Right Questioning

Date Unknown

Before you ask something, I must tell you that there are two types of questioning. One type of questioning comes not because you do not know, but because you know something. It comes out of your so-called knowledge. You have the answer already and then you raise the question. It is so stupid!

Whatever you know, you have not really known it. Otherwise there would have been no question.

And secondly, because the question has been raised by a preconceived answer, you are not ready to receive a new answer. Whenever there is such questioning it is absolutely useless. It leads you nowhere.

Never ask because you know something. If you know, it is good. Then there is no need of a king.

And if you do not know, then ask as if you are ignorant, as if you do not know. Unless you feel that you do not know, you are never vulnerable, open, receptive. Receptivity is needed otherwise you raise a question and do not allow the answer to go in.

More or less, all questions are like that. We have the answer already and then there is a search for confirmation. We are not confident because we really do not know; we have simply gathered certain information. Now we want someone to give us conviction, someone to be a witness to our knowledge so that we can feel, "Yes, I am right."

This is very absurd. If you know, then knowledge itself, knowing itself, gives confidence. It is self- evident. If you know something then even if the whole world denies it, it makes no difference. And in the same way, if you do not know a thing and the whole world says, "Yes, this is right," that too makes no difference. Knowing is self-evident and ignorance is also self-revealing.

So do not ask from your knowledge. If you know, it is good. If you do not know, then be conscious that you do not know and ask from your conscious ignorance.

The second type of questioning - which is authentic questioning, sincere, honest - is always from the feeling that you do not know. Your doors are open. Now you are ready to invite the guest.

Otherwise you invite the guest and your house iS completely closed. Then you do not really invite.

If you invite, then make a space for the guest. If you have ready-made answers then you have no space within you to receive the answer.

Questioning is useless if there is no space to receive. See when you are asking a question, if there is any space to receive the answer. First create the space, then ask. Then the question is not merely intellectual, not merely mental. You are totally involved in it; your whole being is at stake, your total being This is what is meant by being existential. Now the question comes from your very existence, from your very being.

The first type of questioning is always conditioned by others. This must be understood very clearly.

Ignorance is yours, and your so-called knowledge is given by others. Ignorance is more existential than so-called knowledge. If you do not know, this not-knowing is yours. But if you say, "I know because I have read the Gita. I know because someone somewhere has said such and such a thing, because Buddha had such knowledge and I have become acquainted with it. Therefore, I know," this knowledge is not yours And remember, even your ignorance is more valuable than others' knowledge. At least it is yours.

Something can be done with it. It is real, existential. Nothing can be done with a fiction. The real can be transformed and changed, but with a fiction you can do nothing, with imagination you can do nothing. Imagined knowledge, based only on information, is fictitious. It is not existential.

So ask a question, inquire about something, through your existential feelings not your accumulated, mental information. If you really ask from your ignorance then your question will be universal in a way and individual in a way because when you ask from your ignorance you ask about a problem that is the same for everyone.

If you ask from your knowledge, then the problem differs. A Hindu will never ask a question that a Mohammedan will ask; a Christian will never ask the same question that a Jain will ask. A Mohammedan's knowledge is completely different from a Hindu's knowledge, but there is no such thing as Mohammedan ignorance and no such thing as Hindu ignorance. Ignorance is universal, existential, but knowledge differs. Mohammedan knowledge is different from Hindu knowledge or Jain knowledge, or Christian knowledge.

If your questioning comes out of your knowledge, it is bound to come out of your social conditioning.

Then it is not universal, existential. When a Mohammedan asks something, he himself is not really asking. That which has been forced upon him, imposed upon him, that which has been conditioned that conditioning is asking. The real man is hidden behind the Mohammedan. The imposed Mohammedan (the imposed Hindu) is asking. Then it is superficial, and whatsoever answer is given is not going to benefit you to your depths because the question was never from your depths.

Existential questioning means that you go through all the conditioned layers of your mind and ask - just as a pure, naked existence not as a Mohammedan, Sikh or Jain. Ask as if you have not been given any answers before. Put your answers aside. Then your question will be individual in a way, because it has come from you, and it will be simultaneously universal - because whenever someone goes inside himself so deeply, the same question comes.

So be existential in asking and never ask from your knowledge, ask from your ignorance. If you want transformation, mutation, then ask from your ignorance. Be aware of your ignorance. Dig deep and find that questioning which is coming out of your ignorance and not out of your knowledge.

Question:

It is both correct and incorrect in a way. Questions have been raised, otherwise answers would not be possible. It may be that you yourself have not raised the question but someone else has raised it. The first time the question was raised, it was raised from ignorance. And the first time it was answered, the answer was given by a person who knew. But then everything becomes formulated.

The question becomes formulated and the answer becomes formulated. Then we have ready-made questions and ready-made answers.

Every child is going to ask the same questions really - because existence is the same, the problems are the same. To pass through existence is to pass through the same suffering and the same inquiry. So just as a safety measure, parents and teachers give answers before the question is raised. Neither the question has been raised nor does the one who is answering it know the answer.

Both have become traditional, fixed. Because we know that the question is bound to come... Before it comes, the answer is given.

Once the question comes by itself, you will not be able to give a fixed answer to it. Once a real question comes into being, the society, the establishment, the father, the mother, the teacher, they will not be able to impose any answer. The real question is so powerful that old answers will not do.

So it is just as a safety measure - before one asks, give him an answer. Then the real question will never be raised, will never come into being. When you have been given an answer, when a false answer has been planted in you, you will begin to ask questions about the answer and not about the basic question itself.

A child goes on asking. You have planted an answer in him: You have told him that there is a God and that He has created the world. The child never asked you, but you have given him an answer.

The answer will go deep within the child because it was planted in him at a time when he was not even aware of the underlying question. He was not aware yet of existential problems.

Your answer will go deep in his mind and by the time the child begins to question things, the answer will have become a part of his unconscious. Now he will not ask whether the world has bean created or not. He will ask, "If God created the world, then why is there evil?"

This is a secondary question. It is not authentic, existential. It is because of your answer - the answer that God created the world. Now a problem arises. If God has created the world - it is taken for granted that God has created the world - then why is there evil? This 'why is there evil?' is a question that has been created by your answer - your answer to a question that was never asked.

There are layers and layers. Even this question about why there is evil can be answered before the child becomes aware that it is a question. Then, from a third level, he will raise questions.

The more sophisticated a society, the further away the questioning goes from the existential level.

Really, a sophisticated society, a cultured society, means one in which so many answers have been given for which there were no questions.

One has to begin from the beginning. That is why I insist that your answers must be thrown.

Otherwise you will continue to ask questions that are not basic, not existential, but only secondary - there because the answers were already implanted in you.

So I say that it is both correct and incorrect. If there is no question, on answer is possible. When a question comes into the world for the first time, it comes through existential inquiry. For a Buddha the question is existential, but for a Buddhist it is not. A Buddha's questioning does not come through his conditioning. He had raised the basic questions. He goes in search, and there is an answer.

He comes to know something. His answer is authentic because it has come through authentic questioning.

This answer will then be given to others - even though they may not be interested in the basic question in the least. But they accept the answer. It becomes an accumulation that makes them richer. At least it makes them feel richer. Now, they also know.

So you accumulate answers, many answers. Then these answers get transferred from generation to generation. And every generation goes on adding to them because in every generation some existential questions are asked and some existential knowings become realized. And the answers go on adding up...

So the more cultured a society is, the more the accumulated heritage of answers and the less the possibility of your being in a situation where you can ask a basic question. But if you cannot ask a basic question, you cannot receive a basic answer. If your questioning is false, you will continue receiving false answers.

First be aware of whether your question is coming from some answer that has been implanted in you or whether it is authentic. Ask something that is existential to you. It nothing had been taught to you - if no answer had been given to you: no theories, no systems, no religions - would there have been any question or not? If there would be any question, only that question can be existential, basic, religious.

So put aside all conditioned answers and dig deep into your original being. There will be questions - alive ones. You may even find it difficult to know how to formulate them, how to put them, how to ask them. Because you have never asked a fundamental question, you do not know how to ask.

Then, it is better not to ask. It is better to suffer because you don't know how to ask then to ask unnecessary things. Through that suffering, you will be able to ask. And the moment you are able to ask, you are ready to receive. The same process through which you become capable of asking a foundational question, the same process, is needed in other for a foundational answer to penetrate into you.

The same path is to be used. So go deep into yourself to find a real question. That digging deep will create a passage in you and this same passage can be used by me. If there is no passage in you then my answer cannot penetrate you any more than the depth from where your question has come. The same will be the layer of penetration. If your question is superficial then any answer will just become a superficial thing to you.

Sometimes it has happened that the questioner was authentic and the teacher was not. Still, the questioner could receive the answer. But when the reverse happens - when the teacher is authentic but the questioner is not authentic - then nothing can be done.

Even a false teacher will do because, really, the work is being done by you not by a teacher. Even a stone image will do. If you are really concerned with the question then even a stone image can give you the answer. But if you are not really concerned. then even a living Buddha is dead to you. It depends on you ultimately; it does not depend on the teacher. It depends on the disciple, it depends on the questioner.

If you can ask a foundational question, from the very heart of your being, the answer will come to you even if there is no one to answer you. The vacuum will create the answer, existence itself will give you the answer. But with false questioning, nothing is possible and nothing can be done.

So try to formulate a right question. Even if you fail in your effort it is good. Try to formulate some problem that comes from you: not from the society, not from your teachers, not from your upbringing - just from you.

This is a meditation This finding out is the meditation. So - find some question!