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ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX
VOL. 1
Chapter 2: Ignorance is Ultimate
Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 1
The first question:
Question 1
THERE IS AN OLD TRADITION THAT LINKS WISDOM AND FOOLISHNESS. IS A WISE MAN SIMPLE-MINDED? IS THE SIMPLIFICATION THAT COMES WITH AGE WISDOM OR FATIGUE? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WISE MAN AND A FOOL?
THE TRADITION IS RIGHT. There is a synthesis which goes beyond foolishness, which goes higher than wisdom itself -- a synthesis in which wisdom and foolishness disappear into one unity.
Foolishness and wisdom are dualities, like all other dualities: man and woman, day and night, summer and winter, life and death. All dualities have to be transcended. Unless dualities are transcended you never come to know the one, the real, the universal.
In that sense a wise man is also a fool -- because in that transcendence both are included. But he is not a fool in the ordinary sense -- he is not even wise in the ordinary sense. His wisdom is quite a separate reality, so is his foolishness. He is wise because he knows, and he is a fool because he knows that the mystery of life is such that it cannot be known. He is wise because his journey is finished and he is a fool because he now knows for the first time that there is nothing to know and there is no possibility of knowing, that ignorance is ultimate. He has come to know that ignorance is ultimate. There is no way to demystify existence.
We call a man who has got the answer, wise, but the real wise man has not got the answer. His questions have disappeared and so have all the answers -- he is in a tremendous emptiness. And he does not know in the sense of knowledge.
We call a man foolish because he lacks knowledge; we call a man knowledgeable, wise, because he is full of knowledge. But the really wise man=has come to see that there is no way to know the real. The real is there? you can live it, you can be it, but there is no way to know it. Knowledge presupposes division -- the division between the knower and the known; knowledge presupposes distinction; knowledge is based on duality.
A really wise man has come to the point where he is no longer separate, where he is no longer an island, where he has disappeared into the whole. He pulsates with the whole, he vibrates with the whole, he is no more. Only God is. This is the meaning of the Upanishadic seer when he declares 'AHAM BRAHMASMI' -- 'I am God'. This is the meaning when Christ goes on saying 'I and my father are one.'
When you look at existence as an object you remain separate, but when you participate with existence, when you become a participant, when you look at an object and it becomes your very subjectivity -- then there is no knowledge and then there is no ignorance. When there is no knowledge, how can there be ignorance? Ignorance and knowledge are aspects of the same coin and the wise man has thrown both. So a wise man is neither and both.
THERE IS AN OLD TRADITION THAT LINKS WISDOM AND FOOLISHNESS. That is true. There is a tradition that says that Jesus was a fool -- and he was. There is a tradition that says that St. Francis was a fool -- and he was. In India the name of Buddha has taken a very strange form. It has become BUDDHU -- which means 'the fool'. The very name which means the most wise has taken another form, the polar opposite -- it has become BUDDHU. It means 'the fool, the utter fool'.
Yes, polarities meet. That's what I was talking about yesterday -- about what scientists call androgeny. Each man is both man and woman but you become identified with only one part of your being. You think you are a man but there is also a woman inside you, waiting to be recognised, received, accepted. And you go on denying it. You say, 'I am a man.' You will remain lopsided. If you are a woman there is also a man waiting within you, and you go on denying the man. Then you will never be one whole, you will always remain split.
There is a point of awareness, understanding, vision, where your man and woman inside meet and mingle and disappear into each other. That's what William Blake has called 'the inner marriage' when you have become both, androgynous, man and woman both. In India we have the perfect symbol for it -- ARDHANARISHWAR. There are statues of Shiva in which half of his body is man and half of his body is woman. He is both the lover and the beloved, the yin and yang. He is androgynous.
This same kind of meeting with the opposites goes on happening in many directions and many dimensions. Foolishness and wisdom are your two polarities. If you are wise and you deny your foolishness you are not fully wise, because a part of you has not yet been absorbed. A part of you is hanging around you; it has not yet become an integral part of you. If you are a fool and you think that you are a fool then your wise man inside you has been denied, suppressed. A wise man is both and yet neither. He transcends both so you can say he is neither, but because the dualities have disappeared in him and have come to become a new synthesis, you can call him both too.
IS A WISE MAN SIMPLE-MINDED? No. A wise man is no-minded -- not simple-minded, not complex-minded. Again there is the same duality: the simple mind and the complex mind. A wise man is a no-mind. The wise man has gone beyond the confines of the mind, he knows no mind at all. Mind divides. Mind is the barrier between you and existence. Mind exists like the great China Wall -- it is your armour.
A wise man has no armour. He is unprotected, he is vulnerable, he is open. He is not defending himself against nature in any way -- he is available, he is ready to go the whole way with it. He does not push the river, he flows with it. He need not have any mind because the mind of the whole is enough. He need not have a private mind of his own because he has no private goal. He is not going anywhere, he is not an achiever, he has no ambition -- that's what I mean when I say that he has no private goal. So what is the need of having a private mind? The universal mind is enough.
Either call it no-mind or call it Mind with a capital 'M'. Zen people do both. They call it 'no-mind' if they simply want to deny the mind that you have; and they call it the universal Mind, the cosmic Mind, Mind with a capital 'M', when they want to show its positivity.
What exactly is it? When we call it 'no-mind' we are simply saying that it is not what you have got; when we call it the universal, cosmic Mind, we are showing exactly what it is. Calling it 'no-mind' says something negative about it -- it is not the mind that you are acquainted with. Calling it Mind, great Mind, indicates its nature. A wise man is no-minded or a wise man is a cosmic Mind.
Yes, he is simple like a child but he is not a simpleton. He is simple like a child but he is not childish, remember. There is a vast difference between being childish and being childlike. When Jesus says, 'Only those who are like small children will be able to enter into my kingdom of God,' he is talking about the simplicity, the innocence of childhood -- but he is not talking about childishness, he is not talking about immaturity. A wise man is not childish although he is like a child. He is not complex in the sense that a philosopher, a logician, a theologian is complex; he is not complex in the sense that he has many doctrines and ideologies and he goes on spinning theories -- he is not complex in that sense. His mind is at rest. There is no crowd. His mind is empty. He need not think.
Thinking is a substitute. When you don't know, you think. When you know, what is the point of thinking? You know it already. Thinking is a state of blindness. If you are sitting here and you are blind and you want to go outside, then you will have to think about where the door is. You will have to enquire of other people where the door is. You will be afraid to stumble, you will be afraid to knock against the wall and you will become worried about where the door is. But a man who has eyes does not enquire. He knows where the door is, he can see it, so he does not think about it. The question 'Where is the door?' is irrelevant because he sees it. A wise man has eyes, he can see, so there is no need to think. Only blind people think.
In the West the idea of a thinker is utterly different to the Eastern idea of the seer. You must have seen Rodin's statue of 'The Thinker', or at least a picture of it, a photograph. We don't call it a thinker. Rodin's 'Thinker' seems to be ill, worried. You can look into the statue and you can see millions of thoughts rushing about in his mind -- it is rush-hour traffic. You can see them in the marble statue -- in the way he is sitting, his head in his hand, the lines of worry on his forehead. You can almost feel that if this man continues in this same posture he will go mad.
The concept of a seer is totally different -- that's why we call him a seer. A Buddha is a seer not a thinker; a Mahavir is a seer, not a thinker; Jesus is a seer, not a thinker. And these Zen people are seers. Why do we call them seers? They can see. When you can see there is no need to think. What is there to think about when you can see? When eyes are available, thinking is dropped. Thinking is like the stick of a blind man which he carries to grope his way along.
There is a parable. A blind man came to Jesus. Jesus touched the blind man's eyes and he was cured. And he was carrying a big stick which he had carried all his life. He thanked Jesus and started going away to his home -- very, very happy because he had obtained eyes and for the first time he had seen colours and the sun and the sunlight and the flowers and the people and the faces. He was thrilled. But he was still carrying his stick. Jesus called to him and said, 'Sir, why don't you throw away your stick now? Why are you carrying it? 'And he replied, 'Throw it away? How can I throw it aWay? I cannot live without it.'
It is an old habit. He does not know that because he has now got eyes there is no need to carry the stick.
This happens when you get in tune with the no-mind for the first time. You still continue to think. It is just an old blind man's habit. But by and by you become aware that now there is no point in it -- you are simply repeating, you are in an old rut.
Thinking becomes irrelevant -- that is what I mean when I say that a wise man is simple but not a simpleton. All is available to him -- how can he be a simpleton? His consciousness has expanded, his consciousness has become divine, he is as rich as God himself -- so don't think that he is a simpleton. His richness is far more than the richness of a thinker, infinitely more, a million times more. But still he is simple; his innocence remains uncontaminated, his source of consciousness remains unclouded.
You ask: IS THE SIMPLIFICATION THAT COMES WITH AGE WISDOM OR FATIGUE? That which comes with age is fatigue. Wisdom has nothing to do with age. A young man can become wise and you can find as many old fools as you want -- if you try to find one you will find one thousand. Old age has nothing to do with wisdom. Yes, an old man is more experienced, but that doesn't make him wise. An old man is more knowledgeable, but that doesn't make him wise. He remains as foolish as ever.
Neither foolishness nor wisdom is a question of quantity. It is not that the foolish knows less and the wise knows more, no. It is a total shift; it is a new gestalt altogether. The ignorant, the so-called foolish person, and the so called knowledgeable person exist in the same dimension -- the difference is quantitative not qualitative. Maybe the foolish person knows only a few things and the knowledgeable man knows many things, but the difference is between few and many; the difference is not of quality it is only of quantity, the difference is only of degree.
A wise man is no longer on the same wavelength, he has moved onto another wavelength. The difference between a wise man and a fool is so tremendous that it cannot be called quantitative. And the difference between a wise man and a fool is exactly the same as the difference between the wise man and the knowledgeable man. He is as far removed from the knowledgeable man as he is from the ignorant man. He is as far removed from the educated man as he is from the uneducated man. It is a totally new gestalt. His quality of consciousness has changed -- it is not that he knows more, he is more. Listen to it... it is not that he knows more, he IS more. His being is more.
It is possible that you may know more than Jesus; in fact, it is absolutely certain. You know more than Jesus, you know more than Buddha. If Buddha comes here and suddenly has to pass an examination for a Bachelor's Degree or a post-graduate degree, he is bound to fail -- but the many who will pass will not be wiser than him. He will not know a thousand and one things. If you ask him what 'quantum' is he will not know. If you ask him what this theory of relativity that Albert Einstein has propounded is, he will not know. But that does not make him unwise.
The difference between you and Buddha is of quality. His presence is different, his awareness is different, his compassion is different. It is not that he knows much. Even in the days when Buddha was alive there were people who knew more than him. Great scholars were there, great pundits were there and they used to come to quarrel with him, to argue with him. But those days were beautiful. People were not so arrogant. They could see. Even scholars -- it is almost an impossibility -- even scholars could see that this man was totally different, that he existed on a different wavelength. And they would surrender to him. It was not that they knew less than him, they knew more, but he WAS more. It is not a question of his having accumulated more information, something has become transformed in him. There was no darkness in his being, it was full of light. That is the meaning of his enlightenment -- he had attained to light.
This light is wisdom. How can this light come just by age? Sometimes it has happened to children -- about Lao TZU it is said that he was born enlightened. The story is that he was born old, he was born so old that he was almost eighty-two years and his hair was pure white, snow white, and he had a beard. This beautiful story is a metaphor -- it is not true, it is not factual. It says that he was as wise as a man should be by the time he reaches eighty-two years of age.
In India Shankara died when he was thirty-three -- very near to the hippie age limit of thirty. He had not gone very far. But he was one of the most enlightened persons in the world. Even very, very old sages used to come and sit at his feet and were converted by him.
When Jesus was crucified he was also thirty-three. He could not have been very experienced, could not have been very knowledgeable. There were many Jewish rabbis who knew more, who could have quoted scriptures far more authentically. Jesus was almost uneducated, a carpenter's son. You could not expect much. But what was the difference? The difference was not in the information, the difference was in the being. He was full of light, full of joy, full of bliss. He had the aroma of having arrived -- there was nowhere to go, nothing to be achieved any more, all desires had disappeared.
When becoming disappears you are a being -- a wise man attains to being. An unwise man goes after becoming -- become this, become that, be rich, be powerful, this and that. A wise man is simply happy the way he is, in the place he is, at the time he is. He has no hankering -- not even for God, not even for enlightenment. He hankers not. Desires have disappeared, desires have left him. This non-desiring state of consciousness is what we call wisdom.
No, wisdom has nothing to do with age. With age comes fatigue. But many old people start talking in terms of knowledgeability. They start preaching to young people. They start talking about things they have never done themselves; they are fatigued, tired, and in a very deep way, jealous. If you see a young boy climbing up a tree, don't you feel jealous? And immediately your jealousy is asserted in some very great advice -- you tell the boy, 'Don't go up there. You may fall down. Listen to me. Listen to age.' Look deep down and you will see that you are feeling jealous that those days are gone, that you cannot climb the tree and this boy is doing it.
When an old man sees a young man and a young woman moving hand-in-hand with a great vibe of love around them, he feels jealous. Now he cannot do it any more even though he would like to do it. But the jealousy takes a very beautiful form. It says that this is all foolishness, it is just momentary. 'Listen,' says the old man, 'this will disappear sooner or later. Don't be befooled by it.' Don't think that he has become wise. If he had really become wise he would understand the young people, he would not be against them.
Real wisdom is never against life; real wisdom has always a 'yes' for life, never a 'no'. Wherever you find a 'no' which is very, very emphatic, remember, something else is pretending to be wise.
Next: Chapter 2: Ignorance is Ultimate, Question 2
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 1
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
|
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