From Words to Knowing: Milking the Scriptures Without Worshipping the Cow

We usually begin our lives knowing because of words.

Someone names the world for us.
Someone tells us what is right, what is sacred, what matters.
Language arrives before understanding, and through language, worlds form.

Civilizations are born this way.

The Vedas shaped one world.
The Bible shaped another.
So did many scriptures that came, flourished, and quietly vanished with the cultures that carried them.

Words do that. They don’t just describe reality.
They organize it.

And yet, words are not where knowledge begins.

The Milk Metaphor We Often Miss

There is a beautiful image in the dhyāna śloka of the Bhagavad Gita.

Krishna, the cowherd, milks the cow.
The cow is the Upanishads.
The milk is the Gita.
Arjuna, the calf, drinks.

This is not poetic ornamentation. It is instruction.

Krishna does not ask Arjuna to eat grass.
He does not ask him to worship the cow endlessly.
He draws out nourishment that has already been transformed.

Milk is not raw nature.
It is processed essence.

The metaphor quietly tells us something radical:

Scriptures are not meant to be clung to.
They are meant to be milked.

Vedas Have a Purpose. So Do Those Who Live by Them.

The Vedas have a role.
Ritual, structure, repetition, preservation, transmission — all of this matters.

Those who dedicate their lives to maintaining that structure also serve a purpose. Civilizations need continuity.

But purpose is contextual.

Not every path is every person’s path.

To say “this is not mine” is not rejection.
It is discernment.

The Bhagavad Gita itself allows this clarity. It never demands uniformity. It recognizes nature, inclination, readiness.

That recognition reaches a quiet turning point in one understated verse.

When Krishna says that for one who truly knows, the Vedas are like a small well when the land is flooded with water, he is not insulting the Vedas. He is relocating authority.

The center shifts:

from text to seeing,
from repetition to realization,
from inherited words to lived clarity.

Words Are Born of Knowledge, Not the Other Way Around

There is a simple sentence that carries a truth worth pondering:

शब्दाः ज्ञानजन्याः
Words are born of knowledge.

We usually assume the opposite.
We assume we know because we have words.

But every scripture, every revelation, every philosophy began somewhere before language, in silence, insight, or direct seeing.

Knowledge does not depend on articulation.
Articulation depends on knowledge.

That does not make words useless.
It gives them their proper place.

Words are instruments, not origins.

Yes, Words Create Worlds

This is where the nuance matters.

Through words:

societies are formed,
laws are written,
values are transmitted,
inner narratives are shaped.

Language builds experience.
It gives shape to life.

So when we say knowledge is self-luminous, we are not denying the creative power of language.

We are saying this:

Knowledge illuminates itself.
When it enters language, worlds arise.

Worlds can be beautiful.
Worlds can also imprison.

When words forget their source, they harden into dogma.
When scriptures forget silence, they turn into weapons.

Most conflict is not born from knowledge.
It is born from expressions mistaking themselves for truth.

Why Later Generations Must Milk, Not Memorize

No generation starts from silence.

We inherit languages, traditions, stories, books.
That is natural.

But maturity begins when we stop mistaking inheritance for insight.

Later generations have a different responsibility:

to extract essence,
to see through formulation,
to taste what gave birth to the words.

This is what it means to “milk” a tradition.

Not to abandon it.
Not to literalize it.
But to draw nourishment and move forward.

That is how the Gita emerged from the Upanishads.
That is how living wisdom has always moved.

Reading Scriptures, Reading the World, Reading Ourselves

This stance changes how one reads everything:

a sacred text,
a philosophy,
a culture,
even an AI-generated response.

Begin with words.
Respect them.
Use them.

But do not stop there.

Let them point you back to the silence they came from.

Because words can guide.
Worlds can form.
Traditions can endure.

But knowing — real knowing — does not belong to language.

It shines by itself.

And when it ripens, it does not stay mute.
It speaks.

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