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The more I learn the less I know.
Earthninja
WandererWest Australia Veteran
Hi online sangha!
I hope you are all well, I just thought I would share a small insight I've recently had.
Every time I think I understand what the Dharma is about or think I'm on the right path I get humbled right in my tracks.
Every time I think I understand something, I realise I don't understand. A seasoned practitioner or an insight blows my previous understanding right out of the water.
I feel very fortunate and humbled by this path.
It is actually liberating knowing you dont know anything(even this statement is likely flawed
)
How about you guys? Does the Dharma keep throwing curve balls?
I hope you are all well, I just thought I would share a small insight I've recently had.
Every time I think I understand what the Dharma is about or think I'm on the right path I get humbled right in my tracks.
Every time I think I understand something, I realise I don't understand. A seasoned practitioner or an insight blows my previous understanding right out of the water.
I feel very fortunate and humbled by this path.
It is actually liberating knowing you dont know anything(even this statement is likely flawed
) How about you guys? Does the Dharma keep throwing curve balls?
8
Comments
@Earthninja
If everything changes, and our practice is a witnessing of that fluidity, wisdom is learning how to assess the validity of each truth as it appears in each moment, rather than trying to gild it into some personal aid to be carried around for our own delusive security.
Welcome to the moment.
Seems about right. You practice. Change happens. It is humbling. You don't gain anything in dharma apart from peace of mind, equanimity, maybe a nice doll stand (aka shrine) . . . you lose ignorance. It is of course ignorance that thinks in terms of becoming, progressing, achieving etc . . .
Beginner mind, every day.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
I am getting to be so humble . . . I may set myself on a shrine
OM NAMU LOB STER HUM
Ain't mysteries great....?
"The more I learn the less I know."
"Everything evolves-will come to mean nothing is true!"
Nietzsche
Plato once said the same thing in his old age. I think it was Plato anyway "The only thing I know is that I know nothing."
Which is pretty solid advice coming from someone who spent most of their life philosophizing.
It's good to be humbled. There's a lot we're unaware of, and I'd rather be shown to be wrong or not in alignment than cling to my delusions.
Humbling doesn't necessarily mean an error is pointed out, though. Sometimes you can just be so overwhelmingly impressed with someone -- with their conduct, with their speech, with their enthusiasm. Those moments and those meetings are valuable indeed.
how said it really well; it's not about devising the perfect structure to carry around with us wherever we go, it's about seeing the completeness of it all already. It's like dragging around a bathtub full of water while swimming across a lake. Why?! To take a bath of course. Haha.
Letting go of the bathtub is easier done than said.
True and wonderful spirit friends are rare these days, and I'm honored for all the connections we have. Keep your eyes and your heart open and connected. There are masters all among us.
@Earthninja
Thus I have heard the Buddha was meant to have said something along these lines...
"Sabbe dhamma nalam abhinivesaya." (Nothing whatsoever should be clung to) ...
and considering everything is a constant state of flux including the psycho-physical phenomenon that we call the self, he makes a good point and it looks like you are beginning to experience the ultimate through the conventional lens ....
But I could be wrong
I think you are saying that you notice more and that includes seeing more things that you don't understand? But strictly speaking you know more now than when you first started. I guess that would depend on what you mean by 'know'.
Just be gentle for yourself and the others. There is no hidden fantasy treasure.
I think one needs to have an empty mind in order to arrive at clarity at some point. A good time to meditate and use it to develop insight while it lasts perhaps?
I don't think the more you learn the less you know. I think it's a clarity that helps you better see what you don't know.
What we do know may be a drop in the ocean compared to what we don't know but I do know that if water gets cold enough it will freeze as surly as hitting my toe with a hammer will break a bone. Is that not considered knowledge?
It would be odd to know nothing. I doubt anybody really knows nothing as nothing doesn't exist and couldn't be experienced by anything. I mean, if there is experience, there is not nothing. It sounds pretty but it is meaningless. If there is experience then we should call it experience because even if experience is empty, it is not nothing.
Even a baby instinctively knows it has to eat with its mouth.
The more I learn, the better I can understand but if I wanted to know less, I would probably believe more.
It is what it is.
I feel @vinlyn has expressed an important point to do with this:
That clarity gives a wider understanding of the potential ways of knowing that others have described. We are in a sense constrained by our karma. We initially know through a limited being and experience.
The very things that self identity clouds and obscures as we leave the constraints of my knowledge, my path, my wisdom, my oh my . . .
What then becomes possible, understandable differently?
http://viewonbuddhism.org/mind.html
Isn't it?
But I'm referring to "knowledge" of who is watching the water freeze? Is there even a somebody watching the water freeze?
Where does seeing stop and sight begin?
These sort of ultimate questions.
The answer to these used to be easy, now I don't know anymore...
Reminds of that zen proverb about streams are streams and mountains are mountains. Then realising there aren't any streams and mountains. Then understanding streams are still streams and mountains are mountains.
To me that koan means that the water and the watcher of the water cannot be separated. Not one but not two. The entire cosmos watching itself from different viewpoints.
It illustrates that duality is our tool, not the other way around.
This is what I mean by I know nothing.
Who exactly is it a tool for? If it is indeed the cosmos looking at itself I sure as hell haven't experienced this.
At the moment it is just words I use as I try to describe the experience but yes, as far as I can tell, I have experienced non-duality from a perspective neither subjective nor objective.
If we want to get technical, we can say we do not know the entirety of anything but it is impossible to know nothing. There would be nothing to know. It's gobble-de-goop.
No?
Let me ask you this @Earthninja;
When in that koan it says, mountains are no longer mountains, what do you think it means? Is it that the mountains do not exist to the awakened or that the labels have dropped away?
The notion that everything is an illusion and so does not exist will lead to nihilism when taken to its logical conclusion.
It is indeed logically impossible. It does indeed sound like nonsense.
That impossble nothing that knows itself as empty/nothing is Buddha Nature. No arising. No being. Unborn. Has no qualities. What we face is humbling by having no face.
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/bankei_zen_master.html
Using words to try to describe the ineffable will eventually lead to contradiction ...Such is the paradox of life...
So would you equate emptiness with nothingness?
On the surface this seems a minor detail but at a subtle level the difference is quite fundamental as to whether compassion is the logical conclusion or merely an ideal born of pure sentimentality (from the non-existent).
If there was nothing to experience we would never experience anything... Not even our precious delusions.
We can experience emptiness but we cannot experience nothingness and we would never know it if we did.
@Shoshin;
But it's fun to try!
True
Yes, equating emptiness with nothingness is completely missing the point. And it is about labelling.
Everything is an illusion and does not exist. ( in the way we perceive it to exist) through our minds.
All these words will lead you to looking up your own ass. Honestly, @Earthninja there may come a point where you're thinking so much about this, you'll over-think it.
I think your current 'I don't know' is actually a mental block.... I think you do know, you just can't believe you do.
Drop it.
Literally, let it go.
Just abide, Be, and sit in Emptness.
That's it.
The Mountain is the Mountain, then it isn't, then it is.
It's that final 'then it is' you need to wrap your head round.
That's the key to the two previous stases.
'It is, it isn't, it is' are all you need.
They form the tripod that sustains, supports and contains the vessel that knows everything necessary to Be. (That's you, BTW....)
So?
Be.
We can say that spaciousness, emptiness and no-thingness are nuances or subtleties of experience, that is not quite the same.
Spaciousness without form, emptiness without being, nothing without experiencer CAN NOT be 'known'. There is knower without knower. It is gibberish but there it 'is' . . .
Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.
I don't understand what you think I know?
To be honest with you I'm trying not to think, not by force. But by observation of thought and meditation. Not stop thinking but limit useless thinking.
I really don't know.
Maybe I should elaborate.
When I started this path I would look at a chair and say. That is a physical chair and this is me looking at it. Obviously. I mean it's obvious right?
Then I've had experiences of there being awareness of both the person and the chair! I was neither just one field of seeing. (This is subtlety still with me now)
Then I had an experience where I was everything that there is. All experience was manifested in this awareness AND was this awareness.
But I've recently went back to a blog I used to follow and realise this is only a beginning stage. They are talking about there being no witness of experience at all. Everything is experience and experienced with nothing to land on. No self anywhere.
(Well this blew my mind so I now I have no idea who or what I am) I am not sure about anything.
And this was liberating for me.
I now just focus on now and don't get caught up in so much the words like you said.
I don't understand (so I'm off to the mat and like you said, to just be!
So what do you think I know but choose not to believe? Not sure what you mean.
No, read again:
I didn't say you knew something but chose to not believe it.
I said you know something, but you don't believe you know it already. You think you don't know, but you do.
Our understanding of the truth could change but truth is truth whether we know it or not.
No offence but you just cancelled out your own argument. If it is all an illusion and doesn't exist it won't matter how we perceive it.
The illusion is being separate, not being.
One makes compassion common sense and one makes it pure sentimentality (which is paradoxical since the sentiment wouldn't even have a way to be expressed)
This universe is so complex that no human being can understand it - but perhaps we can get an insight of it outside the knowledge (is this English?). There is a reality, although our perception of it may be an illusion, but we are not a dream of a god.
I can't imagine other purpose for our lives than to live in a harmony with this world, which is a single entirety without any mystical truths. To know how this world works is not the main question in life.
No, the purpose is to Know Suffering, and Transcend it.
To be IN this world, but not OF it.
@ourself you said "No offence but you just cancelled out your own argument. If it is all an illusion and doesn't exist it won't matter how we perceive it."
I never said it doesn't exist? I said it doesn't exist in the way we perceive it. It definitely matters to me how I perceive. In the grand scheme who knows.
Like a mirage right? Hmm
Thanks for all the feedback guys.
Yes, suffering people are like strings that are not in tune. Maybe that was a cold and bad methaphor?
Can you imagine how much fun that would be. We would probably agree a lot more.
I'm not so finesse with words on my mobile and Buddhism is so hard to talk about let alone type about!
With metta. Chris
Let me go back and ask the same question again.
When that koan says "mountains are no longer mountains" do you think the mountains cease to be or that the labels have fallen away to reveal inter-being?
If it is neither of those then could you explain?
"The way we perceive it" is pretty broad and doesn't really nail it, you know?
Mountains are no longer mountains because the labels have fallen away to reveal a process which is all inclusive.
Mountains are once again mountains because duality is a handy tool and there is no sharing of information or distinguishing of any kind without it.
(I take it we're not going to be discussing tectonic plates....? No....? Jolly good.
)
But we need to experience these before wisdom arises. That's the ferry boat to awakening.
I'm floating around at the moment
In Sufism this is described as the station of 'bewilderment'.
There is no witness of the witness.
There is no self in emptiness BUT this otherness is pure 'non being' and changes or transforms the knower which is how we can 'attain' or experience without gaining or removing.
Fantastic observation
in vedanta there is a lovely term
Neti Neti
In a general response to the OP, I think sometimes folks on here "over-think" and "over-discuss" some topics. I often think that Buddha himself would be scratching his head if he could see some of these threads.
First we scratch
then there is an itch
finally our head falls off
The "I" just being the fabrication of the fluctuating psychophysical phenomenon ie, a convenient tool, 'conversational piece' so to speak, has no way of knowing the ultimate... Where could the "I" hold such fleeting intrinsic knowledge....
So in one sense your statement is true, true in that as 'awareness' chips away at the foundations of the illusion of a permanent self, the "I" eventually becomes less and less dominant and more of a figurehead hence "The more "I" learn the less "I" know !"
Remember to take all the above with a pinch of salt
I'm not sure exactly what you mean but if it has to do with constructing some kind of framework out of the dharma to A. make life predictable and/or B. allows you some sort of control, I've lost count of the many times my house of cards have been tumbled. I think of the many times when I did what I considered the appropriate course of action to have it end in catastrophe and the many times I thought I utterly screwed up to find that it was exactly what was required. It's human nature to want to construct solidity, but the true nature of existence is such that those who love their delusions spend a lifetime creating alibis and those that seek the truth throw up their hands and surrender-and the minute they do they know the most important thing they can ever know: you can't know. You simply be aware of the moment and accept whatever that moment brings, free of judgments and expectaions
If you are no longer blown away, or blown off course, then nothing can ever surprise you, or change your awareness - and that is a truly awful thought!
Anataman! 2015