Knowledge is not knowledge. It has the appearance of knowledge, hence it deceives many. Knowledge is only information. It does not transform you; you remain the same.
Your accumulation of information goes on growing. Rather than liberating you, it burdens you, it goes on creating new bondages for you.
The so-called man of knowledge is far more foolish than the so-called fool, because the fool at least is innocent. He is ignorant, but he has no pretensions of knowing - that much truth is his. But the man of knowledge is in a far greater mess: he knows nothing but he thinks he knows. Without knowing, to believe that one knows is to remain forever rooted in ignorance.
Knowledge is a way for ignorance to protect itself - and it protects itself very cunningly, very efficiently, very cleverly. Knowledge is the enemy although it appears as the friend.
This is the first step towards wisdom: to know that you don't know, to know that all knowledge is borrowed, to know that it has not happened to you, it has come from others, that it is not your own insight, your own realization. The moment knowledge is your own realization, it is wisdom.
Wisdom means that you are not a parrot, that you are a man, that you are not repeating others but expressing yourself, that you are not a carbon copy, that you have an original face of your own.
Knowledge makes you a carbon copy, and to be a carbon copy is the ugliest thing in the world. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man - because knowing not and yet believing that you know, you will remain always ignorant and in darkness.
And whatsoever you do is going to be wrong. You may be able to convince even others that you know, you may be able to strengthen your ego, you may become very famous, you may be known as a great scholar, a pundit, but deep down there is nothing but darkness. Deep down you have not yet encountered yourself, you have not yet entered in the temple of your being.
The ignorant is in a far better situation. At least he has no pretensions, at least he is not deceiving others and himself. And ignorance has a beauty - the beauty of simplicity, the beauty of uncomplicatedness. To know that "I don't know" immediately brings a great relief. To know, to experience, one's utter ignorance fills one with great wonder - the existence is transformed into a mystery.
And that's what God is all about. To know the universe as a miracle, as a mystery, as something unbelievable, as something impenetrable - as something before which you can only bow down in deep gratitude, you can only surrender in awe - is the beginning of wisdom.
Socrates is right when he says: I know only one thing - that I don't know at all.
To be wise is not to be knowledgeable. To be wise means to realize something of your consciousness - first within and then without; to feel the pulsation of life within you and then without. To experience this mysterious consciousness that you are, first one has to experience it in the innermost core of one's being, because that is the closest door to God.
Once you have known it within, it is not difficult to know it without. But remember: the wise man never accumulates knowledge - his wisdom is spontaneous. Knowledge always belongs to the past, wisdom belongs to the present. Remember these distinctions. Unless you understand the difference very clearly between knowledge and wisdom, you will not be able to understand these sutras of Gautama the Buddha. And they are tremendously important.
Knowledge comes from the past, from others, from scriptures. And Buddha has said:
My transmission of truth is beyond the scriptures. What I am saying, what I am imparting, what I am communing, is not written anywhere, has not been spoken anywhere - in fact, cannot be spoken at all, cannot be written at all. It is transferred in deep silence between the master and the disciple: it is a love affair. Wisdom is contagious. It is not taught, remember; you can receive it but it cannot be given to you.
You can be open and vulnerable to it, you can be in a state of constant welcoming, and that's how a disciple sits by the side of the master - ready to drink, ready to allow the master to penetrate his very heart. In the beginning it is painful, because the master's consciousness penetrates you like a sharp arrow - only then it can reach to your very core. It hurts.
Knowledge satisfies the ego; wisdom destroys the ego completely; hence people seek knowledge. It is very rare to find a seeker who is not interested in knowledge but is interested in, committed to, wisdom. Knowledge means theories about truth; wisdom means truth itself. Knowledge means secondhand; wisdom means firsthand.
Knowledge means belief: others say and you believe. And all beliefs are false! No belief is ever true. Even if you believe in the word of a buddha, the moment you believe it is turned into a lie.
Truth cannot be believed; either you know or you don't know. If you know, there is no question of belief; if you don't know, there is again no question of belief. If you know, you know; if you don't know, you don't know. Belief is a projection of the tricky mind - it gives you the feeling of knowing, without knowing. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jew, the Jaina, the Buddhist - they all believe.
To believe is cheap, it is very easy - nothing is at stake. You can easily believe in God, you can easily believe in immortality of the soul, you can easily believe in the theory of reincarnation. In fact, they remain just superficial; deep down you are not affected by them, not at all. When death will knock at your door you will know your beliefs have all disappeared. The belief in the immortality of the soul will not help you when death will knock at your door - you will cry and weep and you will cling to life. When death comes you will forget all about God; when death comes you will not be able to remember the theory - and the complicated implications of it - about reincarnation.
When death knocks you, it knocks down all the structure of knowledge that you had built around yourself - it leaves you absolutely empty... and with the awareness that the whole life has been a wastage.
Wisdom is a totally different phenomenon: it is experience, not belief. It is existential experience, it is not "about." You don't believe in God - you know. You don't believe in the immortality of the soul - you have tasted it. You don't believe in reincarnation - you remember it; you remember that you have been here many times. And if this has been so in the past, this is going to be so in the future. You remember you have been in many bodies: you have been a rock, you have been a tree, you have been animals, birds, you have been man, woman... you have lived in so many forms. You see the forms changing but the inner consciousness remaining the same; so you see only the superficial changes but the essential is eternal.
This is seeing, not believing. And all the real masters are interested to help you to see, not to believe. To believe, you become a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. Belief is the profession of the priest.
The master first has to destroy all your belief - theist, atheist, Catholic, communist. The master has to dismantle all your structure of belief so that you are left again as a small child - innocent, open, ready to inquire, ready to plunge into the adventure of truth.
Wisdom arises within you, it is not a scripture. You start reading your own consciousness - and THERE are hidden all the Bibles and all the Gitas and all the Dhammapadas.
Osho Dhammapada Volume 3
Your accumulation of information goes on growing. Rather than liberating you, it burdens you, it goes on creating new bondages for you.
The so-called man of knowledge is far more foolish than the so-called fool, because the fool at least is innocent. He is ignorant, but he has no pretensions of knowing - that much truth is his. But the man of knowledge is in a far greater mess: he knows nothing but he thinks he knows. Without knowing, to believe that one knows is to remain forever rooted in ignorance.
Knowledge is a way for ignorance to protect itself - and it protects itself very cunningly, very efficiently, very cleverly. Knowledge is the enemy although it appears as the friend.
This is the first step towards wisdom: to know that you don't know, to know that all knowledge is borrowed, to know that it has not happened to you, it has come from others, that it is not your own insight, your own realization. The moment knowledge is your own realization, it is wisdom.
Wisdom means that you are not a parrot, that you are a man, that you are not repeating others but expressing yourself, that you are not a carbon copy, that you have an original face of your own.
Knowledge makes you a carbon copy, and to be a carbon copy is the ugliest thing in the world. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man - because knowing not and yet believing that you know, you will remain always ignorant and in darkness.
And whatsoever you do is going to be wrong. You may be able to convince even others that you know, you may be able to strengthen your ego, you may become very famous, you may be known as a great scholar, a pundit, but deep down there is nothing but darkness. Deep down you have not yet encountered yourself, you have not yet entered in the temple of your being.
The ignorant is in a far better situation. At least he has no pretensions, at least he is not deceiving others and himself. And ignorance has a beauty - the beauty of simplicity, the beauty of uncomplicatedness. To know that "I don't know" immediately brings a great relief. To know, to experience, one's utter ignorance fills one with great wonder - the existence is transformed into a mystery.
And that's what God is all about. To know the universe as a miracle, as a mystery, as something unbelievable, as something impenetrable - as something before which you can only bow down in deep gratitude, you can only surrender in awe - is the beginning of wisdom.
Socrates is right when he says: I know only one thing - that I don't know at all.
To be wise is not to be knowledgeable. To be wise means to realize something of your consciousness - first within and then without; to feel the pulsation of life within you and then without. To experience this mysterious consciousness that you are, first one has to experience it in the innermost core of one's being, because that is the closest door to God.
Once you have known it within, it is not difficult to know it without. But remember: the wise man never accumulates knowledge - his wisdom is spontaneous. Knowledge always belongs to the past, wisdom belongs to the present. Remember these distinctions. Unless you understand the difference very clearly between knowledge and wisdom, you will not be able to understand these sutras of Gautama the Buddha. And they are tremendously important.
Knowledge comes from the past, from others, from scriptures. And Buddha has said:
My transmission of truth is beyond the scriptures. What I am saying, what I am imparting, what I am communing, is not written anywhere, has not been spoken anywhere - in fact, cannot be spoken at all, cannot be written at all. It is transferred in deep silence between the master and the disciple: it is a love affair. Wisdom is contagious. It is not taught, remember; you can receive it but it cannot be given to you.
You can be open and vulnerable to it, you can be in a state of constant welcoming, and that's how a disciple sits by the side of the master - ready to drink, ready to allow the master to penetrate his very heart. In the beginning it is painful, because the master's consciousness penetrates you like a sharp arrow - only then it can reach to your very core. It hurts.
Knowledge satisfies the ego; wisdom destroys the ego completely; hence people seek knowledge. It is very rare to find a seeker who is not interested in knowledge but is interested in, committed to, wisdom. Knowledge means theories about truth; wisdom means truth itself. Knowledge means secondhand; wisdom means firsthand.
Knowledge means belief: others say and you believe. And all beliefs are false! No belief is ever true. Even if you believe in the word of a buddha, the moment you believe it is turned into a lie.
Truth cannot be believed; either you know or you don't know. If you know, there is no question of belief; if you don't know, there is again no question of belief. If you know, you know; if you don't know, you don't know. Belief is a projection of the tricky mind - it gives you the feeling of knowing, without knowing. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, the Jew, the Jaina, the Buddhist - they all believe.
To believe is cheap, it is very easy - nothing is at stake. You can easily believe in God, you can easily believe in immortality of the soul, you can easily believe in the theory of reincarnation. In fact, they remain just superficial; deep down you are not affected by them, not at all. When death will knock at your door you will know your beliefs have all disappeared. The belief in the immortality of the soul will not help you when death will knock at your door - you will cry and weep and you will cling to life. When death comes you will forget all about God; when death comes you will not be able to remember the theory - and the complicated implications of it - about reincarnation.
When death knocks you, it knocks down all the structure of knowledge that you had built around yourself - it leaves you absolutely empty... and with the awareness that the whole life has been a wastage.
Wisdom is a totally different phenomenon: it is experience, not belief. It is existential experience, it is not "about." You don't believe in God - you know. You don't believe in the immortality of the soul - you have tasted it. You don't believe in reincarnation - you remember it; you remember that you have been here many times. And if this has been so in the past, this is going to be so in the future. You remember you have been in many bodies: you have been a rock, you have been a tree, you have been animals, birds, you have been man, woman... you have lived in so many forms. You see the forms changing but the inner consciousness remaining the same; so you see only the superficial changes but the essential is eternal.
This is seeing, not believing. And all the real masters are interested to help you to see, not to believe. To believe, you become a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. Belief is the profession of the priest.
The master first has to destroy all your belief - theist, atheist, Catholic, communist. The master has to dismantle all your structure of belief so that you are left again as a small child - innocent, open, ready to inquire, ready to plunge into the adventure of truth.
Wisdom arises within you, it is not a scripture. You start reading your own consciousness - and THERE are hidden all the Bibles and all the Gitas and all the Dhammapadas.
Osho Dhammapada Volume 3
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