Too dumb for the gyan

After reading a classic, a friend told me - “I guess I’m too dumb to understand all the gyan”.

Two friends looking at the night sky can draw two different constellations. Even though the stars are fixed, the lines of their constellations are their own. Whose is “correct”?

It reminded me of the reader response theory, that I came across through Stanley Fish. It is the idea that there is no inherent objective way of understanding meaning from a text. The meaning is actively produced by the reader during the act of reading.

Every reader can create an individual interpretation from a common text. And this interpretation depends upon his way of thinking (and sometimes based upon his life history, emotional mood, his culture). This is why sometimes one novel can hit us very deeply when we read it at age 20 and looks silly at age 40. Or vice versa.

Different civilizations have drawn different constellations in the same night sky. Vedic astronomers saw 28 constellations, while the Chinese saw 300+ constellations. Same sky, different cultures, different observations. But is the Chinese sky more correct than the Indian one? Or the Maori’s (6 constellations), or the Greek/Modern one (88 constellations). ¹ Which one is right? Is there one?

Stanley Fish did an interesting experiment in his class of religious poetry. On a blackboard, he put the names of linguists vertically and as their teacher, he told his students that it was a religious poem. And the students found imagery and connections between those names and interpreted that list as a religious poem. There was no poem in the original sense. Their teacher told them there was one, so they created one.

The voice that tells my friend that he is too dumb to understand a text is the same voice that tells us that there is one correct way of interpreting texts. That there is one correct way of doing things, and that we are failing it.

And we try to find that one correct way of reading, studying, doing things, living life, finding purpose in life, by looking up to the experts, by taking their courses, or reading their writings or listening to their talks. But it is always someone else who is the expert, not you. It is always someone else who is right, not you.

And it keeps on saying, you are behind, you are behind. If you follow it, then it turns outwards, and keeps on saying, they are behind, they are behind.

The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi said - the highest standard of correctness is not to lose the characteristic feature of one’s nature and fate. A duck’s legs are short, if we lengthened them, it would be troubled. A crane’s legs are long, if we cut them, it would be grieved.

We don’t need to follow the voice.

Wait a minute.
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While writing this post, I kept getting stuck about where this actually goes or where do I want to take it. I realized that in trying to tell about the voice, I wanted to be a better voice, maybe the best, for my friend. To tell that I am so much smarter or wiser that I can overpower all the voices telling him this way or that, with what is the most proper, most wise, most happy-making, most anxiety-reducing path. And in doing so, I was trying to replace his current voice with mine.

Zhuangzi also tells of a butcher named Ding. Ding cuts an ox as if he is a dancer keeping time. He explains that for first 3 years, he used to see an ox but after that instead of seeing the ox with his eyes, he would see it through his inner sense. A good cook changes his knife yearly, a poor cook changes monthly, while Ding has got his knife for 19 years and it still looks as if it has come brand new, because he moves his knife along the natural patterns, along the major seams, according to the inherent structure of the ox. Never across even a thin ligament or tendon. Through the spaces between the joints. And when he comes to a difficult area, he slows down, and moves his knife delicately, till it all comes apart on its own. After the job, he stands there fulfilled, wipes his knife, and puts it away.