I know of a wise one called Morris who said once in a series of lectures he gave to a small crowd of seekers that he had essentially STOPPED reading books 15 years back and was very selective about what he did read. And he preferred to acquire knowledge from living and pull it from the air, for it is all in the air he said and always has been since the inceptions of the universal concepts. Always available if you believe it so. Imagine that.So upon the day I was birthed (a day I have revisited in dreams, daydreams and altered states) I recall looking out into the world and wondering a few things like where is my mother and why is she not holding me?
And once of school age I vowed to please my teachers as best I could and from this contract with me came much struggle in the realm of math, physics, biology and latin. English grammar I mastered. I ate also French lessons for decades. World Religions and Philosophy I argued over but understood the agreed upon precepts and practices that defined one as Catholic, Buddhist, Agnostic or Atheist.
And I was a success on paper.
And now when I hear a fearless leader speak of the need for war anywhere, I remind or delude myself with the comment that he is saying that for the sake of his own conscience, not mine.
I have days I hardly move
and on these days I feel the wisdom of the ages
attaching itself to me like the velvet moss on the wise old evergreens.
And to be cloaked in such grace and growth organic is as good as it gets.
So I move seasonally and rest seasonally.
And the knowledge I need ultimately finds me.
I choose not to burden myself with more than I need in any given moment
leaving ample room for beauty to be simply appreciated.
Transformation Tarot Card
Dropping Knowledge
Naropa's haunting vision
Truth is your own experience, your own vision. Even if I have seen the truth and I tell you, the moment I tell you it will become a lie for you, not a truth. For me it was truth, for me it came through the eyes. It was my vision. For you, it will not be your vision, it will be a borrowed thing. It will be a belief, it will be knowledge--not knowing. And if you start believing in it, you will be believing a lie.
Now remember it. Even a truth becomes a lie if it enters your being through the wrong door. The truth has to enter through the front door, through the eyes. Truth is a vision. One has to see it.
Naropa was a great scholar, a great pundit, with ten thousand disciples of his own. One day he was sitting surrounded by thousands of scriptures--ancient, very ancient, rare. Suddenly he fell asleep, must have been tired, and he saw a vision.
He saw a very, very old, ugly, horrible woman--a hag. Her ugliness was such that he started trembling in his sleep. It was so nauseating he wanted to escape--but where to escape, where to go?
He was caught, as if hypnotized by the old hag. Her eyes were like magnets.
"What are you studying?" asked the old woman.
He said, "Philosophy, religion, epistemology, language, grammar, logic."
The old woman asked again, "Do you understand them?"
Naropa said, "Of course... Yes, I understand them."
The woman asked again, "Do you understand the word, or the sense?"
Thousands of questions had been asked to Naropa in his life--thousands of students always asking, inquiring--but nobody had asked this: whether he understands the word, or the sense. And the woman's eyes were so penetrating--those eyes were going to the very depth of his being, and it was impossible to lie. To anybody else he would have said, "Of course I under-stand the sense," but to this woman, this horrible-looking woman, he had to say the truth. He said, "I understand the words."
The woman was very happy. She started dancing and laughing, and her ugliness was transformed; a subtle beauty started coming out of her being. Thinking, "I have made her so happy. Why not make her a little more happy?" Naropa then said, "And yes, I understand the sense also."
The woman stopped laughing, stopped dancing. She started crying and weeping and all her ugliness was back--a thousandfold more. Naropa said, "Why are you weeping and crying? And why were you laughing and dancing before?"
The woman said, "I was happy because a great scholar like you didn't lie. But now I am crying and weeping because you have lied to me. I know--and you know--that you don't understand the sense."
The vision disappeared and Naropa was transformed. He escaped from the university, he never again touched a scripture in his life. He became completely ignorant, he understood--the woman was nobody outside, it was just a projection. It was Naropa's own being, through knowledge, that had became ugly. Just this much understanding, that "I don't understand the sense," and the ugliness was transformed immediately into a beautiful phenomenon.
This vision of Naropa is very significant. Unless you feel that knowledge is useless you will never be in search of wisdom. You will carry the false coin thinking that this is the real treasure. You have to become aware that knowledge is a false coin--it is not knowing, it is not understanding. At the most it is intellectual--the word has been understood but the sense lost.
