DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

There is an old phrase which declares "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," and that is particularly so in Dharma understanding and even more so in Chan and Dao.

Words and the intelligent mind are the enemy... when the words of the Dharma are digested by intellect alone, this we call little knowledge.

In the deluge of texts which flood the markets we find little knowledge, for fools can quote wise words and not understand them profoundly, go beyond those words to the experiences, or practice them.

Chats, facebooks and the like are replete with Identity projection and those that feel lost cling to the words of fools because they sound profound and in themselves repeating them they further destroy the Dharma truth.

Look at the words of Liang Su, 梁 肅 (753-793), one of the prose masters of the age, and a devout follower of the old Chan of the Tiantai School (天台宗) which had had its heyday in the last decades of the sixth century under its founder, the great master Chih-i 智顗 (died 597), but which was burdened down by an encyclopedic scholasticism and was a declining school by the eighth century:

"Nowadays," said Liang Su, "few men have the true faith. Those who travel the path of Chan go so far as to teach the people that there is neither Buddha nor Law (Dharma) and that neither sin nor goodness has any significance. When they preach these doctrines to the average men or men below the average, they are believed by all those who live their lives of worldly desires. Such ideas are accepted as great truths which sound so pleasing to the ear. And the people are attracted by them just as the moths in the night are drawn to their burning death by the candle light. . . . Such doctrines are as injurious and dangerous as the devil (Mara) and the ancient heretics." 

Here we have a text which is produced by a scholar, a wise man in worldly terms, yet he failed, for he too fell into that same "little knowledge" trap.

He was correct to declare "Chan teaches people that there is neither Buddha nor Law (Dharma) and that neither sin nor goodness has any significance."

He was correct also in declaring "those who live their lives of worldly desires. Such ideas are accepted as great truths which sound so pleasing to the ear. And the people are attracted by them just as the moths in the night are drawn to their burning death by the candle light."

What he failed to understand due to his little knowledge of the true Chan experiences beyond the words was that Chan does not exactly project those ideas as Truth.

What Chan declares is that conceptualizations such as Buddha, Dharma law, sin and goodness are just words riddled with mind-associations and are in themselves empty.

The illusion of Buddha and the Dharma is a valuable tool, but beyond those tools are experiences which make the concepts of Buddha, Dharma, sin and goodness rather trivial and in themselves dangerous.

So we have here a complex problem...Declaring that (the conceptualizations) Buddha and Dharma and sin and goodness do not exist may be easily perused and distorted by a mind that is shallow, and this is indeed dangerous.

But declaring that Buddha, Dharma, sin and goodness do exist is also dangerous and allows a clinging and craving of the transcendental ideas.

There is only one way around the dilemma, that is, to not foolishly speak or write with little knowledge and to wait until attainment and understanding of what is to be taught. 

That means one must walk upon the path with calmness, patience, determination, perseverance and diligent introspection, just as Buddha suggested.

That is a difficult task, when Id is calling out for attention, Ego demands its pound of flesh, and Super Ego calls loud and clear for its place in the sun.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.