permaculture

[Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>]

For further elucidation on the subject of ignorance I recommend reading 
the latest issue of the Activist (our 20 year anniversary issue) that 
includes an excellent article by Wes Jackson entitled Toward an 
Ignorance-based Worldview which he delivered at a conference with the 
same title. This from his invitation to that event:

   "Imagine an ignorance-based science and technology in which
   practitioners would be ever conscious that we are billions of times
   more ignorant than knowledgeable and always will be."

He concludes his article with this:

   "...maybe it's time to start with a certain amount of humility and
   say we're fundamentally ignorant about the way minds change.
   Acknowledging that we are fundamentally ignorant, we now can ask a
   question that goes beyond the available answers, and that's going to
   force knowledge out of its categories.

   We would be fundamentally respectful of our original relationship
   with the universe. There might even be a more joyful participation
   in our engagement with the world."

There are  teachers who  recommend a "Way of Divine Ignorance" as a way 
to remain true to our priorly and always already native and actual 
condition.

See http://www.adidam.org/adida/religion/dhome.htm?go=wayignorance.htm 
where the following quote derives.

   "The presumption of familiarity with objects and others is only a
   product of the presumption of separateness from them. The movement
   to "name" things and presume familiarity is based in fear of
   unknowability or loss of control. But names are only superficial and
   ultimately arbitrary.

   Your native state of being is not separation, knowledge, or
   familiarity, but the unknowability of simple Existence beyond fear
   or contraction."

You will find reference to an excellent story for chidren at 
http://www.adidam.org/adida/teachings/dhome.htm?go=divineignorance.htm 
which helps us and them grow into stable and constant re-cognition of 
this fundamental and natural state or condition.

Here's text from the book on the subject:

   An Excerpt from What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be
   Happy

           Have you heard this is an apple? [Picture]
           Have you been told this is a tree? [Picture]
           Do you think this is the moon?  [Picture] and this the sun?
   [Picture]
           Have you told someone this is a little girl?  [Picture] and
   this is a little boy? [Picture]
           Well. But you and I can be very truthful to each other. And
   it seems
   to Me that, no matter what we name this or this or this or this or this
   or this, we still do not know what they Are. Truly, you and I don't
   know what even a single thing Is. Do you know what I Am? See? And I
   don't know what you Are, either. It is a Mystery. Doesn't it make you
   feel good to feel It?
           Did you ever ask somebody where this or this or this came
   from, or how
   this or this or this came to be? Some say, "I don't know", and saying
   this makes them feel they are being very honest and truthful. Others
   say something such as "God made it", or "It comes from God". And such
   people are also being very honest and truthful when they say this.
           How can they both be telling the truth? Well, because they
   are both
   telling you the same thing in different ways. You see, nobody - not
   Mom, or Dad, or Grandmother, or Grandfather, or big Sister, or big
   Brother, or teachers, or doctors, or soldiers, or athletes, or lawyers,
   or TV stars, or any people who are working, or any people who are
   playing, not even a President, not even a King or a Queen, not even
   people who love each other - nobody knows what even a single thing Is.
   It is a great and more-than-wonderful Mystery to everyone that anything
   is, or that we are. And whether somebody says "I don't know how
   anything came to be" or "God made everything", they are simply pointing
   to the feeling of the Mystery - of how everything is, but nobody knows
   what it really Is, or how it came to be.
           As long as you go on feeling this Mystery, you feel free and
   full and
   happy - and you feel and act free and full and happy to others. This is
   the secret of being happy from the time you are small until the time
   you are old.
           Everybody - even all the animals - goes on living for a
   while, and
   then the part of them you see and touch and talk to every day when you
   wake up goes to sleep in the feeling of the Mystery. This happens to
   everybody. And everybody has to live every day without being afraid to
   go to sleep. This can be difficult, even when you are small. Especially
   because people sometimes forget the Mystery, and get unhappy, and try
   to make others feel unhappy - by making them think things that make
   them afraid and make them forget the Mystery.
           So the way to keep on being happy every day until you go to
   sleep is
   to remember the Mystery. Just keep on remembering that you, with
   everybody else, do not know what even a single thing Is - not even an
   [apple].
           Just remember this- or remember Real God, which is the same
   thing.
   Keep on remembering Real God as the Mystery, and you will feel happy
   and act happy to others - and so you will keep on loving and helping
   others, so the world won't get all afraid, and stupid, and unable to
   sleep or play or work.
           If you do this all the time, you will have lots of amazing and
   more-than-wonderful experiences until you go back to sleep. And, if you
   remember the Mystery even when you are going to sleep, then you will go
   to sleep all happy in the Mystery. And you will always wake up in the
   Mystery, too. And all your dreams will be about the Mystery, until you
   wake up again.

   "The conditional self Is Inherently (or Divinely) Ignorant. The
   conditional self Is (Inherently, Always Already, and Cannot Ever Be
   Else Than) knowledgeless, or Bereft and Free Of The Familiar (or the
   known). Indeed, the conditional self (or conventional "I") Is
   (itself) An Illusion Of knowledge (or Of Familiarity)--and, If The
   Inherent (and Self-Evidently Divine) Condition Of Ignorance Is
   Realized In any moment, the "knowledge" of body, mind, or
   conditional "I" Is Replaced By The Mystery Of Inherently bodiless,
   mindless, and selfless Being."

Kinda ups the ante on the whole subject of observation and meditation, too.

   "As long as the individual is simply seeking, and has all kinds of
   motivation, fascination with the search, this is not
   understanding--this is dilemma itself. But where this dilemma is
   understood, there is the re-cognition of a structure in the living
   consciousness, a separation. And when that separation is observed
   more and more directly, one begins to see that what one is suffering
   is not something happening to one but it is one's own action. It is
   as if you are pinching yourself, without being aware of it. You are
   "creating" a subtle pain, and, worse than the pain, a continuous
   modification, which is "mind", which the living consciousness
   identifies as itself. The more one observes this, the more one's
   search is abandoned, spontaneously, intelligently."

Long live ignorance! We'll never get beyond it, so let's get used to 
it...or, even, enlivened and enlightened by it... and on its basis may 
we all realize...

   "...the truly adult capability to live intentionally as love in all
   relations."

Anyway, my 2 or 3 cents worth. An interesting thread.

--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 1209
Black Mountain, NC 28711
(828)669-6336

also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
Culture's Edge at Earthaven Ecovillage
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
http://www.earthaven.org
http://www.bioregionalcongress.org
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