Let's not know

We have become a community of pundits. It snuck up on us and we never saw it coming. Now we are all experts on what this practice is, where it leads, what the view is, what it is not, what enlightenment is and is not, what teaching modalities are appropriate or inappropriate. All of this knowing gets heavier and heavier until it slows progress to a crawl.

Can we all just not know for awhile?

I'll start; I don't know.

Hell...I'm totally clueless. And I don't foresee that changing any time soon.

Me neither...

Right. I was thinking something along this as I was reading lots of 'knowing' responses to the 'Direct Path' line.

Endless array of things to know, vocabulary to learn, views to understand, etc. (Notes: aversion to not knowing, impatience, anxiety about time, overwhelmedness, chest pressure, planning panic, desire to please, desire to achieve, desire to understand, self-critique thought: never going to keep on top of dharma, career-related knowledge, relations, KFD, practice, culture...).

But even if I can't keep up with KFD (or other exponentially expanding domains of information), I *will* keep practicing on-cushion and off, where I steep in not-knowing continuously -- and more and more actually accept it. =)

"The practice of the Tao consists of daily diminishing...
...
The student learns by daily increment. The Way is gained by daily loss." (Tao Teh Ching c. 48)

"Can we all just not know for awhile?" ~Kenneth

I'm in.

I sure know a lot of useless stuff, but I'm also in.

Don't know. Clueless.

I love you guys.

This is good.

When I read a lot of posts I tend not to reply to much because my overwhelming experience is that I don't know. There is stuff I remember, although a lot of that stuff seems to be fading fast. I don't really know what a jhanic arc is anymore or steps along the way. I know so little in fact I feel I can't offer anyone any advice or participate in a conversation. I feel really, really dumb, but it doesn't bother me. Recently I've been looking out at the enormous Chinese Elm tree in my front paddock that shimmers with the early sun, the fresh green foliage glittering in streaming white light and to be honest I really don't know what I'm looking at. Today, three was the process of looking, don't even know who is there.
Paul

In. Totally in.

Immense weight off my back. Once again, thank you Kenneth.

I don't know, but not just for a while, I don't want to know anymore. Life is too good to know.

!!!

"I love you guys."

No,

I love you, man.

Quite frankly Paul that sounds scary as hell... I don't think the "don't know mind" is meant as a way towards stupidification...

Thank you Bruno,
I don't feel scared and I don't feel stupid. Everything appears to me to be as it is, I don't need to know anything for that to be so. I still have an intellect and I can still construct arguments and concepts, at the moment, they just seem like water seeping through my cupped hands. In the process of totally surrendering, which is what I am practising, I have noticed that everything goes, including claims and notions about how I imagine myself and imagine the world. As an extension of that, when I finally surrender my imagination....
paul
Paul

I think not knowing is just not planting any flag saying yes, I know that this is all there is to know, because obviously there was stuff that was not known now being experienced by many of us here. Why limit ourselves by thinking we know everything already. We obviously don't. I know I don't. The world opens up a whole lot more when you admit it.

"I know so little in fact I feel I can't offer anyone any advice or participate in a conversation. I feel really, really dumb, but it doesn't bother me."

Dumb but not stupid heh? If you just mean knowing what you don't know and not being opinionated, OK, but if you are talking about actually getting dumber, like getting worst memory, or not being able to participate in a conversation (which I can imagine is perfectly possible by doing some specific meditative practice), then that sounds scary and I'm out

And I'm guessing that is not what anyone here means... but I suggest we should be a bit more down to earth with this "not knowing" thing, no?

EDIT: Kenneth, I follow you, but I am specifically replying to what Cartago is saying ("feeling dumb", "participate in conversation," "forgetting things"). This is probably the wrong thread.

Bruno, in this case, not knowing means letting go of the compulsive urge to wrap everything in a neat conceptual package. It doesn't mean you forget how to tie your shoes. But notice your own compulsive urge to wrap "not knowing" into a neat conceptual package! ;-D

I was talking with a Theravada nun a few years ago, telling her that I had been reminding myself many times a day that "I don't know." She perked up, apparently remembering everything she knew about the well-worn topic, nodded her head fiercely and said, "Don't-know mind!"

In other words she "knew" all about "don't-know mind." There is irony in that.

That I can do!

I'm in, too. And reminded yet again of the joy of dancing in free fall. Thanks, Kenneth.

Yep, I used to know, then I saw that I didn't. Hence my silence.

"Yep, I used to know, then I saw that I didn't. Hence my silence." ~Adam

Haha!

So true, for me as well.

"Yep, I used to know, then I saw that I didn't. Hence my silence."

Yet there is another type of ignorance beyond knowing or not knowing something.

No, not "beyond".

Its an ignorance empty of knowledge and empty of absence of knowledge.

I wouldn't refer to it as ignorance. Rather, the wisdom of not knowing. There is a difference, I think.