Knowledge 智 Life is Beauty, Terror, Knowledge. A crucial part of following Tao is seeking knowledge. All the efforts of self-cultivation are meant to make us a fit vehicle for that search. Sometimes what we learn is not pleasant. With learning, we glimpse life as it really is, and that is difficult to bear. That is why spiritual progress is slow: not because no one will tell us the secrets, but because we ourselves must overcome sentiment and fear before we can grasp it. There is an underbelly of terror to all life. It is suffering, it is hurt. Deep within all of us are intense fears that have left few of us whole. Life’s terrors haunt us, attack us, leave ugly cuts. To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives. We take beauty as the only worthwhile thing in this existence, but it cannot veil cursing, violence, randomness, and injustice. Only knowledge removes this fear. If we were shown the whole truth, we could not stand it. Both lovely and horrible details make us human, and when knowledge threatens to show us our follies, we may realize that we are not yet ready to leave them behind. Then the veil closes again, and we sit meditating before it, trying to prepare ourselves for the moment when we dare to part the curtain completely.
This is an interesting lesson to me because as much as in love the Dao, I’ve struggled with what seems to me an anti-intellectual bent. For example, Daodejing chapter 65: (paraphrasing the Mitchell translation)
The ancient Masters
Didn’t try to educate the people
But kindly taught them to not-know.
When they think that they know the answers
people are difficult to guide.
I wonder where this author is drawing these ideas from, because I like them! It’d be nice to have further support in the classic texts to bolster my own practices and writing as well.
