Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3

CHAPTER 1

Pursuit of Knowledge
11 August 1975 am in Buddha Hall

LAO TZU SAYS:
WITHOUT STEPPING OUTSIDE ONE’S DOORS ONE CAN KNOWWHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE
WORLD. WITHOUT LOOKING OUT OF ONE’S WINDOWS ONE CAN SEE THE TAO OF HEAVEN.
THE FURTHER ONE PURSUES KNOWLEDGE THE LESS ONE KNOWS. THEREFORE
THE SAGE KNOWS WITHOUT RUNNING ABOUT UNDERSTANDS WITHOUT SEEING,
ACCOMPLISHES WITHOUT DOING.

Religion is not knowledge, it is knowing. Knowledge is of the mind, knowing is of the being, and the
difference and the distance, is tremendously vast.
The difference is not only quantitative, it is also qualitative.
Knowledge and knowing – they are as different as heaven and hell, earth and the sky, so the first
thing to understand is the difference between knowledge and knowing.

Knowledge is never of the present, it is always of the past. The moment you say you know it is
already a dead thing, it has already left its marks on the memory, it is like dust clinging to you. You
have already moved away from that.

Knowing is always immediate, knowing is here and now. You cannot say anything about it, you can
only be it. The moment you speak of it, even knowing becomes knowledge; that’s why all those whohave known, they say it cannot be said. The moment you speak of it the very nature of it changes;
it has become knowledge. It is no more the beautiful alive phenomenon of knowing.
Knowing has no past, it has no future, it has only the present. And remember, present is not part of
time.

People ordinarily think that time is divided between past, future and present. They are absolutely
wrong. Time is divided between past and future, present is not a part of time at all. You cannot catch
hold of it in time. Pursue it and you will miss. Try to grasp it and it will always be out of your reach,
because it is part of eternity not part of time.

Present is eternity crossing time. It is a meeting point where eternity and the temporal meet.
In the present is knowing, in the past is knowledge, Whenever you know, you start planning. The
more you know, the more you plan. Knowing means the past, planning means the future – then you
don’t allow the future freedom, you try to fix it into the pigeon holes of the past. You would like it to
be just a repetition of the past, howsoever modified, decorated, but just a repetition of the past.

A man of knowledge is a man of planning, and life is an unplanned flow. Life is freedom, you cannot
pigeon hole it, you cannot categorize it, that’s why a man of knowledge misses life. He knows
much, and he knows nothing. He knows too much and he is just empty and hollow. You cannot find
more shallow a person than a man of knowledge. He is just surface and surface, he has no depth,
because depth comes through eternity.

Time is horizontal, it moves in a line on the horizon. Eternity is vertical, it moves into depth and
height. That is the meaning of Jesus’ cross: time crossing eternity, or eternity crossing time. Jesus’
hands are time, they move into past and future, crucified in time, resurrected into eternity. His being
is vertical – everybody’s being is vertical, only the body, the hands, the material part of you, is
horizontal.

>   Downlod Book Here