There are so many profoundly interesting sources of
knowledge that really do draw my interest to an amazing degree. There is so
much knowledge to be had. It draws me incredibly. Yet, as I recently read in
the book of Aboriginal truth, knowledge is NOT wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to
live wisely, to be able to apply such knowledge in living. My way, which is
closer to zen Buddhism is not so much a way of knowledge but a way of being.
Knowledge is helpful to understanding which is helpful to being, but is not
central to being. So what if we know our true history? It does lead us in the
direction of our true being, I believe, but it can also became a false pursuit,
a distraction to being, even an obstacle. I have pursued it and still do
actually but now I see that knowing the true history and development of life
and human life, though absolutely of interest and even importance to me, is not
the essence of being. In zen practice, it would be considered simply
“phenonema” to be recognized and not pursued. Now I can study it as an interest
without pursuing it as “the way.” I prefer to simply “observe what is” here and
now as it presents itself through the focus of “my” being. If “my being”
happens to expand in the process, fine, but I feel I should trust myself in
this matter, rather than trying to force some kind of expectation upon myself
to be something other than I am. This may reflect and even be my own
shortcoming, my own lack of vision and expansiveness, but it is my own mistake
which I will come to recognize as my own. It is not someone else’s whom I may
follow and cannot necessarily undue or correct within myself. I believe I can
untie a knot that I have made but not necessarily someone else’s that I have
taken upon myself. I already have enough knots within myself tied by others who
I have taken into myself that I have to learn how to untie. Such knots become
so integral to one’s own being that to simply sever them is to sever a part of
oneself. So unlearning is a painstaking, conscious, careful undertaking. We
cannot throw the baby, i.e. ourselves, out with the bathwater no matter how
dirty and polluted it is. I tried to throw out Catholicism within myself but it
will always remain embedded within me, like an old wire fence embedded within
the layers of bark on a tree. I cannot cut it out but I can be very aware of
its continuing presence and even learn to hold a reverence for it and
understanding of it, and of myself.
