There's an old analogy to a cup of tea. If you want to drink new tea you have to get rid of the old tea that's in your cup, otherwise your cup just overflows and you get a wet mess. Your head is like that cup. It has a limited capacity and if you want to learn something about the world you should keep your head empty in order to learn it. It's very easy to spend your whole life swishing old tea around in your cup thinking it's great stuff because you've never really tried anything new, because you could never get it in, because the old stuff prevented its entry because you were so sure the old stuff was so good, because you never really tried anything new ... on and on in an endless circular pattern. (Lila , page 33)
This post should be about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but my copy has disappeared in mounds of books and for now is beyond my reach. Lila is almost as good. This idea has stuck in my mind since the early nineties when I first read Lila. We write things down to help us forget. Most people think it's to help us remember but the notes we make clear our minds for something new. These days we use blogs to help us forget!
We read blogs and books and we're impressed at how much the author knows. Of course, it shows how little the author knows; their text is now forgotten through the act of writing. Just as I remember only this thought from Lila, I am united with the author in forgetting the rest of the content. So long as we have books and blogs no-one need remember anything ever again!
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