Philosophy, to me, had been a center of attraction where people including myself got attracted to and discussed “important matters”. At this center, people, who had spent a long time reading the greatest works of the famous philosophers, would talk about various issues. They’d spend time reasoning out answers to various questions. Someone would pose a question and people would try and answer them each one trying to justify whose answer was correct. And then one fine day, a “philosopher” backed out. And that was me!
For some strange reason I cannot explain I knew there was something wrong about this and could not bring myself to continue getting attracted to the center. I did not feel this was philosophy. But then again, I strongly feel that maybe it is me who does not understand what philosophy means. I was perhaps under some kind of a spell that did not allow me to truly understand what philosophy is.
I find it quite interesting to note that the word “philosophy” and the word “progress” occur in the same section of the dictionary. My firm belief is that philosophy is all about progress. And I do not find progress in endless debates at the “centers” about the meaning of truth, meaning of this and the meaning of that. Let me make it clear that these debates can be enriching but usually end up being loops and circles or arguments rather than enlightening most of the times.
There are two sources of philosophical knowledge according to me. One is a room full of books. Yes, lock yourself up in a room, read one book. Read it well and once that is completed proceed to reading the second book. Third, fourth and so on! And then one day, you leave the room and go out only to enter another room which is the center I was talking about earlier. Here, you meet people who have been doing what you have been doing. And now, you start discussing which of the authors has been correct and why.
Then there is the second source of knowledge. Life itself! Yes, life can teach us a lot. Go out and see life. See the people on the streets. Talk to all the people from all the walks of life. See the criminal committing crimes, see the children, see the adults! And then come back home and think about the differences between the happiness of one man and the happiness of the other, the happiness of the adult and the happiness of the child. Think about the mechanical existences of the people and think about what could be common in all this diversity. Listen to people, listen to what they have to say about their lives and the lives of the others.
And somewhere down the line, the person whose source of knowledge has been the one described above comes across a book written by one great philosopher. As he reads the words of wisdom, he feels a strange resonance. He literally ‘feels’ the truth in his words. All this time when the man was experiencing life, his counterpart was reading and reading. Now, in terms of books there is a difference of perhaps a hundred books. But the latter man has experience and it is he who is on the path of the progress and in my view, the true philosopher. This reminds me of what the character of Morpheus tells Neo in the Matrix movie : “There is a difference between walking the path and knowing the path!”
When we read books and we debate about the rightness of one thing and the wrongness of the other, we are trying to know the path. And by ‘knowing’ I only mean that we are merely speculating about how it would be to walk the path and possible experiences one might gain from it. But that is all we are doing. We simply gaze down a road and speculate about where it leads and how that place can be but what we ought to be doing is walking on it and seeing where it leads. And walking is something only life can teach! I refuse to believe that there can be a book which, to a ‘normal’ man can give both knowledge and wisdom.
It is like all the subjects we read in our universities. We have something called theory and then something known as practical or field work. Why is that necessary? Imagine a man who has been living his entire life in zero gravity in space. Now, he does not know what gravity is. He can read a lot of books about it. But let us take him to a planet and let him feel gravity for himself. That experience of gravity cannot be got from any book! Same is the case with philosophy. You may read a hundred books. But there are life lessons out there waiting to be learnt. Go out and meet life! See what you can learn from people, “lowest” and the “highest” whatever that means. Question and reason, the answers will come!
You talk about the meaning of life and death. You talk about suffering and happiness. You talk about mechanical nature of existence. You talk about how desire is the root cause of all misery. You talk about the hundred paths prescribed a hundred philosophers to “evaluate the truth”. That is all talk and nothing but talk. Only a man who has experienced life can truly feel and understand all this! An experienced man who has never read a book can many a times speak words that stun the best of “philosophers”.
And in conclusion, let me just say that for those of you who tend to think only from one extreme to the other extreme, I am neither suggesting that you detest books and neither am I suggesting you to lock yourself up with books! Who am I to suggest anyway? I only state my belief, my conviction that the lessons life teaches are far greater and far richer than all books of knowledge together.