7) When aroused, become awake. When awake, reach understanding.
I will be honest and forthright with this one – I have not been able to find any reference to it beyond the KFEB. It’s likely to be a Buddhist reference, specifically with the words “awake” and “understanding”. When I was younger, this one perplexed me and I don’t think that I gave it much thought beyond the obvious escalating steps in the process to understanding.
While in my twenties, I learned more about Buddhism but I didn’t go down that path that much at the time. I had found Taoism to be an interesting philosophical outlook, so I did a lot of research on it at the time, but Buddhism had similar concepts that seemed to tie together and created a little confusion for my research at the time.
My interpretation of that time was still that the escalating steps were there towards understanding, which I still felt to be more in line with academic or conceptual understanding; admittedly, I didn’t look at the whole of the statement, but instead focused on the end result.
It made sense: When you wake up, try to see the world as it is… and it was through this that you could understand how everything worked. I am not saying that this isn’t a viable interpretation because it was for me, and still is in some ways, but it isn’t the current interpretation that I have for this particular line of wisdom.
What I have come to understand, and this is probably going to change like all of my previous interpretations, is a little complex and comes with layers of external interpretation and ‘baggage’.
In Buddhism, the commonly assumed goal is one of “awakening”, or “enlightenment”… but that isn’t always the case. The endstate (rather than “goal”, which has semantic overtones that aren’t exactly in line with many Buddhist ideas regarding ‘attachment’ and ‘attainment’, specifically Zen.) is actually liberation (moksha) from the cycle of suffering (dukkha).
I’m not going to go through all of the concepts above, nor am I going to explain all of the interpretive baggage from the various evolutions of these beliefs. Instead, I’m going to give my viewpoint.
“When aroused, become awake.” This means the moment of the inquisitive spark (arousal) starting someone on his or her path to enlightenment. Enlightenment is a recognition of all of the interconnections, and the dependence of every single thing upon every other single thing… This is to “become awake.”
This awakening is like a light coming on – the flames being fanned from the spark of the arousal on the kindling of recognition and curiousity.
“When awake, reach understanding.” I can only hazard an academic review of this, but when you’ve fanned the flames and recognize everything’s interconnections, the understand where that comes from… that’s the next step, if there is a step by step process…
It’s sort of like, in Martial Arts training, when you think too much about something and try to understand it, it is forever elusive. Understanding in this particular context is an experience, not a quantifiable thing…
When your body does a technique without thought, it is said that you can do it… but it is when you know when to use that technique, then you understand it.
You come to Karate because you’re curious, stay because you’re intrigued at what it is revealing to you, and later come to recognize all of the things it did for you, beyond the obvious…
