Summary: You may be stupid and don’t know it. The biggest breakthrough for a stupid person to declare that they are stupid. Why? Because it would force them to look before they act, talk, argue, say yes, or say no… Stupid is an attitude, not an ability…
So, what is the attitude of a stupid person? They think that they understand everything. They think that what they see is what’s there…
Koan: For you Everything is the same as everything else … except not always
This belief, that you know everything, is an entirely mind-based concept. It is based on something tricky: that your understanding of words, connections, contexts, is accurate.
You can be certain that those understandings are NOT correct. It is a childish and arrogant thing to think that your understanding is correct and that looking at other people’s teachings through your current understanding is going to give you an accurate view of what they are saying.
I’ll give you two examples, but before I do that, consider the saying:
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail… we’ll get back to this later.