if prajna exists

usually, it’s hard to
tell exactly 
what all the practice 
and studying
is meant to do.

you vaguely think
it’s got something 
to do with 
getting to see
a whole different world
than the one you’re
stuck in.

you think you see
the world you’re in
only too well.
there’s somehow 
got to be
some other world
you’re not seeing 
that’s a lot better than
this one.

that’s what makes
the whole thing so
disappointing.

what you keep 
seeing is
who did what 
to whom.
that’s what you think 
the world is.

the seeing that couldn’t care less 
who did what to whom
is what the buddhist books talk about as
prajna.

it’s the intelligent
things you think before
you think all those other things
like how terrible it is and how
great it is.

prajna is how you get to read
the world right in front of you.

usually, people don’t believe in it.
it’s not how you got trained to be. 
you got trained to think 
what will come of it if I do this, 
what will come of it if I do that?

lots of fast thinking 
like that
is what you use 
to deny the
very existence 
of prajna.
it’s impossible even to
think such a thing
could exist.

if prajna exists, 
all your other thinking 
has no reason to 
be there.

you see prajna as
arrogant 
and selfish and calculating
and controlling.
you reduce it to one more
person’s opinion.

but the more you 
do that 
the more intimidating 
it becomes.

you can’t really be 
trained to act out of 
prajna.

you also don’t get to
use the excuse 
that you’re not that 
advanced, 
that’s why you can’t 
read the world 
like those advanced 
teachers. 

prajna is you stop 
attacking everything
and everybody 
and yourself 
with all your other 
thinking. 

you don’t care
what comes of it.
you do things because
those things
need to be done.

it’s not to make 
your relationships 
work out.
that’s not the point. 

it’s how you read 
the world, 
instead of going to
war with it.