Knowledge is NOT Wisdom (Beingness)

 

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.