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KARMA - THE MECHANISM
SUTRAS
SUTRA 13 Filhapū Ysgla || 93 | Jnanavarane prajnajnane (13) - Vanity because of our own great learning as well as - ignorance are both manifestations of karma that blocks or restricts our access to knowledge. (13)
Learning too many details without integrating them into one living experience is as much a manifestation of ignorance as sheer lack of knowledge: Both types of ignorance are variations of karma that blocks or restricts our access to knowledge.
The acquisition of formal knowledge to impress others with our high degree of learning is useless.
When we actively use knowledge to expand our range of experience, it automatically becomes a natural part of our life. As we employ it to evaluate and change our attitudes and activities, knowledge transforms into insight that soon ceases to be new or special and usually also does not give cause for vanity or arrogance.
Without this natural integration knowledge remains a foreign and separate component to us. Persons thirsting for high social status tend to display this formal, dead knowledge with vanity and in arrogant disdain for the 'less learned'. Convinced of their 'superiority' they like to define 'knowledge as the stiff data they accumulated. Their fellow people easily recognize the vanity for what it is - a flaw of personality, - but unfortunately they also tend to equate 'knowledge' with the stagnancy and boredom these people emanate. And this often kills their natural enthusiasm and thirst for growth.
Any use of learning' as a tool of power and attitudes of vanity or pride in it only document a total misunderstanding of the real function of knowledge.
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