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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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trees of knowledge. And what is your education? -- a tree of knowledge.
God had prohibited them to eat from it, so that you can remain innocent, because only the innocent heart can know. The moment you become full of knowledge, knowing stops. In fact, you have found a substitute for knowing -- your knowledge becomes the substitute. Then there is no need to know! You go on clinging to the knowledge and it goes on giving satisfaction to your ego.
But the moment Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they fell -- they fell from their original innocence, they fell from their childlike life. Before that there was poetry in their life, before that there was beauty in their life, before that there was ecstasy in their life -- before that there was wonder and awe. Before that each and everything was extraordinary, because the whole existence was full of mystery; they were surrounded by a mysterious universe. The rainbow and the sun and the moon and the stars... it was all unbelievable. They were in constant surprise.
The moment they became knowledgeable all that wonder disappeared. Knowledge kills wonder, and in killing wonder it destroys your spirit of knowing, inquiry. Knowledge demystifies the universe -- and a universe demystified is a universe without God. A universe demystified is a universe without poetry, without love, without music. Then the sound of the raindrops does not come to your heart as a message from the other shore. Then the wind passing through the pine trees leaves you unmoved, and the fragrance of the flowers does not create poetry in you. The colors of a butterfly are ignored. A rainbow remains unseen. You become too much attached to very mundane things: money, power, prestige. You become ugly because your whole existence becomes ordinary; it loses sacredness, it becomes profane. You transform the temple of God into a marketplace.
That is the original fall -- but it happens every day, remember. Don't believe the Christians who say that it happened only once -- it happens with each child. The moment you start the child on the journey of becoming knowledgeable, you are helping him again towards the original fall.
The
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