MajesticWanderer and KnowledgeableTailnibbler By Dr.swaranJ.

(jswaran09@gmail.com)
(Astoryofourexcessiveclingingtocyclicthoughtsandsolvingworldproblemswiththesamethought activitywhichwecallknowledgeandwisdom)

The majestic wanderer was moving in the forest, said the story teller. He was in search of food or something else, who can say. As he crept between the ground and dry leaves and producing grazing sound, birds chirp to let others know of his presence. When he was out and in the open, his dark back shined in the moonlight. Just then he saw a prey. It was a large frog. He hissed to make it stunned. Frog became still and didnt move an inch. He quickly steered his hood over it and caught it between his curved fangs. Within few moments it was in his stomach. He was wandering in the forest majestically for sometime when he came near a pit and heard a hissing sound just like his. He went near its edge and struggled to see inside the pit. What he saw inside the pit he could not believe his eyes. There in the pit he saw another one, dark colored, almost of the same size and shape as he was. He looked closely. His tail was inside his mouth and he was nibbling it constantly. He could not help asking, Hey, you! What on earth are you doing here? Oh! You!, one in the pit retorted back, You seem to be one from the jungle, having very little civic sense. Why are you here? Do you want to take my pit? Go away, I tell you, But why are you here? Why not moving outside, searching for food. Why should I? Here I have uninterrupted supply of food. I have many frogs here, all in the cage. I have understood how to breed frogs, though I do not breed them here. There are others like me who do the job. They supply me the food on regular basis. Strange! All this is happening on earth. I cant believe my eyes. But why are you nibbling your tail. That is my own dear delight, my pleasurable secret. I must not

divulge it to an outsider. Perhaps that is why you should do so. Im an outsider but not from your clan. You may tell me frankly. Im curious to know, my friend! After much persuasion the tail nibbler was ready to have discussion. You are right, I think, he said. I have not opened my mind for long. You may be the right person whom I may talk to. Yeah! Lets have some easy chat. Please tell me why are you nibbling your tail? I get the itching to do so. It gives me pleasure to nibble my tail Oh! Please stop kidding. I am dying to know that. But I always dont get pleasure. Most of the time it gives me pain too, Last part he conversed was merely a whisper, almost a sigh. Why not always? Majestic wanderer was surprised. Because I get pain when I dig my teeth too deep, rued the tail nibbler. Again kidding. But pray, tell me, why you indulge in such pleasurable activity which often turns painful? Nibbling my tail is my aid to thinking. I do the thinking actually. He was now quite frank. One can judge my thoughts from the way I nibble. I nibble lightly during pleasant thought activity but my nibbling becomes vigorous when I think vigorously, while working on some solution to a problem. I understand it looks odd but I cant help it. But we all do thinking as we possess the thinking apparatus, the brain, and the cortex. I also do thinking, but I do not nibble my tail. I construct thoughts during my thinking process. These thoughts give me knowledge, knowledge to grow, to develop, to prosper and to understand. Sometimes I work overtime and construct many

thoughts. What then you do with them? I publish them in the books. That is my favorite leisure time pursuit, my much desired pastime and of course my livelihood too. I earn capital from that. Wah! So strange to hear that. There might be others like you doing the same business. Oh! Many. Some days ago you dismantle a brick and you find two working under it. Nowadays you may find two more sitting on the brick. We are valued by the readers who like our work. What then you do to maintain your identity? We complicate the writings that are not easily understood. Some times our thoughts are so much complicated that we ourselves do not understand the context in which they are produced? They are nearly a mathematical puzzle. How then you disentangle them to know their meaning. By deconstruction. To understand those we have to deconstruct them. These days the thinkers from one category construct the thoughts and of other category deconstruct them. So these deconstruction thoughts again are the thoughts, said the majestic wanderer wryly. He..he..he.., laughed the tail nibbler, that is the dear delight of us all; our philosophy; our favorite pastime. There used to be very few in the past and now we are many. There are many like me doing overtime job. We have developed academia for this engagement. For almost all of us it is the only means of livelihood. We all nibble our tails which is more or less our status symbol. So you are a knowledgeable person. Lets talk about your knowledge. Okay, happily, as you wish, sir, said the tail nibbler humbly. What are your most pleasurable thoughts? I constantly nibble, I mean, I think about the problems like good

and evil, pleasure and sorrow, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death, god or no god etc. So what are your inferences? Regarding what? Regarding any of these. Let it be arr good and evil. This I cant tell you in few words. If you want to know please move to the library, the fifth pit from this of mine on the right side. As of now I am not quite sure about these issues. For how long you are engaged in this act? For many generations. For many generations and still not sure! Still hovering in the dark!! the majestic wanderer was surprised a lot. But we have collected a good mount of data, said tail nibbler hurriedly, we shall be able to compile this in the near future. But the problem is that data increases every year. Actually there is a convention of teacher and taught amongst us. As number of taught are increasing every year so do the teachers, so we have developed many universities of knowledge. It is a big business I tell you. All the teachers nibble constantly, sorry again nibble, actually they create many research papers and books and distribute many degrees and awards among themselves and keep on filling the treasure trove of the knowledge. Libraries are overstuffed so they have now developed a new technique of storing knowledge and that is of computers and . Okay! Okay!! I have understood your business of knowledge. You will be able to compile that data in your graves, I am sure. But please tell me why you collect such knowledge that is subject to revision, subject to overwriting. That is how the knowledge grows, said the tail nibbler confidently. Then why dont you make an end to this, the final say, the last insight.

Oh, yes! Insight!! Actually we also produce many insightful thoughts but almost all of them get lost in the bulk of knowledge. Hasnt it occurred to you that your pursuing of the knowledge trail is sheer wastage of time and energy? It occurred to me many times but there is a question of . And also no way out, I understand... You know, we the knowledgeable are very much arrogant about our capabilities. We never listen to others; we actually want others listen to us. So when everyone is speaking and nobody listening there is more noise than the comprehension, more bulky stuff than actual understanding. Yes, there was one, a super genius, who suggested that all libraries should be burnt after every ten years and we should start afresh. That again will not solve your problem. You will end up with even more bulkier libraries. Then what should we do? Know first that truth is always obvious and wrapped in common sense. It should not be wrapped in complexity in murky phrases. Intellectual complexity simply conceals the beauty of expression. Said the majestic wanderer. But what shall we do with the problems of our civic society which continuously look forward to our intellect and intelligence for the solutions? Most of your problems breed from your intellect, your faith upon your will to solve. You think you will get into the depth of problems. But actually you get into the depth of many others problems associated with the main one. Then you divide your intellect; constitute boards and panels, create specialists who are never one at the level of intellect. They try to solve your one by one which often takes time and by that each problem has given rise to many other problems. There was a pause and tail nibbler was listening attentively.

Intellectualization will never solve your problems, continued the majestic wanderer, more and more you intellectualize, more and more you gather knowledge, more and more you are aware of your ignorance. Your knowledge can never be complete. But mere overlooking the subtler aspects of a problem will with time breed a bigger problem. I dont deny that. But I would say that problem is somewhere else and that is your will. How an honest will that strive to solve problems could be the cause of problem? Because that honest will says that this is the other not me, the cause of problem. The honest will always tries to blame others. You collect data to improve your fellows and not yourself. I dont understand that. It is the mind that is originator of all the problems, the mind with all his clandestine desires and hidden motives. you mean? I mean your whole indulgence to earn the comforts out of the pockets of other half! The mind has not developed these desires overnight. We have burnt mid-nights oil for that. What is bad in it when we become successful and are valued by the world? Why then we should not get the honest remuneration of the efforts we do for others. Why shouldnt we enjoy with that. And also tell me how could one kill all the desires? Im not against the enjoying life and Im also not against fulfillment of desires. I may be against their covert accomplishment. Im against their expansion. I am against the capital that you amass for future. See me I keep nothing with me and Im always happy. We in the civil society cant depend upon that. These primitive funs will create mess in our civilized society. If we dont store we

will openly loot each other. We are not few, we are many. Majestic wanderer paused for a moment. He wondered perhaps he is being befooled. He could not say anything for a while. Okay! You look tired. Lets leave the discussion for a while and do some belly filling. Frog is ready. They both ate the frogs. Majestic wanderer was not very happy to eat the caged frogs. For the first time he saw an expression of fear in the eyes of frog. He now understood why these people are obsessed with the thoughts of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil, sin and virtue. Thus for many days both discussed and debated every question of existence. At one point the majestic wanderer thought he would give up and leave the tail nibbler in the hands of his destiny. His thinking fellow was never inferior in debating the matters. And the day came when the majestic wanderer was about to leave. He had now understood that his intellectual fellow wont leave his intellect for the mere sake of simplifying and understanding. While getting ready to leave the pit he said to his tail nibbler fellow, Actually the refinement and not the enhancement of intellect will solve your problems. Even more than that you must be able to say less and understand more, understand less and feel more, feel less and be conscious about more. What else? the tail nibbler again got interested. Even you should be conscious of your consciousness. Strange! You are talking about the things that we have enumerated a number of times. You collect the things but do not value them. You may develop an altogether new mode of thinking. What is that? That is thinking-less thinking, a sort of thinking without thoughts,

thinking without concepts. Shit! All the paradoxical things you are talking about. How could there be any thinking without the thoughts. Not the least. Not at all paradoxical, but you cannot comprehend these matters so quickly. This is analogous to speaking from silence. The thinkers and lovers of wisdom of the past that you were talking about actually were doing the same thing. They were the first order thinkers. Their knowledge was not sourced from the perceptions of the outer, of the objective reality. That emerged from the depth of their silence, their subjective truth. They spoke from those still realms. But they had one difficulty as we all have. The language and concepts of reality they were talking about had been developed within this world. So they were forced to use those concepts to communicate their silence. The second order thinkers who followed the truth rather than invent it took those concepts true to their worldly meanings. They developed their wisdom on that basis only. Then next order thinkers followed them with more fervent zeal. Thus the fluidity of silence was lost and there was created permanent concrete vestige of concepts within the mind. Still now sometimes a certain original thinker emerges from your clan and tries to break those concepts but unfortunately ends up in creating new ones. That whole is the story of your pursuance of knowledge as I could deduce from the conversation I had with you. But how could we then end the primacy of knowledge and be one with our silence. You must stop making idea of an idea. When someone asks you to be conscious of the consciousness you immediately jump to make an idea of it and draw conclusion of it, and put this in your knowledge apparatus and assess it with your past conclusions.

Ultimately it becomes a new concept and you lurk in the darkness as usual. Better to reflect sensitively over the happenings than trying to understand them conceptually or intellectually. Know the knower first before the object to be known. Observe silence. Try to remain free of the thought activity most time of the day. And how will all this help me in understanding and solving my problems. Look once again you are after the idea of the idea. You want to know before this happen. Possibly you may be right. Say for me some last words. Lastly Lastly what? Dont think the same thought twice. Do not write same thought again and again. Free yourself from your habit of circular thinking. Keep your mouth free from your tail. Majestic wanderer laughed, And come out of the pit; dont kill the wanderer in you. Majestic wanderer moved away. (27-6-2011)