this reminds me of Huineng. he was illiterate and heard a section of the Diamond Sutra, immediately understood. then he went to a monastery, corrected the head monk's writing and ended up with transmission from the 5th ancestor.

it also reminds me of tea ladies on the road and some monk seeking a master, carrying all these scrolls. the monk has the scrolls memorized but no clue what the Way is. the tea lady asks a question and the monk is stumped.

avoiding intellectualization is one of my favourite themes to write about when i write about practice.

the Way is ordinary mind is commonn sense 🤙

Funny enough, we were just discussing this phenomenon in the context of “education” the other day. My experience working in a Montessori environment was the opposite—it emphasized the concrete first, using direct tactile experience as the foundation for abstraction. In contrast, traditional education often prioritizes symbols over reality. An apple isn’t actually an “Apple”—the apple you hold in your hand is the apple. Yet people conflate the symbol with the thing itself, making them susceptible to lexical control and propaganda designed to sever them from direct experience and, ultimately, from constructing reality on their own terms.