Many people have ego because they read many books and learned many things from these books. But people who have ego of bookish knowledge do not have wisdom. They often think they know so much but it doesn’t benefit them or others if they are inside empty. Bookish knowledge creates more and more confusion.
Often people try to make others smaller by showing off their knowledge from books. They want to feel great and show their ego. And ego creates more and more bondage to material. But that is not really vidya (wisdom). There is another Sutra: ‘Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktye’. This means ‘true knowledge or wisdom is what liberates.’ You have to watch your knowledge and see if it is binding you or liberating you.
We had a nice dinner with some friends and afterwards went to have ice-cream with them. And while eating we thought of the children in India whose food today was sponsored by ‘food for food’.
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I often find myself being irritated with people who want to show off how much literature and theory they have studied, then again I sometimes find myself feeling better than them because I consider myself more “real” or “organic” and that’s ego to! haha.
Lucy: I find myself doing the same thing, and then I laugh at myself. keep it “real.”
I think people use bookish knowledge to feel important, like there are facts out there and they know them, but in wisdom there are no facts.
Some people gain a lot of knowledge from spiritual study, but aren’t sure how to apply it to their own lives. They intellectualize the knowledge, but haven’t “become it” in their behavior and thoughts. They can be very blind to their own egos and it’s sometimes frustrating to see their contradictive behavior. I think the difference between knowledge and wisdom is that, with knowledge, you tell everyone what you know. However, with wisdom, you don’t need to say a word about what you know; your essence, energy, and presence says it all.
Bookish knowledge might be helpful for scientifc topics and things, you can prove. But in many cases, specially when things are connected to emotions, you can’t expect that for certain questions and problems you’ll find the concrete solution in books. Life means learning.