Osho – Ordinarily we think people who know answers are wise. They may be learned but they are not wise. They may be very well informed, but information has nothing to do with wisdom. People who are really wise, in fact, have no answers. They have a quest, an enquiry, a tremendous enquiry in them, but no answers. By and by they come to understand that all questions are meaningless, so they drop questions also. A man becomes perfectly wise when he has no answers and no questions.
Ordinarily, if you have many answers you will be thought wise. But religiously, in the Zen way, if you don’t have any answers and no questions…. Questions exist in the mind and then mind tries to find out answers, then through answers mind creates more questions, and so on and so forth it goes. It is an endless chain, it goes on ad nauseam.
Once you understand this — that this whole game is a mind game — you simply drop it. You don’t hesitate in dropping it, you don’t postpone it for tomorrow — ‘I will drop it tomorrow’ — you drop it right now. You say, ‘This is just foolish.’
Then, of course, when you drop your foolishness, you will look a fool to the world. If somebody asks you, ‘Who are you?’ and you say, ‘I don’t know,’ will you look wise? He will think either you are a fool or a madman.’You don’t know? You don’t know your name? You don’t know who you are? You don’t know your identity?’ The man will become suspicious of you, he will report to the police immediately that here is a man who seems to be suspect, who could be dangerous. But if you say, ‘Yes, my name is this. My address is this,’ then everything is settled.
Socrates said in his last days, ‘When I was young I knew many things, and I used to think of myself as the wisest man in the world. The more I grew, the more I became aware that I didn’t know much. And then the last thing happened — one day I suddenly realised that I knew nothing.’
It is said that the oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world. People who had heard the oracle came to Socrates and told him that the oracle has declared that he was the wisest man in the world. Socrates looked shocked and he said, ‘There must have been some mistake, because just today I have realised that I don’t know anything at all. I am the most ignorant man in the world! You please go and correct the oracle.’ And they went and they told the oracle that Socrates himself says that he is the most ignorant man in the world. The oracle said, ‘That’s why I have declared him the wisest.’
The more open you become, the more innocent, the more childlike you become, the more the winds of existence start flowing in and out of you. The more you are knowing and have the gesture of knowledge, the more you are closed. Then you don’t allow the winds of existence to enter you, then you are always distrustful, you don’t trust life. A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.
Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don’t try to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as if just born, just a babe. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The world will start taking advantage of you… let them. They are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and robbed, let it happen because that which is really yours cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody can steal from you. And each time you don’t allow situations to corrupt you, that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your soul will become more crystallised.
Source – Osho Book “Dang Dang Doko Dang”