn't necessarily about acquiring large amounts of of information; it is about cultivating an inquisitive mind  •  first you need to listen and learn, to pay attention, to get the facts  •  but then you have to really think about what you have learned; you have to work with it and struggle with it  •  there's a kind of laziness of mind that settles for a superficial understanding without really questioning what is being said, and why  •  this is particularly true in this “age of information,” which in many ways has become the age of disinformation and conspiracy theories  •  there is a tendency to not really think about what you hear, but just respond on an emotional level to rumor and innuendo  •  such gullibility can leave us vulnerable to manipulation by people who don't necessarily have the best of intentions  •  the type of questioning I'm referring to is not cynical questioning based on hatred and aggression, but a questioning that comes from curiosity and genuine interest  •  because we're willing to question ourselves as well as others, it leads to a kind of softness or gentleness, as well as clarity and depth.