From the Enlightened Zen Masters:
You can go on thinking, accumulating information -- but those are paper boats, they won't help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay -- paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage; but if you go for the voyage with paper boats then you will be drowned. And words are nothing but paper boats -- not even that substantial. And when we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside. The being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you -- just like dust gathering around a mirror: the mirror remains the same, only it loses its mirroring quality. What you know through the mind makes no difference -- your consciousness remains the same. In fact it becomes worse, because accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your mirroring consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.
The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrotlike.
When there is no knowledge, knowing happens, because knowing is your quality - the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you, just at the tip of your nose.
