WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM, AND UNDERSTANDING?
There is a lot of difference, and the difference is not quantitative, it is qualitative. Knowledge is belief.
Knowledge is others’ experience not your own. They say there is God and you believe in it. This is
knowledge.
A young man can become very knowledgeable. There is no trouble in it. You need a good memory,
you need to make a little effort. The same thing can be done some day by a computer: you will carry
a computer in your pocket, no need to make your head too heavy with the libraries, the computer
will carry all the knowledge.
Remember, soon computers will replace all your knowledge. The pundit is going to disappear from
the world, the computer will take its place. And I say ’its’ place knowingly, consideredly, because a
pundit is a mechanism, he is not a man.
That’s all you have been doing with the brain – you go on feeding it information.
Knowledge is borrowed. Others know it, you believe they must be true. Wisdom comes through your
own experience. Knowledge is an accumulation, wisdom is also an accumulation. But knowledge
is accumulation of others’ experiences, wisdom is accumulation of your own experience. A young
man can never be wise; he can be knowledgeable, but for wisdom time is needed. Old people are
wise because you have to pass through experiences.
You can read many books on love and you can know much about love, what others have said about
it, but to know love itself you will have to pass through experience – which is time absorbing. By the
time you know something about love the youth, your young age, will have gone. You will be old, but
wise.
Old age is wise, youth can be knowledgeable. Wisdom is one’s own experience accumulated,
knowledge is others’ experience accumulated by you.
Then what is understanding? Understanding is non accumulative. What difference does it make
whether somebody else experienced and you believed, or you experienced and then you believed?
That experience is of the past. It is no more there, and you have changed so much – and everybody
is changing every moment – that an old man who says that ’In my youth I experienced THIS,’ is
talking about somebody else because he is no more the same.
A little closer wisdom is than knowledge, but not very close. Understanding is non-accumulative,
you don’t accumulate either others’ experiences or your own. You need not accumulate, you grow.
Understanding is always fresh, wisdom is a little dusty and old, wisdom is always of the past, your
own past. Knowledge is also of the past – of others’ pasts. But what difference does it make finally?
Because your own past is as far away from you as others’ pasts; you are no more the same. Every
moment the river is flowing, says old Heraclitus, you cannot step in the same river twice.
Your own youth – you cannot step in it twice; you have learnt something from your experience, you
carry it. Knowledge can be washed away, wisdom also. They can be brainwashed, completely
wiped from your mind. Understanding can never be brainwashed, it is not part of the brain, it is non
accumulative. All that is accumulative is accumulated in the brain.
Understanding is of your being, it cannot be washed away – you cannot brainwash a Buddha; in
fact he himself has brainwashed himself completely, he has cleaned his slate himself, how can
you clean him? He is non-accumulative, he lives moment to moment. Through living his being
grows. If through living your knowledge grows, it is wisdom; if through living your being grows, it is
understanding; and if without living your accumulation grows, it is knowledge.
Understanding is the real flowering of being. A man of understanding is mirror.like. A mirror carries
nothing. A mirror always lives in the immediate present, whosoever comes before it, it reflects.
You ask me a question. The question can be answered through knowledge, that is, experience of
others; the question can be answered through wisdom, experience of my own; the question can be
answered through understanding – then I am just a mirror, I simply respond.
You ask, you come before my mirror, I simply respond. That’s why a man of understanding will
always be felt contradictory, inconsistent, because what can he do? He does not carry the past, his
answers are not coming from his past, his answers are coming right now this very moment from his
being. And every moment the world is changing, it is a flux, so how can an old answer be given
again? Even if the words appear to be old the answer cannot be old.
Understanding is non-repetitive and non-accumulative. Wisdom is accumulative, repetitive,
knowledge is accumulative, repetitive. Knowledge is sheer belief, wisdom has a little experience in
it, understanding is totally different. It is your presence, your mirror-like presence. It is a response.
Old people can be wise, young people can be knowledgeable, only children can be understanding.
That is the meaning when Jesus says that, Only those who are like children will be able to enter in
my kingdom of God.
When you again become childlike, fresh, carrying no past, carrying no ready-made answers within
you, carrying NO answers, just a deep emptiness, then something echoes in you. Somebody asks
a question – no answer comes from the memory, no answer comes from the experience, but the
answer is a response this very moment.
Understanding is always of the now and the here.
Understanding is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. Drop knowledge, and then
drop wisdom also. Don’t believe in others’ experiences and don’t believe in your own experiences
either, because they are of the past – you have passed from there, they are no more a part of
existence things have flowed on, the river has passed under a thousand-and-one bridges, and it is
not the same river, even if you see it flowing. It is not the same river, it is constantly changing.
Except for change, everything is changing. Change is the only permanent factor in existence so how
can you rely on the past? If you rely, you will always miss the present.
Old people, wise, are always ready with great advice to give to anybody – full of advice; nobody
listens to them – that is good, never listen, because you will never live the same experiences as
they have lived. The river will never be the same again. If you follow them you will become false,
inauthentic, untrue, you will be a lie.
And never listen to your own experience either because you are also getting old every day, and
yesterday will always be giving advice. A new situation arises and the yesterday is ready there, and
the yesterday says, the old man within you says: This is the advice, do THIS, because we did this
yesterday and it was good, and it worked, and you succeeded.
Don’t listen to your own inner old man. Be alert! Aware of the total situation. AND DON’T REACT;
respond. If everything is new let your answer also be new. Only the new can meet the new, only the
new can solve the new, only with the constantly fresh and new do you remain alive and true to life.
OSHO
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