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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 4 | Previous Next | |
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Arthur replied, "Her lips and her neck."
Now, stumped for the answer to the third part of the question, Arthur turned frantically to his expert. The Frenchman threw up his hands and groaned, "Alors, mon ami, do not ask me. I have been wrong twice already."
The expert, the knowledgeable, the intellectual, has no insight of his own. He depends on borrowed knowledge, on tradition, on convention. He carries libraries in his head, a great burden, but he has no vision. He knows much without knowing anything at all.
And because life is not the same ever -- it is constantly changing, moment to moment it is new -- the expert always lags behind, his response is always inadequate. He can only react, he cannot respond, because he is not spontaneous. He has already arrived to conclusions; he is carrying ready-made answers -- and the questions that life raises are always new.
Moreover, life is not a logical phenomenon. And the intellectual lives through logic; hence he never fits with life and life never fits with him. Of course life is not at a loss; the intellectual himself is at a loss. He is always feeling like an outsider -- not that life has expelled him; he himself has decided to remain outside life. If you cling too much to logic you will never be able to be part of the living process that this existence is.
Life is more than logic: life is paradox, life is mystery.
Gannaway and O'Casey arranged to fight a duel with pistols. Gannaway was quite fat, and when he saw his lean adversary facing him he objected. "Debar!" he said, "I am twice as large as he is, so I ought to stand twice as far away from him as he is from me."
Absolutely logical, but how can you do it?
"Be aisy now," replied his second. "I will soon put that right." And taking a piece of chalk from his pocket he drew two lines down the fat man's coat leaving a space between them.
"Now," he said, turning to O'Casey, "fire away, and remember that any hits outside that chalk line don't count."
Perfectly mathematical, perfectly logical -- but life is not so logical, life is not so mathematical. And people go on living in their intellects very logically.
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