Gaining knowledge

It is a certain accumulation of information. But is this accumulation a boon or a burden? Without knowledge, he explains, you will have to re-invent the wheel every day. However, if too much accumulated memory sticks to the knife of the intellect, then it cannot cut through anything. What you call knowledge is a certain accumulated information. Whether you want to cook your meal, manufacture a car, produce a great computer or build a building, this accumulated knowledge is important. What you call as a cook book or an engineering book or a medical book is simply accumulated knowledge. If you do not make use of the accumulated knowledge, then you will have to reinvent the wheel every day. Only a fool will invent things which have been invented a thousand years ago. A wise man will use what has been invented in the past and produce something else for tomorrow.

Knowledge is not enough, to rely on it is dangerous. Knowledge is borrowed, it is not knowing. Knowing grows with you, knowing is a growth, an evolution, knowledge is implanted within you from me outside, knowledge is borrowed, it is counterfeit. It looks like knowing, it is not. It deceives, it gives you a feeling that you know you don’t. On the path of Zen the first thing to be aware of is knowledge: the tradition, the scripture, that which has been handed over to you others. Those eyes are not yours, that light is not yours, and it is better to remain ignorant than to become knowledgeable — because at least ignorance is yours. A least it is authentic, at least it is true, at least it belongs to you Out of the truth of ignorance, knowing can grow, but out of the falsity of knowledge, you will be lost. Nothing can grow out of it. Knowledge is an accumulation of dead facts and information. It has no life in it. It is like stones piled up, one upon another. It can rise to a very great height, but it has no growth because it has no sap of life in it.

Wonderment is the beginning of new knowledge. Creativity dawns by stretching the wonder. The attitude of ‘I know’ makes one closed and limited. ‘I don’t know’ makes way for new possibilities. When one moves with ‘I know it all’, he or she gets stuck with a fixed concept. Often one says ‘I don’t know’ out of frustration. Turning that ugly ‘I don’t know’ to an ‘I don’t know!’ that is marked by wonderment arising out of knowing the endless possibilities is the path of growth. The more one knows, the more wonderment dawns about the unknown. It is beautifully said in the Upanishads, “One who says, I don’t know, knows it, and the one who says, I know, doesn’t know!” It’s said that what is known is not even the tip of the iceberg of the unknown.