Spark 16
UNDERSTANDING IS ABOVE LEARNING
“Learning may come to you by reading,” Rumi observed, “but understanding comes through love.” Everybody who is well-read knows the truth of this. Reading, writing and speaking have no doubt some value. They are good exercises for our mind and they provoke thinking in those who read or hear us. Hiding behind all the scholarship, however, there can be lack of understanding – of life’s realities – and this can cost dearly to anybody among us.
When our learning, acquired through the study of a lot of books, blossoms into right knowledge, full understanding or ‘proper seeing (samyag-darshana),’ there is complete transformation of our being. In essence, there is no more of the ‘separate I’ in our consciousness.
“The height of knowledge is when the ego-sense no more rises,” declares Viveka Choodamani1. Shri Krishna praises2this transformation in the Geeta by employing such figurative descriptions as, “the fire of knowledge burns away all actions (and their results).” This is the ultimate mystery of human life: When does verbal knowledge blossom into change of perception?
The difficulty increases when we try to judge a saint. Our own concepts come in the way of assessing his (her) state of consciousness. “Know someone to be enlightened when you notice she (he) is equal to all,” said3 Sri Ramana Maharshi when he was asked on the marks of realization. The problem again is we are unable to conclude someone is equal or otherwise for there are factual factors in all relationships. You cannot be equal to all when five of your students are around you and you need someone to read a letter in Telugu; you will ask the student who knows Telugu and not any of the other four who might know Hindi, French or Spanish! Certain backgrounds, logistics or even intentions to convey a message could be behind a saint’s apparently favoring one person over another in particular circumstances.
Leave the matter of judging others. How do we know if we have graduated from learning to understanding? How do we know love now drives our life and not egoism clouded by personal bias? “Love is when the self is not,” remarked J Krishnamurti. There is no other test perhaps than gentle awareness, operating in silence and illumining the darkest corners of our mind where hidden forms of the separate self might lurk!
To live in true awareness and not even bother about where we have reached seems to be the wise way.
Swami Chidananda
In Himachal Pradesh
Notes:
1 aham-bhava-udaya-abhāvah bodhasya parama-avadhih – verse 425, Viveka Chudamani
2 jnānāgnih sarva-karmāni bhasmasāt kurute tathā – verse 37, chapter 4, Geeta
3 sarva-bhoota-samatvena lingena jnānam-uhyatām – verse 16, chapter 1, Ramana Geeta