The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

firewood until their hands are red and stinging with blisters, workingankle-deep in mud— there are many who quickly call it quits.Today, as I watched a group of young people work on a tiny hut, ayoung woman from Funabashi came walking up.When I asked why she had come, she said, “I just came, that’s all. Idon’t know anything anymore.”Bright young lady, nonchalant, has her wits about her.I then asked, “If you know you are unenlightened, there is nothing tosay, right? In coming to understand the world through the power ofdiscrimination, people lose sight of its meaning. Isn’t that why the worldis in such a fix?”She answered softly, “Yes, if you say so.”“Maybe you don’t have a really clear idea of what enlightenment is.What kind of books did you read before coming here?”She shook her head in rejection of reading.People study because they think they do not understand, but studyingis not going to help one to understand. They study hard only to find outin the end that people cannot know anything, that understanding liesbeyond human reach.Usually people think that the word “non-understanding” applieswhen you say, for example, that you understand nine things, but there isone thing you do not understand. But intending to understand ten things,you actually do not understand even one. If you know a hundred flowersyou do not “know” a single one. People struggle hard to understand,convince themselves that they understand, and die knowing nothing.The young people took a break from their carpentry, sat down on thegrass near a big mandarin orange tree, and looked up at the wispy cloudsin the southern sky.153