Yes, I know?

I'm afraid I don't know very much, despite the advantages I've had in education and experience. I've learned a lot of names of things and read a lot of books, but the things I feel I know best aren't the things my head has learned. They are the things my heart has learned. I trust my reason most of the time, but I probably trust my feelings more when it comes to knowledge of things that reason or science hasn't yet proven.

It is said that man's distinct advantage over other animals is language, yet many animals have complex communication skills like us (whales, dolphins, even ants and bees, for example). It is also said that man alone can reason. Well, maybe. We can try to confirm our hunches and to avoid known fallacies through Greek logic, inductive and deductive (and I don't think whales and dolphins, ants and bees have had the pleasure). But what is invented by man to try to organize our thoughts logically is, well, still invented by man, isn't it. It's not really knowing.

The Eastern mind relies much less on rational thought and much more on intuitive grasp, on perceptive rather than reasoned truth. In that sense, Zen and Tao are much closer to what I mean by "knowing" things with my heart, or "trusting my feelings." As creatures we can reason, but we can also feel. Surely there is a function for each faculty as part of our biological and survival equipment; neither ought to be totally suppressed by the other.

But again it is said, reason must ultimately be the master over feeling, for the latter can mislead. Our feelings are after all based on our perceptions, which can be faulty--even dead wrong. To follow our feelings blindly can lead to disastrous actions. Well, maybe that's true. Many's the time I've found out my "take" on a situation was really wrong, especially when I thought I knew someone's intentions or motives but totally misread them. And the most insidious thing about strong feelings is that they tend to be self-justifying: "I feel so strongly that such and such is true, so it surely must be so." That's when reason and evidence needs to assert itself. Feelings are the result of what we interpret to be true, not the evidence, and not the cause. But reason, similarly, can be incomplete or faulted. It is at least limited, for all our faith in it. I suspect we as creatures simply cannot really Know much of anything, absolutely.

Since neither reason nor feelings are totally reliable all the time. I guess each has to be tempered with the other, and if reasons can't always be found for feeling a certain way, it doesn't mean they don't exist, only that they're not yet discovered. Similarly, if reasons or evidence for a certain conclusion aren't supported with the feelings of the heart, it doesn't mean that the heart's response isn't valid, only that caution is needed. The important thing, I think, is to try to keep the mind--and the heart--open to change, and to recognize that what we think we know isn't always the full story. We all see through a glass darkly. And when we close the circle on truth and don't permit change, that's when we get into trouble.