Buddhism Is Not What You Think by Steve Hagen

Author:Steve Hagen [Hagen, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddhism, Not Read
ISBN: 9780061739750
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

24

Before We Say

“Who, Subhuti, will grasp this perfect wisdom as here explained?”

Thereupon the Venerable Ananda said: “Those who cannot fall back will grasp it, or persons who have reached sound views….”

“No one,” said Subhuti, “will grasp this perfect wisdom as here explained. For nothing at all has been indicated, lit up, or communicated. So there will be no one who can grasp it.”

—from The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines

BEFORE THE FACT, wise people often look like fools. In contrast, experts often look like fools afterward.

To give an example, in the mid-1980s the Soviet power plant at Chernobyl exploded, spewing radioactive materials around the globe. (The level of radioactive iodine that fell with the rain in Minnesota a few days later was 48 times higher than normal.) Less than a year before this event, a high Soviet deputy minister assured us that nuclear power plants were safe. He specifically mentioned the Chernobyl plant, saying that it would be ten thousand years before there’d be an accident of any consequence.

Only a few months before the space shuttle Challenger blew up, a NASA official assured us that there would be tens of thousands of launches before there would be any explosion of a space vehicle upon launch. And yet already, tragically, we’ve seen a second catastrophic failure of a space shuttle—though this time on reentry, which is considered by experts to be far less risky than launch.

Not long ago, experts assured us that we’re all safe from bioterrorism. Since then, however, we’ve seen a number of deaths from anthrax and major disruptions to our postal service because of anthrax being sent through the mail. Our officials have since ordered 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine.

In all of these cases, and many others, people supposedly in the know have either overlooked or ignored what is obvious to anyone who could just see. Furthermore, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that such gaps in vision are becoming ever more perilous.

Yet this is the very nature of knowing, as we commonly understand knowing. For in holding and maintaining a particular view, even if we become an expert, we must necessarily leave some things out of that view or ignore them altogether. There’s no allowance for wisdom—for with wisdom (as with Reality), nothing is held or maintained and nothing is left out.

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