Only A Blank Canvas Provides A Plethora Of Possibilities

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 28 June 2023 "Books make you a scholar. Awareness makes you an evolved individual." A Zen saying Kitabon Aur Pothiyon Se Aage Nikal Apni Hasti Ko Samajh Aur Badhta Chal Dayashankar ' Naseem ' (Go beyond books and tomes/ Realize your existence and march ahead) Every day in the corner of a library in Japan, an old monk was to be found sitting in peaceful meditation. " I never see you read the sutras, " said the librarian. " I never learnt to read," replied the monk. " That's a disgrace. A monk like you ought to be able to read. Shall I teach you? " " Yes. Tell me," said the monk pointing to himself, "what's the meaning of this character?" Why light a torch when the sun shines in the heavens? Why water the ground when the rain pours down in torrents? Socrates, Kabir, Saint Kanakadas, among others never learnt how to read and write but that didn't prove to be their Achilles' heel. Kashmir-born Indo-American poet Aga Shahid Ali succinctly described Kabir in his quatrain, "He never wielded a pen/ Because, it was a pain/ Rather, he travelled all over/ That was his gain." By the way, 'elite' Indians going ga-ga over Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth, A K Ramanujan and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's English, must read Aga Shahid Ali's chiselled English poetry. Coming back to the core issue, we all have a conventional way of thinking. Our definitions and perceptions of knowledge and enlightenment are still so backward. The great polymath and modern Marco Polo, Rahul Sankrityayan (Kedarnath Pandey), was not even a matriculate. No university offered him the professorship as he didn't have enough degrees. Let alone varsities, he was not even considered for the job of a primary teacher until Jawaharlal Nehru, a visionary, intervened and appointed him as a professor of Buddhism and Eastern Religions. It was an irony that though varsities didn't care for him, all the 'learned' professors of Philosophy across the globe were studying and teaching his treatises! To be enlightened, one doesn't have to be 'educated' in a conventional sense of the word. Akbar Allahabadi wrote, "Zehan Khulta Nahin Do Kitabein Padh Lene Se/ Aati Hai Aql Aankhein Khuli Rakhne Se" (The mind doesn't open by reading a few books/ Wisdom comes when eyes are wide open; here, the phrase, 'eyes wide open' means 'to have uninterrupted awareness'). In Buddhism, it is not whether you can read or write, but how you can use your native intelligence and wisdom to transform and control your thoughts, speech, and actions and return them to their original state of pristine purity and quietude. Enlightenment means that one has attained the necessary wisdom to achieve the absence of desire and suffering and to be release from samsara or the cycle of repeated births and deaths. Enlightenment means also to understand and to be awakened. In The Walled Garden of Truth or The Hadiqat al Haqiqa (حدیقه الحقیقه و شریعه الطریقه), Persian mystic Hakim Sanai writes about one of his disciples whose name I can't recall at the moment. He was unlettered, but extremely intelligent. Sanai never tried to teach him how to read and write because he (Sanai) believed that by learning artificial means, the disciple would lose his natural intelligence and awareness. He used Muhammad as a metaphor for ramming home his point: 'Not for nothing, did Allah choose Muhammad as his medium, because Muhammad was Ummi (totally unlettered in Arabic).' Wisdom descends on those who're simple, but aware and whose consciousness is ever-evolving. Only a blank canvas provides a plethora of possibilities. ---- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/blank-canvas-plethora-possibilities/d/130094 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism