Oboe Not Duck

Welcome to Sutra a Day.

I hear a bird squawking outside reminding me of band when I was a kid, specifically of the oboe. The oboe can be a beautiful instrument, but in the hands of many junior high school band members it can also sound a bit like a duck in pain. Junior high was a painful time, at least to me.  I have a coworker who raves about his junior high and high school years, his shenanigans and high jinks, circle of friends. I feel like he’s relaying the plot to some hip movie he has seen most of the time. This was not my life, I still think navigating the hormone-ridden landscape of pre and early adolescence is akin to hell on earth. 

Still, I think back to those early days in life and what I knew and what I didn’t know. I knew marriages could fall apart. I knew fathers could cry. I knew school was as much for socialization as for learning from books. I knew somehow that I would always be alone in life. I knew how to play the clarinet – so that it sounded more like an instrument than a pained animal. I knew there were other places in the world to explore, that my small town and my junior high weren’t the only world that would ever exist, even if it felt like it. But still, I knew I would always be alone. Did it matter?

Nothing I thought I knew came from a book. It came from a place of experience and emotions. Was it “right knowledge”? Definitely not. There were a lot of filters there, that’s for sure. But it was what I knew. 

Right vs. Wrong…. Knowledge?

7. Pratyaksanumanagamah pramanani.  “The sources of right knowledge are direct perception, inference and scriptural testimony.”

When I read this sutra for the first time, it didn’t sit well with me. First of all, I thought, what the heck is “right” knowledge. Defining it simply in terms of its sources didn’t make sense to me. What did right mean in this context. And what is wrong. We already know that “right knowledge” is one of the painful or painless mental modifications and that these mental modifications are a barrier to the Seer inside us, they fog the window, filter the view, etc. So – is knowledge a goal? Svadhyaya, the fourth niyama, would advise us to study ourselves and our texts. So it would seem that study and knowledge are both a part of the path and a mental modification. Fun. I’ll deal with that later. 

The other thing that didn’t sit right with me was that scriptural testimony was automatically considered right knowledge. But we must always critically examine, I thought to myself. Scripture and scriptural testimony – do they come to us from the divine that each of use contains or through the mental modifications of the writer? In any case, I’m feeling better about this now than I was then. It occurred to me that just because scriptural testimony was a source of right knowledge, it didn’t mean everything in scripture was right, just that there was right knowledge to be found there. And indeed, I believe that wisdom can be found in the commonalities that all great faith traditions have – far more so than it can be found in their differences. 

So here’s what Satchidananda has to say about it.  “One example of what Patanjali calls valid knowledge is what you understand by seeing something yourself… Another is by inference. Seeing smoke, you infer there is a fire…And there is one more way,…. A reliable authority, or person who has really understood something tells you.” He agrees with me in that you shouldn’t do something just because someone tells you to, but then distinguishes between new inventions and those validated by having been around a really long time. He is suspicious of new knowledge.  Still this is his interpretation, I don’t see that the actual sutra says “ancient” scriptural testimony. Perhaps because the sutras are themselves pretty ancient. You’d have to go pretty far back.  

Ultimately, you have to discern context – whether it is direct perception, inference or scripture. Some ancient scriptures need reinterpretation in modern times or contexts, sometimes what you see and experience directly is still an illusion like a magic show. Much like intention is critical, so is context. It’s just another kind of filter. 

He does note that at the end, all knowledge goes, good or bad. But, he notes, emptying the mind is a process, better to fill it with the good and the right and get rid of the bad or the wrong as a first step. However you feel about an empty mind, I know my mind often feels full. Who has time for being a jerk – to the world or oneself – or for lies or inauthenticity.  

Still, sometimes right knowledge hurts. Sometimes it is painful. Parents do get divorced. Love does turn to pain. But we are never really alone. And the bird may sound like a 7th grade oboe player. But it’s not.