Naropa's Knowledge

[Guest guest]

Cross posting from advaitin

 

Naropa's haunting vision

 

 

Truth is your own experience, your own vision. Even if

I have seen the truth and I tell you, the moment I

tell you it will become a lie for you, not a truth.

For me it was truth, for me it came through the eyes.

It was my vision. For you, it will not be your vision,

it will be a borrowed thing. It will be a belief, it

will be knowledge--not knowing. And if you start

believing in it, you will be believing a lie.

 

Now remember it. Even a truth becomes a lie if it

enters your being through the wrong door. The truth

has to enter through the front door, through the eyes.

Truth is a vision. One has to see it.

 

 

Naropa was a great scholar, a great pundit, with ten

thousand disciples of his own. One day he was sitting

surrounded by thousands of scriptures--ancient, very

ancient, rare. Suddenly he fell asleep, must have been

tired, and he saw a vision.

 

He saw a very, very old, ugly, horrible woman--a hag.

Her ugliness was such that he started trembling in his

sleep. It was so nauseating he wanted to escape--but

where to escape, where to go?

 

He was caught, as if hypnotized by the old hag. Her

eyes were like magnets.

 

" What are you studying? " asked the old woman.

 

He said, " Philosophy, religion, epistemology,

language, grammar, logic. "

 

The old woman asked again, " Do you understand them? "

 

Naropa said, " Of course... Yes, I understand them. "

 

The woman asked again, " Do you understand the word, or

the sense? "

 

Thousands of questions had been asked to Naropa in his

life--thousands of students always asking,

inquiring--but nobody had asked this: whether he

understands the word, or the sense. And the woman's

eyes were so penetrating--those eyes were going to the

very depth of his being, and it was impossible to lie.

To anybody else he would have said, " Of course I

under-stand the sense, " but to this woman, this

horrible-looking woman, he had to say the truth. He

said, " I understand the words. "

 

The woman was very happy. She started dancing and

laughing, and her ugliness was transformed; a subtle

beauty started coming out of her being. Thinking, " I

have made her so happy. Why not make her a little more

happy? " Naropa then said, " And yes, I understand the

sense also. "

 

The woman stopped laughing, stopped dancing. She

started crying and weeping and all her ugliness was

back--a thousandfold more. Naropa said, " Why are you

weeping and crying? And why were you laughing and

dancing before? "

 

The woman said, " I was happy because a great scholar

like you didn't lie. But now I am crying and weeping

because you have lied to me. I know--and you

know--that you don't understand the sense. "

 

The vision disappeared and Naropa was transformed. He

escaped from the university, he never again touched a

scripture in his life. He became completely ignorant,

he understood--the woman was nobody outside, it was

just a projection. It was Naropa's own being, through

knowledge, that had became ugly. Just this much

understanding, that " I don't understand the sense, "

and the ugliness was transformed immediately into a

beautiful phenomenon.

 

This vision of Naropa is very significant. Unless you

feel that knowledge is useless you will never be in

search of wisdom. You will carry the false coin

thinking that this is the real treasure. You have to

become aware that knowledge is a false coin--it is not

knowing, it is not understanding. At the most it is

intellectual--the word has been understood but the

sense lost.