Arguments are wonderful, and so are ideas. But ideas aren't life! They are excellent for guiding us in life. But they aren't life. Abstraction isn't life. Life is found in experience. It is like reading a wonderful menu. You can guide your lives by the menu, but the menu isn't the meal. And if you spend all your time with the menu, you're never going to eat anything. Sometimes it's even worse. There are people who are eating the menu. They are living off ideas, letting life slip away.
What are we to do to overcome this? Krishnamurti warns us, "The day we teach a child the name of a bird, the child stops seeing the bird." The child looks at that sprightly thing, full of mystery and surprise, and we teach it : it's a sparrow. This child now has an idea: sparrow. And later, whenever it sees a sparrow, it's going to say, "Well, you know, its a sparrow..." The same thing applies to the idea, let us suppose, of an American. Every time I see an American citizen go by I say, "American." And I miss out on the unique being that this individual is. Have you experienced seeing a child in wonder looking at this mysterious trembling vibrant thing that we call a sparrow? The idea, the word, can be an obstacle to seeing the sparrow. The word "American" can be an obstacle keeping me from really seeing the American in front of me. The word and idea "God" can be an obstacle to seeing "God."
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1 comment:
Well said. Most of what I've learned that has been the most meaningful in my life has come during times I am "out of my element" in some way, experiencing nouns/verbs/feelings that I can't yet attach actual words to. Once those words are attached, the "science" begins to be understood, the experience is never as meaningful, be these physical/chemical/emotional/relational experiences.
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