Intelligence & Ignorance

In his first teaching, Buddha explained that the root cause of suffering is ignorance. But where exactly is this ignorance? And how does it display itself? Let’s take an everyday example. Think about those people --- we all know some --- who are gifted with a remarkably powerful and sophisticated intelligence. Isn’t it puzzling how, instead of helping them, as you might expect, it seems only to make them suffer more? It is almost as if their brilliance is directly responsible for their pain.
    What is happening is quite clear: this intelligence of ours is captured and held hostage by ignorance, which then makes use of it freely for its own ends. This is how we can be extraordinarily intelligent and yet absolutely wrong, at one and the same time.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoce

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There was a time I felt that I had no chance at attaining any sort of liberating spirituality because I wasn’t pure enough or intelligent enough to “get it”. It seemed to me that all of this enlightenment was for other people whose lives had not been held hostage by the same demons as mine. What Sogyal Rinpoche seems to be saying in this meditation is that we are indeed held hostage by ignorance no matter how pure and intelligent we might be. 

   It was refreshing news to me that I didn’t have to be a recruit for Mensa, or to be born into a yogic tradition from which no impurities were ever allowed in food or thought, in order to “get it”. The good news is that I don’t have to be the sharpest pencil in the drawer to sit and meditate. I don’t have to be a genius to be able to examine my motives and check them at the door before I sit. I can be compassionate and caring no matter what my mental capacity is because these qualities and actions are accessible to anyone regardless. All that is required of me is that I surrender to the basic genius of the Cosmic Intelligence of our Creator.

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