Sounds about right. But I wouldn’t reduce ‘thinking’ to this or any other definition.
Also sounds right.
I’m not sure where you want to go with this, so I’ll let you make the next move. 
I have been responding to what you wrote previously, as when you wrote
and
As has been made (I hope) abundantly clear (and you now say you see this too) metaphors, symbols, concepts belong to thought, to thinking.
Thinking is an abstraction, a simulacrum, of perceptual experience - of actual birds, actual trees, actual human beings. So the thought (‘bird’) is not actual the thing we call ‘bird’.
You said ‘yes’ to the above, so it means that your previous statement claiming metaphor to be “all” there is, is invalid.
It means you admit that the particular pheasant I can see with my eyes right this second (marching around the garden outside) is not a metaphor created by my thought - but is real, living, actual, capable of being perceived.
Only a perverse mind would deny this.
If you believe otherwise, it can only mean that you think the world of nature - the world of actual humans, animals, trees - is made purely of images, memories, abstractions conjured up in your (equally wholly illusory) brain.
Is this what you believe?
This would be genuine, psychopathic nihilism (which you are free to live in if you want to!).
To the mind, yes. ‘Metaphor’ has no meaning apart from that which the mind gives it.
No, I would say that I don’t know what the source of the metaphor is. I can only take a best guess that the source is the thing consensus reality calls: a ‘living pheasant.’
I’m not saying I do or don’t believe this or that, I’m saying I don’t know. It’s a mystery!
What you’re saying is that you’re not serious. Or that you’re a troll. There is a Madhyamaka form of illusionism that makes coherent sense, but I’m not going to do your homework for you.
Precisely, paths. None of which have anything to do with the truth. Neither yours nor mine. We have come full circle. Truth is a pathless land. Krishnamurti’s novel discovery which you appear to categorically reject.
I’m not saying either of those things. You are.
Yes, unfortunately, I am
Given that, where does it leave our interaction here? We might think the other person is wrong, or deluded, or frivolous, or portentous. Does that end the interaction? Doom it to failure? Challenge us to find a way to make it work? What do we do now?
Shall we let it rest for a while, nobody? - and maybe something will germinate.
As the wise bird once said:
“There must be periods of cultivation and periods of stillness from cultivation.”
Sounds good, brother. 
But let’s not let the ball drop for too long, there’s a universe to grok out there!
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No, I don’t reject it. I accept it as a view that helps shed light on the nature of truth.
I dunno. Seems to me when we turn the statement “truth is a pathless land” into a view, we have rejected it. We have brought it down to our level rather than rising up to its. There is nothing to be gained from a statement like that. It is revolutionary.
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Hi- would you please send me the info?
Thanks,
Liora
Yes, good point.
Re: Metaphysics & everything is just a story.
What we call reality is a controlled hallucination - meaning : what we perceive is a story produced by the brain; a description based on the continuous process of interpretation & reaction (seeing & checking the model, projection & action)
But to conclude that nothing exists is in direct contradiction to the evidence. Even if we say that there are no dancers, only the dance, this is something not nothing. Nihilism ignores the relationship, the patterns in play, simply because it cannot grasp/understand what is at play. It is to focus on the hallucination and ignore the other half of the story : control.
Controlled hallucination is not nothing happening in a vacuum. Our continuous play of prediction and error minimisation (seeing and doing) implies a relationship between forces/patterns (aka things)
If our philosophy is not tied to reality in any way (metaphysics?) it is just a story, this is uncontrolled hallucination and is a confusion that does not lead to silence.
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The nihilism I lean towards is the existential flavor: Nothing has any intrinsic meaning. I’ve drawn no hard conclusions about what does or doesn’t exist, though like all of us I have my suspicions. 
One of the big challenges with approaches like idealism or Buddhist emptiness is that it rubs up against nihilism, and as you say embracing nihilism can (but doesn’t have to) lead to suffering.
Is there an “approach” to the truth? Doesn’t “embracing’ the past no matter what name we give it, mean attachment or bondage to it?
Isn’t the approach to the truth, the denial of all approaches to the truth?
Dan,
better word than “denial” is “negation”… right?
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Paradox alert! Nothing wrong with a good paradox, right?
There’s the via negativa approach, negation, which Krishnamurti spoke so passionately about. There’s also the via positiva approach, affirmation. And lots of other approaches.
My point was simple: there’s no ‘approach ‘ to the truth, obviously.