The Tao, sutra 47
One can know the world without leaving the house. One can see Tao without looking out the window. The more you study, the less you know.
And that last sentence is probably the most unfortunately worded statement in all the East Because taken literally it is absolutely absurd, and is responsible probably more than any other single line for much of the ridicule New Age/Eastern thought deservedly gets with its "Do nothing, think nothing. that's the way to enlightenment." Many have tried to correct this misunderstanding, from Vivekananda, to the members of the Golden Dawn and some of its offshoots, to Joseph Campbell.
Taking in the Tao as a whole, and working with "one can see the Tao," see as in "know", understand, and everything else contradicting a narrow literal translation, it is quite clear that by this sentence the Tao is referring to the unfortunate but common academic practice of gathering sense impressions from everywhichway and place like buckets of sand, endlessly pointing to pairs of opposites ad nauseum ad infinitum, as a means of analyzing a specific isolated situation, when always the intelligent thing to do is look for underlying principles, and applying those to the particular circumstances to explain the course taken, and how that course might be altered to realize a desired change. So its certainly not about doing nothing, or necessarily doing less even, but doing things in a far more intelligent and sophisticated manner.
It is absolutely shocking to see how even grad students in the sciences tend to read for mere memorization of words, rather than the comprehension of the operative principles being described in there reading materials. I recently had a run in with a grad student in psychology who displayed this to an extreme. He insisted that mental images had nothing to do with the way memories are stored, and subconscious complexes had nothing to do with cognitive or memory inaccuracies, and that I was spewing fantasy psychology (which to this individual seems to include just about every accepted aspect of the subconscious) and should read his source material to straighten myself out. Well right in the introduction to that book, low and behold, it said that memories are stored as mental images, and subconscious complexes work to distort both cognition and memory. His response to my pointing this out was to ban me from commenting in his journal. He was just memorizing words, and doing a lousy job of it likely due to dysfunctional complexes, because if he understood the principles being described he never could have made statements so completely contradictory to his source material.
So understanding this, we can avoid going off the wall with the rest of the sutra.
Thus the truly wise know without traveling, perceive without seeing, achieve without doing.
And that last sentence is probably the most unfortunately worded statement in all the East Because taken literally it is absolutely absurd, and is responsible probably more than any other single line for much of the ridicule New Age/Eastern thought deservedly gets with its "Do nothing, think nothing. that's the way to enlightenment." Many have tried to correct this misunderstanding, from Vivekananda, to the members of the Golden Dawn and some of its offshoots, to Joseph Campbell.
Taking in the Tao as a whole, and working with "one can see the Tao," see as in "know", understand, and everything else contradicting a narrow literal translation, it is quite clear that by this sentence the Tao is referring to the unfortunate but common academic practice of gathering sense impressions from everywhichway and place like buckets of sand, endlessly pointing to pairs of opposites ad nauseum ad infinitum, as a means of analyzing a specific isolated situation, when always the intelligent thing to do is look for underlying principles, and applying those to the particular circumstances to explain the course taken, and how that course might be altered to realize a desired change. So its certainly not about doing nothing, or necessarily doing less even, but doing things in a far more intelligent and sophisticated manner.
It is absolutely shocking to see how even grad students in the sciences tend to read for mere memorization of words, rather than the comprehension of the operative principles being described in there reading materials. I recently had a run in with a grad student in psychology who displayed this to an extreme. He insisted that mental images had nothing to do with the way memories are stored, and subconscious complexes had nothing to do with cognitive or memory inaccuracies, and that I was spewing fantasy psychology (which to this individual seems to include just about every accepted aspect of the subconscious) and should read his source material to straighten myself out. Well right in the introduction to that book, low and behold, it said that memories are stored as mental images, and subconscious complexes work to distort both cognition and memory. His response to my pointing this out was to ban me from commenting in his journal. He was just memorizing words, and doing a lousy job of it likely due to dysfunctional complexes, because if he understood the principles being described he never could have made statements so completely contradictory to his source material.
So understanding this, we can avoid going off the wall with the rest of the sutra.
Thus the truly wise know without traveling, perceive without seeing, achieve without doing.