A New Way Of Learning

Knowledge has its place. It is an amazing tool.

It seems that knowledge is an accumulation. I can get more and more of it. It is a thing, like any other thing, like money and technology. Someone - a teacher - can give me more knowledge. I can get it from a book.

More knowledge has not made me a peaceful person. It has not brought a lasting, deep abiding joy. Nor has any other thing brought me this. They may have brought me a momentary 'blip' of novelty - a fleeting joy, but nothing transformative or lasting.

I was walking in the woods, watching my mind slow down, letting all the words go by, not giving them power by becoming concerned or identifying with them. Then there was silence. I was still aware but there was little to no movement of thinking. No concerns about time. I felt peace. I was watching a way of being happening, a sense of wonder. Knowledge was there, dormant, but I could call upon it to operate if I needed it to be there. I was observing a sacred way of living that had nothing to do with knowledge, in fact, it was the act of totally letting go of knowledge that cleared a path for this awareness to arise.

Is knowledge the problem? The stress, the worry, the struggle? Is letting go a way of learning, a way out of suffering?