February 17th

Knowledge


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.

Personal Interpretation

A crucial part of our journey is to seek knowledge. It is a beautiful thing, but also a terrifying one. The more we learn, the more we must face the truth of what we are. We cannot help but cling to comforting ideas from time to time. Spiritual progress is slow for this reason. We aren't ready to take in everything at once. We must gain enlightenment in small doses, and at key points in our lives, when we are ready. We may fear knowledge because of what it can bring to light, but knowledge is the only thing that can drive out fear. We may have known great injustice, lost the person we loved most, been made to feel alone in an often cruel world. But we are resilient creatures, and so long as we pick ourselves back up and seek the light, we cannot go astray. Knowledge can be the thing we grasp to, the thing that leads us out of the darkness..if we let it.