Question 2

Osho,

What is True Wisdom?

 

 

WISDOM CANNOT BE TRUE OR UNTRUE. Wisdom is simply wisdom. It is truth. There is no possibility of there ever being an untrue wisdom. All knowledge is untrue: all wisdom is true. Knowledge is borrowed, hence it is untrue. It is yours, that's why is it untrue. It may have been true to the person who imparted it to you. The Buddha talking to his disciples is talking wisdom, but the moment it reaches the disciples it becomes knowledge. Wisdom falls from its heights to the level of the listeners and becomes knowledge.

 

Hence Buddhas have always been very much aware that they impart something of their presence, something of their silence, something of their joy, rather than imparting their wisdom. Even if they have to talk, they talk only in order to persuade you to be silent. Even if they use words, those words are used to create a wordless state of consciousness in you.

 

So the first thing, Prem Samadhi: wisdom as such is truth, it cannot be untrue. Just as light is light and cannot be dark, just as life is life and cannot be death, just as logic is love and cannot be hate. If it is hate, it is not love.

 

Wisdom is intrinsically true because it is an existential experience. It is not something known from others, it is not something gathered from the scriptures; it is something that grows in your heart. It is a growth, not an accumulation. It is experience, not information.

Knowledge makes you learned: wisdom makes you innocent. Knowledge is very ego-fulfilling, very ego-strengthening. The ego feeds on knowledge; it is the best tonic for the ego. But wisdom happens only when ego has disappeared; wisdom appears only on the death of the ego. The death of the ego is the birth of wisdom.

 

Mind is interested in knowledge not in wisdom, because for wisdom you will have to create a space called no-mind. And, naturally, mind is afraid of your ever becoming interested in wisdom, because mind does not want to commit suicide. Sannyas is a suicide of the mind, so is meditation, so is wisdom. These are different names for the same phenomenon, different aspects of the same diamond.

 

Knowledge depends on words. You can easily become knowledgeable by sitting in a library, but you cannot become wise that way. To become wise you will have to be in communion with a wise man. For knowledge all that is required of you is that you should be a student, that you should be full of questions, inquiries; you should be able to learn from scriptures, books, teachers, universities, libraries. Your memory becomes more and more rich, your biocomputer becomes full of information, but wisdom is not arrived at that way.

 

Wisdom is more or less a love affair with Master. One has to be a disciple, not only a student. The student keeps a distance from the Master. For him the Master is only a teacher; he is interested in the Master because of his teaching. Really he is interested in the teaching, not in the being of the Master. The disciple is not interested in teaching because one thing he has come to understand: that knowledge can be taught but wisdom can only be caught.

 

Wisdom is contagious. You have to be available to a Master, to his being. He has become afire, your candle of the heart is still unlit; if you become available to the fire of the Master you can also become a lit candle, you can also become aflame.

To be aflame with silence, with joy, is wisdom. It is not through logic but through love. It is not through words but through a wordless state called meditation or a state of no-mind, satori, samadhi.

 

Beware of learning, otherwise you may never become wise. To be knowledgeable is very easy; it is not risky, it is safe. To move into the dimension of wisdom is risky; it is going into the unknown, into the uncharted. Great courage is needed, guts are needed. And when you have tasted something of wisdom, knowledge looks so stupid, so utterly stupid. But if you have not tasted anything of wisdom, knowledge seems to be of tremendous value.

 

Zalewski got a job as a delivery boy in a pet shop. One day he was told to deliver a pet rabbit to Mrs. Caldwell, Route 2 -- Box 4.

 

"You better write that down in case I forget it," said the boy.

 

Slipping the address into his pocket, Zalewski started off on his errand. Every few minutes he glanced at the address and said, "I know where I am going: Mrs. Caldwell, Route 2 -- Box 4."

 

Everything went smoothly until he hit a huge hole in the road. The truck landed in a ditch and the rabbit began to run for its life across an open field.

 

Zalewski stood there laughing uproariously. A passerby stopped and asked, "What's so funny?"

 

"Did you see that crazy rabbit running across that field?" said the Polack. "He does not know where he is going because I have got the address in my pocket."

 

That is the state of the knowledgeable man: he has got the address in his pocket. He knows where God is, he knows where heaven is, he knows where hell is. He knows everything -- all is in his pocket. He carries scriptures, AND he believes in the letter and he misses the spirit. He goes on believing in words, he believes too much in the words. And words are useful if you can understand the spirit that is hidden behind them, that is not so apparent, not so visible.

 

In the hands of a meditative person words can become of infinite value, because they can be indicators. But in the hands of non-meditators words are dangerous, very dangerous, because the spirit is completely missed and one starts believing in the hollow, empty word, and one starts following the word.

 

That is what is happening to the Christians, to the Hindus, to the Mohammedans, to the Jainas, to the Buddhists -- all are believers in words. Somebody believes in the Koran and somebody in the Gita and somebody in the Bible, and they ALL are missing the spirit. Because to know the spirit of the Bible, you will have to come to certain inner spaces where you become acquainted with Moses, with Jesus.... Unless you have a direct, inner contact with Moses and Jesus you will not understand the Bible.

 

But following the word you may look Very important -- to people who are just like you, not different in any way. They also believe in words, you also believe in words; both live in the same kind of ignorance. This is not wisdom. Wisdom is an interior phenomenon. It is the discovery of the spirit of all the Buddhas. And there is no need to go into the history of the Buddhas. You have only to go within yourself, because you contain the whole past of existence, the infinite past, and you also contain the infinite future.

 

A mailman was delivering his mail during the Christmas season. At one house the door was opened by a beautiful woman wearing a sheer negligee.

 

"Would you like to come in?" cooed the woman.

 

"Sure," replied the startled mailman.

 

She led him up to her bedroom and made love to him. When they were finished she got up and handed the man a dollar. "Why the dollar?" asked the puzzled mailman. "Well," replied the woman, "when I asked my husband what to give the mailman for Christmas he said 'Just give him a buck and fuck him!'"

 

- Osho, "Be Still and Know, #3, Q2"