Challenges – In Gita Verse 2.65 For one thus satisfied, the threefold miseries of material existence exist no longer; in such satisfied consciousness, one’s intelligence is soon well established.
Krishna by using the word, satisfied, means – once you are back to your own consciousness, you no longer exist as separate, in that all the stress, anxiety, of the objective world just drop out. No longer they exist. All this exists because you feel you are separate from existence. Once you realise this through your own self-alertness but not from any knowledge, scriptures, etc, you regain your own wisdom.
People who become followers of any cult or scripture, they lose their wisdom, they don’t understand the message of Guru or the scripture. They just blindly follow them and miss the opportunity to gain and settle in their own wisdom.
What is wisdom? It certainly is not knowledge. Knowledge is a pretence, it is a false coin. It looks like wisdom and because it looks like wisdom it is very dangerous. One can be easily deceived by it.
Knowledge comes from without, wisdom arises from within. Knowledge is a commodity, you can purchase it in the marketplace; it is sold, it is bought. Wisdom is not a commodity, you have to risk your life to find it. It is not a bargain, it is gambling.
Knowledge consists of all that you have known in the past. Wisdom has nothing to do with the past at all, it is of the present. It has nothing to do with the past and it has nothing to do with the future either because the future is nothing but a projection of the past – modified, decorated here and there, a little changed, polished, painted, but it is the same old thing, renovated.
Knowledge exists in time. Time consists of the past and the future. Wisdom knows nothing of time, wisdom only knows of eternity. Eternity consists only of now, this moment, the present. Eternity does not come, does not go, it is always here.
Wisdom brings peace, knowledge brings anxiety. Howsoever alike they appear, they are diametrically opposite. Wisdom brings contentment, utter contentment. Knowledge brings more and more discontent, because the mind exists only in the desire for more. Mind is nothing but another name for the desire of getting more and more and more. It is a constant hankering for more. If you have money, it desires more money; if you have power, it desires more power; if you have knowledge, it desires more knowledge. It is the same process. Objects differ but the process remains the same.
Wisdom knows nothing of “more,” it is utter contentment. And when the “more” is there surrounding you, you are in constant tension, a chronic tension because nothing seems to be enough. You live in despair and anguish.
Knowledge gratifies the ego. In wisdom, ego simply disappears, it is not found at all. Knowledge knows distinctions, knowledge depends on distinctions: this and that, here and there, now and then, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, the Devil and God. Knowledge is dualistic – I and thou – that’s its form. It divides reality. Knowledge is schizophrenic, wisdom unites.
Why wisdom cannot be taught, we have to learn – Common sense carries fragments of knowledge. It knows that the people who are compassionate, people of heart, have a certain wisdom which is not knowledge, a certain insight, a certain intuitiveness which cannot be taught. They can see things, feel things. They are sensitive to things which are not available to the mind. So people start thinking that there are possibilities of the heart having wisdom.
But they don’t know that the heart is your emptiness. And out of your emptiness a clarity, a transparency arises which can see things which you cannot intellectually infer. This is wisdom.
To make it complete, it has to be said, ‘the wisdom of the empty heart.’ The heart, as the physiologist knows it, is just a blood-pumping system. Out of your heartbeats no wisdom can arise. Have you ever felt any wisdom arising from your heartbeats? Has any doctor ever heard some wisdom while checking your heartbeats through his stethoscope? This heart is not the one we mean when we are talking about the emptiness of the heart. Actually, we are talking about throwing away all the contents of the mind. Then, the no-mind itself becomes your heart. It is not a physiological thing. It is your no-mind – no prejudice, no knowledge, no content. Just purity, simple silence, and the no-mind can be called the empty heart. It is only a question of expression. What you want to choose, you can choose: the wisdom of the empty heart, or the wisdom of no-mind – they are equivalent.
When you are in deep meditation, you feel a great serenity, a joy that is unknown to you, a watchfulness that is a new guest. Soon this watchfulness will become the host. The day the watchfulness becomes the host, it remains twenty-four hours with you. And out of this watchfulness, whatever you do has wisdom in it. Whatever you do shows a clarity, a purity, a spontaneity, a grace.
Krishna with his compassion not only to Arjuna but today to all of us gives insight which cannot be taught and we need to learn, so with Arjuna all of us can establish our Wisdom. Just showing all the ways like food, eat, digest and residue throw. Same way use the knowledge, create experience and throw the knowledge. As every moment new wisdom requires to live the challenges of life.
Tags: Challenges
