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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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an unnecessary wastage of time. A small portable computer can do everything: you can keep it in your pocket and it can remember the whole ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; just pushing a button any information can be available.
In the coming century the whole education system is going to be totally transformed and changed because of the computer. It will be stupid to teach children history, geography -- unnecessary, there is no need. All that can be done by a computer; the child can carry the computer.
And my own observation is: the less you depend on memory, the more intelligent you become. That's why it happens that in the universities you will not find very intelligent people. Professors, chancellors, vice-chancellors -- I have seen many, but it is very difficult to find some intelligent person there. You can find more intelligent people in the farmers, in the gardeners, in the villagers. And the reason is clear: because they are not knowledgeable they cannot depend on the memory. They have to respond to reality, they have to respond to challenges, they have to bring their consciousness to respond -- their consciousness remains more sharp. A farmer, a villager, is far more wise than a professor in the university. The professor can depend on the memory, the farmer cannot depend on the memory.
I have heard:
A woman purchased some canned fruits, but it was a new type of can and she did not know how to open it. So she told the cook, "You wait. I will look in the literature -- the literature has come with the can. Let me see: they must say how to open it."
She went to look in the literature. After half an hour when she had studied the whole literature she came back, but the cook by that time had opened the can. She asked, "How did you manage? It was even difficult for me to find out in the literature how to open it! How did YOU manage?"
The cook said, "Because I can't read I have to depend on my intelligence. You can read; you need not use your intelligence."
Be wise -- that means be more conscious. And be innocent -- that means be more like a child, full of wonder and awe. If these two qualities are there, wonder and awe,
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