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March 13, 2005
Wise old men
here's an exerpt from my anthropology reading (p.s. sorry for the language - I thought I'd rather give the original text):
"Suppose you and I are walking on the road," said Swamiji, the holyman whose storytelling I was researching in 1985. "You've gone to University. I haven't studied anything. We're walking. Some child has shit on the road. We both step in it. 'That's shit!' I say. I scrape my foot; it's gone. But educated people have doubts about everything. You say, 'What's this?!' and you rub your foot against the other." Swamiji shot up from his prone position in the deck chair, and placing his feet on the linoleum, stared at them with intensity. He rubbed the right sole against the left ankle. "Then you reach down to feel what it could be," his fingers now explored the angle. A grin was breaking over his face. "Something sticky! You life some up and sniff it. Then you say, 'Oh! This is shit." The hand that had vigorously rubbed his nose was flug out in a gesture of disgust.
Swamiji turned back towards me, cheeks lifted under their white stubble in a toothless and delighted grin. Everyone present in the room was laughing uncontrollably. I managed an uncomfortable smile.
"See how many places it touched in the meantime," Swamiji continued. "Educated people always doubt everything. They lie awake at night thinking, 'What was that? Why did it happen? What is the meaning and the cause of it?' Uneducated people pass judgment and walk on. They get a good night's sleep" .... When he settled back into his deck chair, he turned to me again. "It's not that you shouldn't study," he said, voice low and kind. "You should gain wisdom. But you should realize that in the end this means nothing."
-this story makes me laugh. I think that sometimes we get so caught up in grades and tests that we realize we are here to gain the most important thing - widsom.
Posted by agutwin at March 13, 2005 11:58 PM
Comments
:)
Posted by: mom at March 14, 2005 01:24 PM
Quite a funny story. But the interesting thing is that this type of story is often told to illustrate prejudice. Last night on Speaking On Faith, the Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne spoke on the relationship between science and faith, a common place for people to articulate their feelings on learning and wisdom. During the conversation with the host, Dr. Polkinghorne said “Some people claim scientists doubt everything. That’s simply not true – if scientists doubted everything, they would never get anything done.”
Your summary was (paraphrased) “don’t worry about the learning because wisdom is the valuable thing.” However, if you look closely at Swamiji’s last comment, it’s ambiguous. He says “this means nothing” which is ambiguous. This story has a Buddhist ring to it. If Swamiji is a Buddhist priest, he comes from a tradition that tells stories and askes questions with no obvious answers: “what is the sound of one hand clapping”. In the same way, Dr. Polkinghorne discussed the questions “how can light be both a particle and a wave”.
Be careful dear that you leap to a simple conclusion.
Posted by: Paul Gutwin at March 15, 2005 07:16 AM
yea - i realize that my last comment was not particularly valid, i had simply wanted to finish the post and go to bed...there is no way i can draw any such conclusion out of the story, but i like it nonetheless
Posted by: anna at March 15, 2005 11:18 AM
Thanks for the clarification - I was worried you had done the "see spot run" thing with such a pithy story. But I'm even more satisfied you decided to go to bed rather than obsess about a perfect blog post...;-).
Posted by: Paul Gutwin at March 16, 2005 07:35 AM