Not Knowing

November 2010

Not Knowing

Someone asks
As I do
What is the answer
To the bigger questions
Of death
Or life?

Well let's give the answer
Straight away
Here it is:

" I don't know! "

What a beautiful answer
Because fully felt
It's so simply true

And it becomes obvious
That Nisargadatta
Or Ramana
Or Ramesh
Or you
Don't know either

This is the vast equality

They probably got rid of their knowing
And burst forth in a flowering
Of action and words
To spur us on

Not knowing is not an idea
But a place to be
And you are there
Right now

What is it
You need to not know?

Simply everything

If however
You feel you still do know
There are books you can read
To help

Such as 'Freedom from the Known'
By J Krishnamurti
Or 'Only Don't Know'
By Seung Sahn
(The titles will do)

Yet you didn't know
Before reading these
And you won't know after

Even if you firmly believe
You do know
You don't
And because you don't
You may as well believe
You do
Like me
It doesn't matter at all

One belief is as good as another
Even 'I don't know'

You can pick any aspect of life
And try to understand it from this new
Unknowing perspective
But before you pick the subject
All is already
Completely unknown

How could you know
What you are doing?
How would you know
What you are thinking?
How could you know
The difference between
What should be
And what is?

How would you know
Anything?
When that very question is
Asked by the unknown
And unanswered
By the known

It's the known
That remains silent
Because only the expression of
The unknown
Is

All the little knowings
Are the unknown dancing

None of these knowings say
" I don't know "
That would spoil the dance

Yet strange attempts
Are made

These tiny pockets of unknowing
Pretending to know
Suddenly catch themselves at it

A spark flashes and
The known and the unknown
Flicker back and forth
Between each other

Till the unknown sees
It can't be seen
Can't be known
Can't be loved

And so the pining goes on
By that which
Can't be loved

By love itself

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