Asking the Right Question - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

What is the difference between a question and wonder? For a question we seek an answer, in wonder we don’t seek an answer. A question is related to sorrow; wonder is related to joy.

No one ever asks, "Why am I happy?" when we become miserable we ask, "Why has this misery come to me?" No one ever questions why there is so much beauty in the world, in creation. But when there is dishonesty, injustice, we ask, "Why this dishonesty?" This "why" comes from that area of our mind that seeks to know, that seeks knowledgeability. Knowledgeability is labeling things.

I don’t know what I am speaking. What you know you speak from your intellect, you speak from your knowledge. But the purpose of knowledge is to make you aware of how ignorant you are. The more you know, the more unknown remains. So, in fact, the unknown grows. What we don’t know grows.

We are born in ignorance. When we mature and we go through the process of acquiring knowledge, we again become ignorant. But there is this difference : This second "I don’t know" becomes a beautiful "I don’t know." It is wonder.

"Why this creation?" "I don’t know."

© `Deccan Chronicle’ dated October 2, 2002. Reprinted with permission.

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