« Is Learning the Beginning of Ignorance? »

When young, the mind keeps on asking "What is this?"  Is this question a moment of learning or... the beginning of ignorance?

When the mind asks "What is this?" it pulls together several incoming streams of sensory information into a perceived - but still nameless - whole.  You stumble upon an unknown aspect of reality (e.g. a flower), you take a sensory snapshot, and then you try to label it.   "What is it?" you wonder as you try to classify, codify, and categorize the unknown.  

This is an entirely legitimate learning process, but it comes at a cost.  As soon as the question is answered, the Nameless is named.  The incoming streams of sensory information (the visual, the auditory, the olfactory, the tactile, etc.) are tied into a Gordian knot of conceptual stability.  What was previously a phenomenon of nature becomes a word.   Once a given aspect of reality is labeled, the mind is made and, often, is closed shut.  A rose becomes an idea.  A rose becomes the word "rose" with all the expectations and the associations that we connect to it.  We now know its look, its smell and we no longer pause to notice it. 

Is this the inevitable innocence of learning or the onset of conceptual blindness?  It's both!  Knowledge both sets us free and imprisons us.  After all, a cup that is full can hold no more water.

What's the solution?

Interpretive silence: witness the namelessness of what is, in all its suchness, without bothering to name it.