Searching for Self – in Pursuit of Inner Peace

Our Way into the Portal

To walk in our own path into the portal of inner peace, we need to seek out pertinent information and acquire the relevant knowledge by ourselves. This knowledge needs to be forged on the anvil of our own life circumstances to gain the most important wisdom needed for our specific purposes. This book will lay out considerable information for our entry into the portal of peace. When we study, understand and assimilate this information, we will gain very useful knowledge. However, merely knowing something does not empower us to effectively practice it. Learning and doing, as we know, are two different skills. Today, with undue emphasis laid on mental accumulation of knowledge, most of us know everything but still can practically do nothing. Hence reading this book and assimilating all the knowledge may not lead us directly into inner peace. Accumulating theoretical knowledge merely gives us the false security of worthless expertise and may also actively block wisdom from entering by filling all spaces in our heads. We become headstrong but wisdom lite. As an old wise man once demonstrated, our  teacups need to be emptied periodically to pour more tea. Else whatever we pour will merely spill out. Our knowledge needs to make way for our personal wisdom that is applicable to our unique circumstances.

“Knowledge can be taught, but not wisdom; there must be freedom from knowledge for the coming of wisdom” Ch ‘Cessation of thought’ in “Commentaries on Living: First Series” by J.Krishnamurti

Wisdom

Wisdom can never be learnt through instructions from others, by reading books or through listening to lectures. We need to do the hard work of attempting and failing repeatedly while we patiently learn from each outcome. We need to observe very carefully without jumping to conclusions based on superficial data. Even after we gain wisdom, we need to be alert to the dynamic circumstances and keep verifying all our conclusions repeatedly. We need to be ready to abandon our knowledge whenever life shows us its irrelevance or inapplicability. We should always guard against errors such as confirmation bias by repeatedly questioning our interpretations and being extremely alert to contrary occurrences. Wisdom is a lifelong pursuit whose  value is now lost on the always hurried, multitasking generation that side-lines the elders.

“Wisdom is the understanding of what is from moment to moment, without the accumulation of experience and knowledge” Ch ‘My path and your path’ in “Commentaries on Living: First Series” by J.Krishnamurti