Our dedication is to the ideal

Attachment to Ignorance

Confessing one’s ignorance is easy. Admitting one’s mistakes is more difficult. Often we will fight for years for an opinion we formed in only seconds. This, then, is the mark of true ignorance: to ignore all evidence which runs contrary to an opinion. This kind of ignorance is the worst kind of fanaticism.

The other day a student told me, “Class is over.” I checked my watch. “There’s two more minutes,” I said. “No, teacher.”

They showed me the internet time on a new cell phone. I checked my watch again. It’s an old windup watch my brother gave me, a Soviet Polyot. He told me he won it from a Russian submarine captain in a poker game. I had to admit my old tick tock watch was wrong. The student had his way; class was dismissed. An honest man admits his mistakes. When the teacher is wrong he looks for guidance from some higher authority.

I consulted Śrīdhar Mahārāja once, about blindly obeying teachers. What if a teacher is wrong, but insists on his ignorance? Shall we go on blindly following? After all, we are supposed to take the words of the guru very seriously.

He told me to imagine being on a train. If I go a few stops and feel the train is going in the wrong direction, what do I do? I can ask the other passengers and find out where the train is going. But once I am convinced that I am on the wrong train going in the wrong direction, do I stay on the train?

Or do I watch for the next stop, get off, and look for a train going in the right direction?

Our dedication is always to the ideal; not to the institution. The institution may betray us. New directors come and go. But we must remain chaste to our high ideal. We do not wish to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We must be practical and do our best to advance the ideals of the mission. But when there is a clash between the mission and its ideals, we must eventually choose the ideal or lose the mission.

We may criticize an institution only so far as we have power to change it. And we are powerless, we may seek backing from a higher power. But when there is neither power to change, nor higher authority to help us promote the ideal, then we have no choice but to go alone and seek out like-minded souls when we meet them.

It may be pointless to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. We may need to ride to the next big station to reverse our course. But at some point it is disaster to continue going in the wrong direction.

Our most precious capital in life is our time. We cannot afford to waste our time in following the wrong path. As soon as we understand where the right path is we must take it or pay the consequences. Progress means elimination and new acceptance. And opportunities come but once.

As Shakespeare put it:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Our short life is a special opportunity to discover meaning, to seek truth, to become enlightened. Attachment to ignorance is an obstacle along the path.