Knowledge V/S Wisdom
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.
