Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 71 — Knowing One Does Not Know
To know that one does not know is highest
To know that one does not know is highest. Not to know yet to think one knows is sickness. To recognize this sickness as sickness is to be free of sickness. The sage is free of sickness because he recognizes it as sickness.
Source context
- Theme
- knowing that one does not know as the highest form of insight; ignorance of one's own ignorance as spiritual sickness
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Socratic philosophySocrates' declaration that awareness of one's own ignorance constitutes genuine wisdom (Apology 21d) is a structural parallel to Chapter 71's distinction between knowing that one does not know and the pathological condition of not knowing that one does not know.
- Advaita VedantaAvidya (spiritual ignorance) in Advaita Vedanta is characterized precisely as the condition of not recognizing one's own ignorance, a cross-tradition congruence with the 'sickness' of unknowing-ignorance described in Chapter 71.
- Zen BuddhismThe Zen concept of 'beginner's mind' (shoshin) values openness arising from acknowledged not-knowing, showing cross-tradition congruence with Laozi's valorization of conscious unknowing over presumed knowledge.
Chapter 71
To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.
It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.