The Arrogance of Knowing
La arrogancia del saber
A student reflects on recognizing a deeply rooted rejection of what is, and the arrogance hidden in it. As attachment to outcomes begins to loosen, a fear arises: if nothing is held onto, will anything still matter?
The Arrogance of Knowing
A student reflects on recognizing a deeply rooted rejection of what is, and the arrogance hidden in it. As attachment to outcomes begins to loosen, a fear arises: if nothing is held onto, will anything still matter?
First of all, I want to thank you for holding these Wednesday sessions when you can. I haven't been asking many questions lately, but I find it extremely valuable to listen to what everyone shares and to hear you speak about whatever topic comes up. I resonate with so much of it.
As people were sharing and you were speaking, something came up for me about attachment and arrogance. I was thinking back on my experience, and I recognize my deeply, deeply rooted rejection of what is. It really resonated with me when you said there's an arrogance to that. Who am I to say this is not right? I'm just one little speck.
Even that is arrogance. How do you know you're one little speck?
I don't know. Not with all these interpretations and opinions.
Yes. What if you're not one little speck?
I don't know. I feel really blessed to have had that experience, although it took me a long time to process what happened.
You're referring to the time we met in person?
Yes.
I told you then that it was a big one.
It had a huge impact on everything that happened afterwards, because I saw how distorted my thinking was, how I interpreted everything: "This is not right. This shouldn't be happening." I know there's a question coming. I'm just trying to work out why this is coming up.
Over a long period of time, I realized how attached I am to a certain outcome, to what I think it should be. That's where the attachment comes in. Slowly, as I catch myself in those moments of being attached to something, I see: "Oh, this is me wanting things a certain way." And yes, I recognize that as arrogance. Then there's a slow process of detaching from outcomes, and with it comes a fear. If I'm not attached to anything in particular, does that mean I won't care about any outcome?
Surrender is not an action
Everything you're describing is pretty much by the book. The dangling carrot, the promise, is that the fear is unfounded. But it's natural. It's to be expected. More and more, you realize that you don't know. You can't know what you are. You can't know what is right or good. You can't know what's best.
There's a lot of talk about how one needs to surrender, how one has to practice surrender. I always say you can't really surrender. It's not an action. It's something that happens to you. If you're able to keep fighting, you will. Surrender is when you no longer have the ability to keep fighting, the ability to stay in illusions. The ability to lie to yourself collapses. This can happen in sudden moments and glimpses. The ability to believe you are your mind collapses, and you see through it. Then you go right back, but you can't unsee what you saw.
Then it becomes a conundrum. Part of you still wants the illusion. There's the attachment to it. But you saw through it. You will keep choosing the illusion until you can't. That's why I focus so much on the illusion and hold up the mirror to it. The more it's seen, the more it's like, "Oh shit, yes," and then it's hard to unsee. The seeing then has an effect of its own. In your case, I knew instantly that you'd had a big glimpse. I told you this was going to change things, from just one instant. And here we are, maybe a year and a half or two years later, and you're asking, "What happened to me?"
A lot of positive things, yes.
But it's still, "What the hell was that?" Right?
It was very, very hard to accept.
Yes. Everything you believed to be true and real, everything you believed you are, and suddenly, boom: "Oh, that's just thoughts." Very relative.
The position of knowing
So, back to arrogance. Humility and surrender are the words for what this is about. The arrogance is simply the position of knowing: "I know," where what I know can be represented in mind stuff, in thoughts. That kind of knowing is always false. It's always relative. It can then be known that I am using thoughts to approximate something that cannot be represented in thoughts, knowing that the approximation is not what it is.
You see this in books like the Tao Te Ching. The book is about the Tao. What is the Tao? It's the way. It's truth. It's reality. And what is it? Well, whatever I say it is, that's not it. The most popular translation of the first line is "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao." But I prefer a more literal translation: "Tao called Tao, not Tao." If you name it, it's not it. And it's not just about giving it a name. Any representation in thought is not reality. This applies to any question: What is reality? What am I? Same thing. If I can represent it, it's not it.
So when you said, "I'm just a speck," really, how do you know? Tao called Tao, not Tao. What if you're very much not just a speck? What if you are everything and nothing, the alpha and the omega, where there can be no name?
Don't blame the mind
Yes. I see how my mind wants to label and interpret and analyze everything, and often I find...
See, it's not just your mind wanting. It's you, fascinated with the mind's ability to produce answers and give you the knowing. Don't blame the mind. It's just there, doing whatever you ask it to do. It's your servant. We think we struggle with the mind: "The mind, the mind." No, something else is going on. Poor mind, blamed for everything.
That's why, when my mind comes up with a question in these meetings, I suspect it's probably not a very important one.
Usually a real question feels like it's burning in some way. Even if it's an obsessive question, the mind might as well bring it up, because it might help clarify. But the deeper questions burn. You feel them in the body.
I find the questions come up more when I'm listening to you and other people talk. The things that come up and stay are more important for me than the first few questions that pop into my head. So I find listening to everyone really valuable. But I still have this fear that when I realize I'm attached to something and then detach, things won't matter anymore.
The fear at the edge
Just recognize that for what it is. It's a worry. It's a fear. Nothing more. This is universal when we move into the unknown, when we confront illusion, when we confront what we believe is real.
Let me step back. We operate from what appears to be real to us. It is what's real to us, though it isn't real. Then there is an encounter with a possibility: "Shit, what if what is reality to me is not? What if it's an illusion?" That encounter, that edge, is scary. What we took as absolutely real, even if it felt terrible, was what is real. And then, seeing that it's an illusion, the thought comes: "But what if what comes after is even worse?"
It's the uncertainty, the not knowing. What the fuck do I do with this?
I know, and that's my point. When you're at that edge, the mind will offer what we ask for, which is all the reasons to stay where we are, back in the illusion. "I want to go back to the cage." It's like a bird raised in a cage. You open the door, it flies out for a second, and goes right back in.
Right, because the mind likes to know.
It's not the mind. It's us. The mind is just offering what we asked for: "Give me a reason to go back to my cage." And it has to happen in a way that we don't know we are fooling ourselves. It has to seem logical, rational: "This is absolutely rational. I should go back to the cage." It's not that I consciously invent an illusion and lie to myself, so that I go back to the cage knowing I did it for a stupid, illusory reason. That's not how it works. It has to be a valid, rational concern.
So we come to the mind with this request, and the mind says, "Yes, you will stop caring about the world, about life, about your children and everybody else. You will become a horrible person who hates everybody and doesn't care about anything. You should go back to the reality of your suffering." And you go back thinking you're a very honorable person doing the rational thing.
The servant.
Exactly.
It's just this back and forth.
Yes, it's a back and forth until it's, "I give up. I give up. Just give me freedom."
The body's reaction
Yes. It feels like my nervous system is...
Oh, yes. It's the body-mind. This mechanism, the body, dies, and it knows it dies. It's genetically programmed. Ever since bits of substance in the ocean turned into something that became a cell, which somehow evolved into this, it has known that it dies, that it has an end. It's programmed to avoid that as much as it can. And what we are is operating under the impression that when this dies, everything ends, that what I am dies.
Say I believe I'm a goat. I've spent thirty years walking around thinking I'm a goat, and it's a terrible life. Everybody treats me like a human who believes he's a goat. It doesn't go well. But as soon as I contemplate that I might not be a goat, that I'm a human like everybody else (sadly, because I was a special goat), the body-mind that has been identified with the goat reacts. To this body-mind, the ending of the goat is the ending of the body. It cannot distinguish the two.
It's psychological, an attachment to the image of the body. It's the ego. As soon as there is the possibility that this is not what I am, the body freaks out. It can't tell the difference between a lion about to eat it and "I thought I was a goat, and suddenly I realize I'm not." What I think I am is ending, and so the body reacts with all the activation it uses to avoid death. We just have to learn that something doesn't end. It's the illusion that ends. Then the body can settle, but it has to go through that process.
I remember you talking about going through the door rather than avoiding it. Often I want to reach for my phone, distract myself, avoid. Sometimes, when it's convenient, I'll try to sit with it, because I know now that if I don't, it'll come up in my sleep.
Illusion never wins
They call it the law of karma. It's often seen as "the terrible stuff that comes at me." No, it's the beautiful lesson that if you don't see reality, if you don't face truth, it will keep coming at you until you do. It's beautiful. It's the universe calling for waking up, calling for truth, for beauty, for love, for freedom, for peace. But what we think we are cannot survive it. It's one or the other: either truth and reality, or what I think is truth and reality. That's the battle. And I'll tell you: illusion never wins.
Like you say, once you see how the magic trick works.
Yes. Illusion is unstable. You constantly have to reinforce it. Reality is just there. Whether you look at it or not, whether you contemplate it or not, reality is real. Illusion requires effort, struggle, effort, struggle, effort, struggle. That's samsara. That's dukkha, dissatisfaction.
There have been a lot of changes in my life this past year or so, and the story of the farmer and the horse keeps coming back to me.
That's a great one. It's a beautiful story that shows how we keep arriving at interpretations, and then the story keeps showing how each interpretation was false: wrong, and then corrected. Both the positive interpretations and the negative ones. And at some point we say, "I give up." Just stop interpreting, and live.