The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

People think that when they turn their eyes from the earth to the skythey see the heavens. They set the orange fruit apart from the greenleaves and say they know the green of the leaves and the orange of thefruit. But from the instant one makes a distinction between green andorange, the true colors vanish.People think they understand things because they become familiarwith them. This is only superficial knowledge. It is the knowledge of theastronomer who knows the names of the stars, the botanist who knowsthe classification of the leaves and flowers, the artist who knows theaesthetics of green and red. This is not to know nature itself- the earthand sky, green and red. Astronomer, botanist, and artist have done nomore than grasp impressions and interpret them, each within the vault ofhis own mind. The more involved they become with the activity of theintellect, the more they set themselves apart and the more difficult itbecomes to live naturally.The tragedy is that in their unfounded arrogance, people attempt tobend nature to their will. Human beings can destroy natural forms, butthey cannot create them. Discrimination, a fragmented and incompleteunderstanding, always forms the starting point of human knowledge.Unable to know the whole of nature, people can do no better than toconstruct an incomplete model of it and then delude themselves intothinking that they have created something natural.All someone has to do to know nature is to realize that he does notreally know anything, that he is unable to know anything. It can then beexpected that he will lose interest in discriminating knowledge.When he abandons discriminating knowledge, non-discriminatingknowledge of itself arises within him. If he does not try to think aboutknowing, if he does not care about understanding, the time will come154