The Danger of Knowledge

It may seem intrinsically wrong to say that knowledge can be dangerous, after all, isn't our study and path about the accumulation of knowledge? And yet, and I say this with a deep personal understanding, as this is one of my own particular flaws, in a way knowledge can be a real distraction from our growth.

I know, I know, it just seems wrong to say it, but bear with me for a moment.

First, and foremost, there are different types of knowing. I can open a book, and read about how to do an operation, but if that book was my only experience, would you really want me operating on you? I can read about how to do kung fu, but would you really trust kung-fu learned in this way to protect you? I can learn everything there is about how to fire a bow, but if you handed me a real bow, do you think I'd really be able to hit anything?

There is internal knowing – the knowing that comes from experience and doing, and there is intellectual knowing, the knowing of the mind. Things learned in a book are useful, but they're a spice. They can help to refine what you know, but they're a poor substitute for actual practice.

The first danger of knowing is that book-knowledge can make you lazy. You can confuse book-smarts with real progress. Again, I'm not saying don't ever pick up a book, but I'm saying that don't fool yourself when you do. The knowledge gained from a book is like a flower, it's pretty to look at, but it often doesn't have the substance of the fruit. And even good knowledge, when taken from a book, is useless until it's tempered and honed with real practice.

Second, the next danger of knowing is the pride it engenders. This is also the danger of teaching. The ultimate goal of our practice is to dissolve the ego, and one part of the evolution of your practice is to learn to teach it. You quickly learn how little you know when faced with a blank slate. Often the very act of having to put something in words causes you to learn it better. But there is also a great hazard here, as it's tempting to derive identity, or pleasure, or pride, or ego from being “the teacher,” or “the boss,” or “in charge.”

And man, this is a big one. This one will veer you right off the road, and right into oncoming-traffic. Because the ultimate goal of our practice is the dissolution of ego, and if you're not careful, this will stop you dead in your tracks. You'll be walking around feeling like the great holy-one, the more-enlightened-than-thou, and in comparison to the people you're looking at, this might be true. But the path of enlightenment is a thousand miles long, and if you've stopped fifty miles down the road, you may be farther along than 99% of the people you meet, but you're still only 5% of the way there. And if you develop ego about what you know, that's as far as you'll ever get.

So the danger of knowing, and of teaching, is that it gives a false sense of accomplishment. The relative difference between the teacher and the students makes the teacher feel lazy. Because I do teach, I have to work on this every day, and I'm constantly finding myself running into this one like a little kid running pell mell into a sliding glass door. I just bounce off, and sit there, stunned, realizing “I've done it again.”

So when you teach, try not to do it as a person giving a great and precious gift, but as a person struggling in your own right, giving up whatever fragments of truth, however twisted your understanding of them may be, hoping that together, we'll all get a tiny bit more, a few hundred feet farther along that thousand mile path. And that's just if we're lucky to make any progress at all.

The final danger of knowing is that it encourages us to think with the wrong part of our minds. There's the analytical mind, which is what we mean when we typically talk about “thinking” and there's another, quieter, deeper place, which is the place we really want to be in. In fact, half of our practice is about silencing that “thinking mind” and just learning to be present. So the last danger of knowing is that it encourages us to fixate on ideas, and concepts, and it steals the deep, and powerful change that just being aware and present brings to us.

Now, as my final words, I want you to “think” about something: You've just read an article, which is asking you to think about not thinking. This may seem a bit like a zen koan, but try not to take it all too seriously. Go and do your work, quiet your mind, and if that's all you do, you'll be better off for it.