Lao Tzu, Jack Kerouac, Sri Nisargaddata Maharaj, Tao, wisdom, and wonder

excerpted from THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves, by Jack Haas

“My ignorance far exceeds yours.”

Shih-t’ou

            As such, with great humility, wisdom, and foolishness, Sri Nisargaddata Maharaj admitted: “I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.”

The history of true wisdom is, in essence, a lineage of true idiots.

One of the wisest fools of all, Lao Tzu, confessed in the Tao te Ching, “I alone have the mind of a fool, and am all muddled and vague. The people are so smart and bright. While I am just dull and confused.”

            Likewise, although Jack Kerouac was born in the Occident, he was a confirmed student of the East. Mirroring the last quote from Lao Tzu, Kerouac concluded: “…everybody, they never listened, they always wanted me to listen to them, they knew, I didn’t know anything, I was just a dumb young kid and impractical fool who didn’t understand the serious significance of this very important, very real world.”

            So we see, once again, that facts, words, and ‘truths’ exist only in the realm of the vulgar, and all these categories are but obstructions to the vision of the wise fool. To make a claim of understanding is to prove one has neither understanding, nor ignorance, only pride. Which is to say, in the paradoxical manner of the eastern sages- in order to be thoroughly stupefied by the miracle of our incomprehensible beings, one must be thoroughly, intelligently ...stupid.

excerpted from:

THE WAY OF WONDER: a return to the mystery of ourselves

by Jack Haas

*

*

Mystical books, visionary art, and fine art photography by Jack Haas