Letting Go of Certainty
The earth moves around the sun at about 18 miles per second. It takes about 250 million years for our solar system to orbit the galactic core. In its lifetime, the sun has circled the center of the Milky Way 18 times, and it has another 25 laps to go before it ends its life as a white dwarf. In the meantime, it will continue spewing four million tons of its mass into space in the form of energy every second.
Unless you’re an astrophysicist, it is very unlikely that you knew these facts before reading them just now. In fact, you didn’t even know that you didn’t know them, because the things they refer to are, for most of us, too far beyond our usual frame of reference.
In our study of meditation, it’s useful to remember that our positions, opinions, and sense of self are tightly constrained by the narrow limits of our perception, and that beyond those limits, we are surrounded on all sides by an unfathomable mystery. To visualize this, imagine these three classic domains of knowledge:
1) Things we know that we know. I know various facts about myself, my family, my friends and acquaintances, the world, and the experience of living in general.
2) Things we know that we don’t know. This might include differential calculus, how to speak Swahili, Hegelian philosophy, or how to build an internal combustion engine.
3) Things we don’t know that we don’t know. Consider the examples at the top of this page. Our entire body of knowledge is limited by our senses which, even when amplified by technology, perceive only an infinitesimal sliver of Reality. And for most of us, our frame of reference is far narrower than that. We are programmed by our tribe, religion, education, language, profession, social caste, political affiliation, and national identity to see things in a particular way, and resist, overlook, or ignore things that contradict or challenge our assumptions. As a practical example, most of us have a hard time thinking, let alone acting, as planetary citizens, even though humanity’s survival depends on it.
And yet there’s an infinite universe of existence beyond us, even beyond the deep field images from space-based telescopes. String theory postulates anywhere between 10 and 26 dimensions. These dimensions, for all we know, may also be teeming with universes, life forms and civilizations we can scarcely imagine.
Meanwhile, our obsession with internet porn, Donald Trump, or the latest clickbait controversy takes up our entire field of view. We haven’t the barest inkling of what we’re missing — what we don’t know that we don’t know.
The point here is not to denigrate the objects of our attention or even to criticize our limitations, but simply to acknowledge that the sum of what we don’t know is infinitely greater than what we do know. This, according to tradition, is what made Socrates the wisest man in ancient Athens — that he knew that he didn’t know. This truth liberates us from the arrogance of certitude, especially when certitude becomes the rationale for injustice, cruelty, exploitation, and violence.
My Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, often recommended that we post little reminders around the house where we could see them often. On them, we should write three words: “Are you sure?”
The next time you sit in meditation, release all preconceived notions, and surrender to the awesome mystery that is the core of your very existence.
“In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wise : that I do not think I know what I do not know.”
~ Socrates