Understanding Understanding

I’ve been saying Buddha’s Four Truths while doing head stand for 30+ years now. These are superbly short, simple, and straightforward as you can see. Still, I’ve plumbed deeper meaning as the years have gone by. For example, a few years ago (5-10?) I began to sense the second truth, ‘The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things‘ at deeper gut level. Now, this truth has always made sense to me intellectually and rationally. But, up until that time I never ‘felt it in my bones’. I guess there is understanding, and then there is understanding.

I’ve long thought that Buddha’s four truths are enough to chew on; just getting them integrated in life takes a lifetime. Of course, the same can be said for the core teachings of all religions. So, why the millions of words written and spoken about these paths? Perhaps this is symptomatic of a lack of gut understanding. Because we can’t walk the walk, we talk the talk all the more. I suppose this is true of most everything spoken or written. We are attempting to convince ourselves. I know I am!

Does this mean my writing is symptomatic of a lack of ‘gut level’ understanding? Perhaps. The odd thing is that we don’t know we lack ‘gut understanding’ until we feel ‘gut understanding’ which illuminates what we only think that we know. It could all be a house of mirrors, one ‘revelation’ replacing another until the brain drops dead. That fits the biological hunter gatherer model: nature drives us to keep looking for something to chew on. Also, gossiping (speaking and writing) about our most recent ‘revelation’ is also nature’s way for humans to socially interact.

I should add here that seeing symptoms doesn’t really illuminate true causes. Seeing matters as merely symptomatic of ’something deeper’ just tells us that there is more there than meets our eye, and perhaps our ‘gut’ as well.