In Wonder

Sense Of Wonder

The more knowledgeable you are, the weaker will be the foundation of yoga. If you are full of the pride of knowing, the chances of your becoming a yogi are less. If your heart is burdened with the scriptures, your sense of wonder will be destroyed. You ask a scholar about God, and he starts answering as if God is a thing to be made an answer of… as if God can be explained. You ask a scholar and he has a ready-made answer. No sooner did you ask than the answer was given. Even God does not make him speechless. All the formulas are definite, he explains them instantaneously.

But you go to the Buddha and ask about God, he does not say anything. Perhaps you will go back thinking that this man remained silent, and the meaning is clear: he does not know. But the reason why this man remained silent is that this sense of wonder is the door to the divine. Had you been a little wiser, you would have remained with the man who did not answer. And you would have tried to understand him: you would have peeped into his eyes; you would have lived in his company, in his proximity because he has experienced something, and the experience is so immense that words cannot express it; he has seen something that cannot become an answer.

Questions and answers are alright for the school-children. Your question in itself is absurd. One cannot ask a question about God. How can one ask a question about the infinite? Both the question and the answer drop by themselves before the infinite. Your question is petty, that’s why Buddha has remained silent. But maybe you will come back thinking that had this man known, he would have answered. He did not answer, that means he did not know. You recognize a scholar because your head is full of words, too. You will not be able to understand a sage because a sage is full of wonder.

And your sense of wonder is dead.

The greatest calamity of the world is: destruction of wonder. The day your sense of wonder is destroyed, your possibility of liberation is destroyed. The day your sense of wonder is dead, your childlike heart is dead, frozen. You have become old.

Are you still amazed? Does life pose a question to you? Are you thrilled by the chirping of the birds, the sound of the running streams, the wind rustling through the trees? Do you feel joy? Does this life surrounding you everywhere makes you speechless? No, because you know that birds are making these sounds and wind is rustling through the trees – you have answer to every question. These answers have killed you. You have become knowledgeable before attaining knowledge.