Knowledge and Being

People prize knowledge over being. So they are always trying to assimilate knowledge, which they believe will help them get around in the world.

But getting around in the world, one is always trying to reach somewhere. In other words, what one is trying to do is to BE. It's called 'living,' but in fact, it's just forever trying to reach something. It means involvement in a process of becoming, rather than being.

BEING is the big challenge, because the whole of conditioning tries to kick you out of being into a frantic world of search and grasp. Of achievement, realization, 'fulfillment.' And it's all going the wrong way! It is running away from a self that accompanies you where ever you go anyway. It is turning one's back on being in order to become something. 

Knowledge Is Ignorance

And vise versa.

What!? Ignorance is knowledge?!?

Well look at it this way—once you have a piece of knowledge, you are equipped to ignore; once you don't know, you are equipped to look, to find out, to study. But if you are full of knowledge, why should you bother about anything? You know it all. You know where you're going, what you are doing, who you are and where you're at.

A person going about his business, full of the knowledge of all the things he is going to do, is an ignorant person. Knowledge is like a cocoon. To be full of knowledge is to ignore. And you have to ask: does Truth need knowledge? That about wraps it up.

Dung Beetle

We push our knowledge forward, in order to create the next moment - rather like a dung beetle, with its little bolus of dung! That's all the future is. We create it from our knowledge as we go, pushing it ahead of us. One thinks, "This will really get me places!" It doesn't matter how big the ball is, it's still dung. The dung-ball is like one's little store of knowledge - and one has to leave it by the wayside.