What I’m saying is that indoctrination doesn’t make a philosopher; not that one should specifically ignore anything, but let the test be what is enjoyable. If you like absorbing high poppycock-content cocktails, then go for it, but philosophical nuggets are needles in haystacks with that method of reinventing the wheel since many have already been down that path and built upon and condensed the knowledge therein.
I don’t need to read the entire works of Mart Twain to know that reading healthbooks may cause one to die of a misprint.
It’s funny you mention efficiency when your suggestion is to vacuum up everything and sort it out later.
But that is reinventing the wheel. Why waste 2 years studying Buddhism when you could spend a couple months studying Alan Watts and learn more about Buddhism than the Buddhists, as well as Hinduism, Christianity, Atheism, and be lightyears ahead of someone with their nose diligently held to the Sutras, Vedas, Bible, or Dawkins.
Most of the understanding of Eastern philosophy is the grueling undertaking of merely conceptualizing the nonexistent self, and that’s not a function of knowledge-absorption, but more a function of futility realized from countless hours pondering. So Buddhism has almost nothing to do with knowledge, but more to do with changing your whole paradigm, worldview, method of thinking… well it’s like being born again.
It’s not too likely that someone would spend 50 years pioneering work that someone else had done, though it reminds me of the time I came to the conclusion that the Europeans had the advantage of horses and domesticated animals to explain their success compared to the Native Americans when someone informed me that I sound like Jared Diamond who had already made a movie about it. Of course, I don’t consider it a waste of time, but a compliment, and it surely didn’t take 50 yrs to arrive at the conclusion, but just dawned on me one day.
“All originality is undetected plagiarism.” - William Ralph Inge, and I have no clue who that guy is.