Is life experience knowledge?

[bkadoctaj]

Originally Posted by CosmicSerpent

The way I have always thought about it is that life experience is a tool to gain knowledge. Some people use the tool to the best of their ability, and others completely ignore it. It is possible to gain knowledge without life experience, but the level of knowledge you are able to gain is limited without it for most people. To me, there is a component of knowledge that is missing if you don't have some sort of experience to go along with it.... I don't know what to call this component, maybe understanding, or observation, or comprehension. None of those words seem quite right, but hopefully you know what I'm getting at. You can read and study an entire lifetime about the world, but until you have experienced your life to the fullest, none of it fits together exactly right in the big picture. It's hard for me to explain this accurately, but here's an example...

Imagine there's a young man working on his doctorate in some advanced science, or philosophy or something. He's been in school his entire life, always been at the top of the class, has tuition virtually paid off in scholarships, but he has never had a real job or traveled very far. Now imagine there's an old man, in retirement, he's never had more than a high school education, but he's worked hard, he's met people, he's been places. The old man has a better understanding of how the world works, even though the student has more technical knowledge.

The movie "Good Will Hunting" comes to mind.

By what in your life is not a part of your "experience"? What that you do or perceive (interpretations of others' "first-hand" experiences) is not experiencing?

[CosmicSerpent]

Originally Posted by bkadoctaj

By what in your life is not a part of your "experience"? What that you do or perceive (interpretations of others' "first-hand" experiences) is not experiencing?

Well everything in life is ultimately part of a person's "experience", but some kinds of experience can be more valuable than others. Of course we gain knowledge from any experience, but that knowledge starts to become more limited the longer you have the same experience over and over. Like if a person lives in the same town their entire life, sure they understand a lot about that town, its people, its "cultural identity" I guess you could say. But that identity is completely different in context with the rest of the world. Someone who's lived in many different places and traveled a lot has a better understanding of the world as a whole.

[bkadoctaj]

Originally Posted by CosmicSerpent

Well everything in life is ultimately part of a person's "experience", but some kinds of experience can be more valuable than others. Of course we gain knowledge from any experience, but that knowledge starts to become more limited the longer you have the same experience over and over. Like if a person lives in the same town their entire life, sure they understand a lot about that town, its people, its "cultural identity" I guess you could say. But that identity is completely different in context with the rest of the world. Someone who's lived in many different places and traveled a lot has a better understanding of the world as a whole.

Since you won't be able to experience it all, you have to estimate every once in awhile. The understanding of estimation is part of experience. What really is relevant to what means something to you deep down is what you really must strive to focus on, as opposed to, say, knowledge for knowledge's sake. To understand what is relevant, one must estimate oneself. To achieve this, one must compare/distinguish/discriminate between things.

If you heard two contradictory ideas from one person, obviously you wouldn't just take the ideas and not reflect on how that person's mind might be working. That thought can lead to a better understanding/estimation of one's personal experience.

[mrblonde77]

No. It's wisdom.

[PAGreenThumb]

I'll quote D.T. Suzuki in his book "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism":

"Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience. A baby has no ideas, for its mentality is not yet so developed as to experience anything in the way of ideas. If it has them at all, they must be something extremely obscure and blurred and not in correspondence with realties. To get the clearest and most efficient understanding of a thing, therefore, it must be experienced personally."

It continues on to describe the importance of personal experience in life (meanings) and so on...

I feel personally that experiencing things yourself is the most genuine way to learn and adapt to change and understand the world we live in. This is obviously from the context of a Zen frame of thought (or anti-thought if you will) although still very interesting in my opinion.

[bkadoctaj]

Originally Posted by PAGreenThumb

I'll quote D.T. Suzuki in his book "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism":

"Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience. A baby has no ideas, for its mentality is not yet so developed as to experience anything in the way of ideas. If it has them at all, they must be something extremely obscure and blurred and not in correspondence with realties. To get the clearest and most efficient understanding of a thing, therefore, it must be experienced personally."

It continues on to describe the importance of personal experience in life (meanings) and so on...

I feel personally that experiencing things yourself is the most genuine way to learn and adapt to change and understand the world we live in. This is obviously from the context of a Zen frame of thought (or anti-thought if you will) although still very interesting in my opinion.

True, although there is some neglect for forgetfulness in that view. Forgetfulness is a filter, and useful at that.