Unknown Tibeto-Chinese Artist:
Enlightened Protector Mahakala with Six Arms [Shadbhuja] (18th/19th century)

"Certainty must certainly be the surest sign of ignorance."

Acquiring knowledge and understanding never occurs as advertised. I understood that I would be acquiring something and come to know as a result of my efforts, but the outcome seems to reliably be different than either of those. Determining the endpoint, when such searches are finished, proves challenging, and applying what I learn, even more so, for it seems that I acquire much less, but also much different, than I expected. Even when I adjust my expectations beforehand, based upon my long and disappointed experience, the result underwhelms me. It always seems much simpler than it should properly seem and also much more complicated. I tend to find myself incapable of explaining what I experienced, what I definitively learned. I feel more humbled than haughty.

It’s little wonder why the uneducated look down their noses at eggheads, for the learnéd among us have suffered a shit ton more humility than have the great unwashed. Those who never pursued enlightenment might have been the wiser for their choice, and might have wisely suspected the chase would have just become another ruse in disguise. They’ve been hoodwinked before. Take my attempt to understand Decency, for instance. It began in relative innocence. I was merely curious. Where had Decency gone? It seemed to be missing much of the time. I believed that I might come to understand better if I just asked myself some questions about Decency’s nature and practice. And I have come to realize, though the brand of realization surely doesn’t seem all that enlightening, or, if it actually is enlightenment, it doesn’t feel like I expected it to.

Maybe that’s the essence of enlightenment, that it doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to feel. It feels different, and that difference seems somehow unexplainable. Learning must not be like saving documents into files and files into folders where they can be easily retrieved. It’s far more fleeting than that. More impressionistic. Less tangible. Not a possession at all. Not necessarily reduced to an elevator speech. It seems more of a nod. Notional. Not a thing after all. Distinctly lacking thingness.

Ask me what I’ve learned about Decency, and I won’t know where to start explaining. My explanation seems more than likely to fail to explain anything useful. My emerging understanding of Decency does not seem fungible, so I feel cursed to use words that cannot help but misrepresent it. It seems primarily comprised of a most curious substance, one I might best label “not that.” My understanding seems to be the opposite of something. If I could only come to understand that opposite, I might be on to something, but understanding seems destined to lead back to the same point on my mind’s Mobiüs strip. Understanding seems different from what I expected. Even when I adjust my expectations to account for the differences I’ve experienced in my past, I still fail to grasp what it was I learned.

I mill around. Humbled by both my search and by what I suppose I found, I have little to parade around. I bring no stone tablets. I bring no golden ones, either. I’m still learning. I’m coming to understand that understanding Decency will most likely continue to elude me. Have I advanced beyond the naive state in which I began this exercise? Undoubtedly. Just don’t ask me how, for that disclosure seems too personal and must be stored in some unspeakable language. I feel humbled. I feel as though I’m bumbling this experience. I sense that I should have come to understand more tangibly, which was my naivete talking when I began, that I tried to adjust my expectations against, but failed. Enlightenment might be coming to sense that it was never about enlightenment. The more I come to understand, the less I know for certain. Certainty must certainly be the surest sign of ignorance.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz