“The person who knows, doesn’t speak; the person who speaks, doesn’t know” – Tao Te Ching
Below is a story that I have been reflecting on this week:
Nasrudin’s Sermon
One day the villagers thought they would play a joke on Nasrudin. As he was supposed to be a holy man of some kind, they went to him and asked him to preach a sermon in their mosque. He agreed.
When the day came, Nasrudin mounted the pulpit and spoke:
‘O people! Do you know what I am going to tell you?’
‘No, we do not know,’ they cried.
‘If you don’t know, then you’re not ready for what I have to tell you,’ said the Mulla.
He got down and went home.
Not daunted, a deputation went to his house after a few days later and asked him to preach the following Friday, the day of prayer. Nasrudin agreed.
When the day came Nasrudin climbed the pulpit and started his sermon with the same question as before.
This time the congregation answered, in unison:
‘Yes, we know.’
‘In that case,’ said the Mulla, ‘there is no need for me to keep you longer. You may go.’ And he returned home.
Having been prevailed upon to preach for the third Friday in succession, he started his address as before:
‘Do you know or do you not?’
The congregation was ready: ‘Some of us do, and others do not.’
‘Excellent,’ said Nasrudin, ‘then let the ones who know tell the ones who don’t.’
This story challenges the idea that wisdom can be given and received by language and logic. It is the fools of the town who are requesting to be taught something wise from the mulla in a sermon. The mulla does teach them and does provide a sermon, but not in the way that they expect, and that itself is the irony of the wisdom. He uses few words and instead provides an experience. The message is something that must be felt, sat with, and integrated to be understood.
This exchange teaches how wisdom must be received with a fresh and open heart, but also with contemplation, seriousness, and humility. Nasrudin doesn’t speak to this crowd because either the message is too deep for some people to understand who won’t spend time with it, or it’s too simple for others to grasp– those who are stuck in their analyzing and talking.
Both are reflections of the receiver’s inability to assimilate and respect living and sacred wisdom, not the message itself.
We love to talk about sacred and unknowable things that cannot be explained with words, yet we expect to “know” it because we have heard it or explained it with language or logic. In actuality, the already built in attachment to narratives, sentiments, certainty, and moralism lead us to only again hearing the same things that we have already heard or what we hope to hear– without the time, silence, and assimilation needed for the message to really come through and change us.
We dissect messages, words, and meaning until there is nothing left of any of it. We use big words, little words, phrases, cliches, anything that we can find to prove our points, even if only to ourselves. We seek more followers, more audience, more information, more sharing– yet when we take sacred ideas to make it or ourselves more popular, we have to slice it up into tiny digestible bites for the masses. In this act, we have the lost the wholeness of what made it so sacred to begin with. It begins to lose the charge and spirit of what it initially held.
Wisdom is not meant to be wrung out and analyzed like an ideal.
It is not meant to be stripped down bare so that nothing is left.
Contemplation, sitting in silence, and letting a word or message digest and assimilate into us with its own nourishing energy and time is the medicine of wisdom that we seek.
Nobody can do this for us or provide this for us. We must learn to do this ourselves if we want wisdom as a living, breathing spirit inside of us.
Today’s reflection:
If we sit without speaking, even internally,
what can we learn about what is already there?
What seeds have already been planted
that are trying to grow?
What is asking to become a part of us?
What is gently asking to be given time?