Knowledge has always been touted over the ages as a source of power, even enlightenment, yet over the ages the greatest thinkers, have warned us not to revel in our false knowledge, in individuality and in a sense of our own being.
Indeed they have all advocated abandoning the ego and of discarding the individual as the only path to true knowledge and even nirvana.
Each ancient tradition has discovered its own version of this thought. In our global village we need to discover this Axial ethos again. 'Do not do unto others what you would not have done to you', and each of these minds have discovered their own path to this ultimate religion of oneness and nothingness and peace.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The gods are later than this world's production,
who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin off this creation,
whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eyes controls this world in highest heaven,
he verily knows it - or perhaps he knows not.*
One day a brahmin, walking down a path found a man sitting under a tree and the sight of his serenity, stillness and self-discipline filled the priest with awe. The man reminded him of a tusker elephant - there was the same sense of enormous strength and massive potential brought under control and channeled into an extraordinary peace. The brahmin had never seen a man like this before. "Are you a God sir?" he asked "An angel perhaps or a spirit?"
"No." replied the man "I am surely none of these, I am merely the best in myself. I have simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It is possible to live in this world of dukkha at peace, in control and in harmony with all creatures. Once people have cut the roots of their egotism, they live at the peak of their capacity" he said.
The brahmin understood, instantly and subtlety all at once, "How should I describe you?" he inquired.
"Remember me," the Lord Goutama Buddha told him, "as one who is awake."**
Centre your attention - Stop listening with your ears and listen with your mind. Then stop listening with your mind and listen with your primal spirit. Hearing is limited to the ear. The mind is limited to tallying things up. But the primal spirit which is within you, is empty. It's simply that which awaits things. Tao is emptiness merged and emptiness is the mind's fast. To know something is to distinguish it form something else, to forget these distinctions is to become aware of undifferentiated unity and to lose all sense of being a separate individual.
Instead of using every opportunity to feed the ego, we had to starve it. Even the best intentions could be grist to the mill of our selfishness.*** - Said Kong Qiu^ (551-479) to his disciples.
One day his favourite disciple came to him, "I'm gaining ground" beamed Yan Hui "I sit quietly and I forget". "What do you mean?" asked his master. "I let the body fall away and the intellect fade. I throw out form abandon understanding - and then move freely blending away into the great transformation"
Kong Qiu went pale with delight, his disciple had surpassed him. "If you blend away like that, you are free of likes and desires and all ego. If you are all transformation, you are free of permanence. So in the end there is only you."****
"Ask questions and analyse the implications of the answers, discover the inherent flaws and inconsistencies of every single point of view. Reject one definition after another. Your aim is not to come up with a clever or intellectually satisfying solution. The admission we seek is that there is no answer. This discovery and confusion is far more important that a neat conclusion, because once you have realised that you know nothing, once you have abandoned the myth of your ego, your philosophical quest can begin" said Socrates.****
When he sees identity in everything
Whether Joy or Suffering
Through analogy with the self,
He is deemed a man of pure discipline******
*Rig Veda, 10.129:6-7 (Circa 1600-900 BCE)
**Angutara Nikaya 4.36 (Circa 450-398 BCE)
***The Book of Zhuangzi 4:26-28 (Circa 400-300 BCE)
****The Book of Zhuangzi 6:93 (Circa 400-300 BCE)
*****Laches - Plato (Circa 400 BCE)
******Bhagvad Gita 6:32 (Cirica 300 BCE)
^Kong Qiu was know as Kongfuzi or 'Our Master Kong' - or in translation - Confucius
Overriding Credit: The Great Transformation (the beginning of our religious traditions) - Karen Armstrong 2006
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