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Know Thyself, Forget Thyself to Become Thyself
Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” The worlds “Know Thyself” where even carved above the door on the Oracle at Delphi. So it is safe to say that lesson is literally carved in stone. But the Zen masters tell us something different. They say we need to forget ourselves. “To know yourself is to forget yourself,” Dogen Zen-Ji tells us. So which is it, to know yourself or to forget yourself.
There is value in knowing yourself. To become whom you are capable of becoming, it helps to know your interest and abilities. Success in life will be more effortless if you know what you have to offer. It also helps to know which areas are not your strengths to avoid wasting your time on things better left to others.
Knowing your values and what you want out of life will make it possible to define success in a meaningful way and ensure you don’t waste your life by misliving. Only by recognizing your gifts, interest, values, likes, and dislikes can you become the best you can be and live the best life you can live.
Next, you need to forget yourself as your ideas about yourself can become a cage that limits you. Forgetting your preconceived notions about yourself opens…
