Knowing the Way as Unlearning

Knowing the Way as Unlearning

老子

十一

~What does Lao Tzu mean by unlearning? How can this be knowing? How can unlearning take place?

~What is the importance of unlearning in the development toward sageliness? 

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Tao Te Ching, 20

Abandon all learning and there will be no sorrow.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge (Tao Te Ching, 65) and so it follows that we should empty our cup so that it should be filled: what we know and what we have learned, we should unlearn. The Tao requires us to decrease so as we could increase and the way to knowing the Tao is by unlearning. It is because we know too much, it is because our heads are filled with things of these and that that we become blinded with the illusion that it is necessary for us to have them. We see a lot of things in others that we don’t have and we are then filled with the desire that we want those things for us to possess. The Tao teaches us that any kind of desire, tangible and/or intangible, is not good for us. These desires, because of the very fact that they are desires, are hard to come by and so the harder that we strive to attain them, the more we bring ourselves closer to harm’s way. Therefore our desire to fill our heads with facts, numbers, and information are that which that makes us contrary to what we truly are. Knowledge only clouds the mind. It teaches us how to discriminate and become prejudiced. Knowledge is a disease that rots the mind. The sage know of this and so, he only seeks for what is needed for life and anything beyond it, the sage rejects. Because of this, the sage rests at the heart of the Tao.

It is only by truly unlearning that we are filled, that we can accumulate the things that which are genuinely essential to us and to our being. This knowledge that we seek only but blinds us from the way of the Tao. They dizzy our head with worldly contents and concerns that we forget how who we truly are and so it is only by depleting that we can come home again. We should decrease day by day until we are nothing, until we are empty. Therefore the sage strives to achieve a mental clarity will make nature profound in him and through this nothingness within his mind, he sees the path to the Tao.  

More often than not, our senses trigger desires and our knowledge about the object of our desires only heightens our need for them. So Lao Tzu warns us: Close the mouth. Shut the doors (Tao Te Ching, 52). If we truly know ourselves then it is easier for us to guard our senses and our mind. If we know who we truly are and if we are close to the Tao then there will be wards around us, wards that keeps away the things that are contrary to nature and the things that can pull us away from the Tao. Being aware of what is truly essential to us helps us retrain worldly desires and keeps us on the right path. If we know who we truly are then we know that we do not know. The sage who knows does not pretend. He is humble in his words and in his deeds and because he keeps the value of humility he is weak. He flows in the river of the Tao, freely, away from necessary desires. The sage is empty but he is full. 

Tao Te Ching, 56

Become one with the dusty world.

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