Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.
The Master is her own physician.
She has healed herself of all knowing.
Thus she is truly whole.
-Lao Tzu-
(Tao Te Ching, chapter 71, translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Yang, Without Yin
It took me a some time to realize why I had failed for so long; and then, suddenly, I was succeeding. But, I finally realized; I had been all yang, without yin. Once I let yin have its place, and then let yin and yang balance themselves out, problems no longer were a problem for me.
Now, I suppose it is possible to err on the other side, to be all yin, without yang. But, that has never been a problem for me. I have never witnessed this problem in others. And, over years of reading through the Tao Te Ching, it doesn’t seem to be a problem with which Lao Tzu is concerned. Are we humans capable of being yin to the extreme? I suspect yang is too strong in us for that to ever be a problem. I suspect, if we are going to err, it will always be on the side of being yang, without yin.
What we are always in need of is balance, harmony. And that balance, harmony, can’t happen if we don’t let yin have its place.
This is why the practice of competing without competing, doing without doing, knowing without knowing is so very important as the practice of philosophical Taoism.
When you are all yang, all your competing, all your doing, all your knowing, will yield miserable results. You will always fail. There will always be so much left undone. And, you will never know you don’t know.
But, look what happens when you allow yin its place. Then, without competing, you compete; without doing, you do; without knowing, you know.
Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. But, you have to first realize you are sick, then you can move toward health.
Maybe I am going way out on a limb, here. But, I doubt it.
You are sick. Just like I was. But, me telling you this isn’t going to be all that it takes for you to realize it. That, I can’t do for you. There are no time tables. Realization will come to you. It will come intuitively and spontaneously. But, I can’t tell you when that will happen, or how. And, don’t beat yourself up over wasted time spent before your realization. There is no wasted time. All of the time before my realization was simply me being molded, shaped, into the person who could realize it. The same is true for you. Just understand that once realization comes, then you can move toward health.
You can be your own physician. You can heal yourself of all knowing. Until you are truly whole.