The end of reading is understanding is a proposition concerning the relationship between reading and awakening. It holds that the point of reading lies not in reading a great deal, but in using words to reach the very “understanding” that words themselves can never give you; and once that understanding dawns, the quantity of one’s reading ceases to be any measure of worth. The proposition argues further that insight bears no direct relation to the amount one reads — the ancients read far less than we do, yet they could awaken to the most profound truths — and so the yardstick for whether one’s reading has hit the mark is not the count of pages and volumes, but whether one has “read until a truth could be drawn out of it.” Its original formulation runs: “Reading only lets you understand certain things that words themselves can never give you… Once you understand, it no longer matters how many books you read or how much hardship you swallow; at most, those things become idle talk over tea.”
Reading Is the Means, Understanding the End
In this proposition, reading and setback are set side by side as one and the same kind of tool: both exist to bring a person to understand “the thing that words can never give you.” What words can transmit is only a pointing, not the thing pointed to; what one is really trying to reach lies outside of words. From this a boundary is drawn for reading — it has an end, and that end is “understanding.”
Reading only lets you understand certain things that words themselves can never give you… Once you understand, it no longer matters how many books you read or how much hardship you swallow; at most, those things become idle talk over tea.
After understanding has arrived, to go on reading and to go on suffering add nothing more; at most those experiences sink into “idle talk over tea.” To treat reading as an end in itself, to take pride in how much one has read, is here taken as the mark of one who has not reached the end. This shares a root with Language and Concepts All Leak: The Finger Pointing at the Moon, War Waged on Paper — words are the finger pointing at the moon, and to stare at the finger without looking at the moon is, however much you read, to remain stuck on the finger.
The Yardstick Is Not Quantity
From “understanding is the end” follows a direct conclusion: how far one must read before it is enough cannot be gauged by quantity. The criterion offered is “read until a truth can be drawn out of it, and that is enough.”
As for books, I think it is enough to read until you can draw a truth out of them. Books can never be finished; and besides, the ancient sages themselves did not read all that many books — much of their wisdom was awakened to within the experience of living.
Two reasons support this yardstick. First, books objectively cannot be finished, so to make “finishing them” or “reading a great many” the goal is to set oneself a task that can never be closed. Second, the source of wisdom is mainly not books but the insight awakened to within the experience of living — the ancient sages had not read all that much. In other words, books are merely one of many media that can trigger insight, and not even the chief one. This chimes with Long-Termism: Abstraction Reaches the Essence, and the Process Is to Be Savored: what one is truly trying to reach is the abstract essence, and words are only one of several paths toward that essence.
Insight Bears No Direct Relation to How Much You Read
The most counterintuitive thread in this proposition is its complete decoupling of “insight” from “the amount one reads.”
The ancients actually read fewer books than we do, yet they could awaken to the most profound truths — which shows that insight bears no direct relation to how much one reads.
The argument runs by way of a contrast between past and present: the books available to people today far outnumber those of the ancients, yet the profound truths were mostly awakened to by the ancients. If insight were positively correlated with the amount one reads, this phenomenon could not stand. From this follows the conclusion — “no direct relation.” Insight has another source: it comes from the experience of living, from the capacity to see through to the essence, and not from how many pages one has turned. This runs in a single line with Intuition Knows in an Instant: Seeing Through to the Essence Is a Rare Gift: whether one can awaken to a truth is closer to a gift and a state of seeing through to the essence than to an accumulation of reading volume. And precisely for this reason, reading is never taken here as the sole shortcut to cognition; the real shortcut is cognition itself, as in Raising Your Cognition Is the Only Shortcut: You Cannot Earn Money Beyond Your Cognition.
”Learning Whatever You Need” Is the Sign of Understanding
Once understanding has dawned, the manner of one’s reading changes with it. An operable sign marks the change: when a person no longer reads cover to cover in lockstep, but turns instead to “learning whatever they need,” that is understanding.
Further on, you find that you learn whatever you need, and everything else is deliberate practice — that is understanding.
In this state, study shifts from “reading for the sake of reading” to “taking up what serves use”: what is needed now, one learns; what is not directly needed falls into the category of “deliberate practice,” kept as honing rather than as an end. This shift marks that the subject has now grasped that “understanding,” and can therefore turn around and command the words rather than being led along by them. It echoes Why Matters Far More Than How — only once the understanding of the “why” is in hand does the “how” recede into a technical detail to be drawn upon as needed.
The Tedious and the Unclear Are, Instead, the Bricks and Bridges to Awakening
The proposition has one further facet that is not easily noticed: those parts that one cannot understand at the moment, that hold no interest, that seem tedious, are not necessarily the dross to be skipped over — on the contrary, they may be the most crucial passage of all.
tedious work can sometimes lead to insight… some parts of a book that you don’t fully understand at the moment, or aren’t particularly interested in, may actually help you the most. They become the bricks, and sometimes even the bridges, on the path to realization.
Tedious work can sometimes be exactly what draws out insight; the passages of a book that you do not fully grasp or have no interest in at the moment may, on the path to awakening, help you the most — they are the bricks, and sometimes even the bridges. This facet keeps the earlier “read until a truth can be drawn out is enough” from being misread as “read only what you love and what comes easily.” The end of understanding is not the avoidance of difficulty, but the seeing-clearly that difficulty and incomprehension are themselves the material out of which understanding is reached. This is structurally one with Suffering Is the Tempering of the Soul — hardship and incomprehension are not obstacles to be skirted but the process of tempering and of paving the way — and just as Only the Road Is Real: The Process Is the Purpose says, the bricks and the bridges are all laid along the road.
Sources
- Manuscript — “Reading only lets you understand certain things that words themselves can never give you… Once you understand, it no longer matters how many books you read or how much hardship you swallow; at most, those things become idle talk over tea”; “Further on, you find that you learn whatever you need, and everything else is deliberate practice — that is understanding”
- Manuscript — the full formulation of the end of reading being understanding, and of learning whatever you need
- Manuscript — which shows that insight bears no direct relation to how much one reads”
- Manuscript — “As for books, I think it is enough to read until you can draw a truth out of them. Books can never be finished; and besides, the ancient sages themselves did not read all that many books — much of their wisdom was awakened to within the experience of living”
- Manuscript — “tedious work can sometimes lead to insight… They become the bricks, and sometimes even the bridges, on the path to realization”
See also
- Language and Concepts All Leak: The Finger Pointing at the Moon, War Waged on Paper
- Raising Your Cognition Is the Only Shortcut: You Cannot Earn Money Beyond Your Cognition
- Intuition Knows in an Instant: Seeing Through to the Essence Is a Rare Gift
- Long-Termism: Abstraction Reaches the Essence, and the Process Is to Be Savored
- Suffering Is the Tempering of the Soul