Ignorance is simply not knowing the facts, having the facts wrong, or having incomplete knowledge. All of these forms of ignorance lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation, overestimation and underestimation.
Suppose that you are searching for your friend and you see him in a distant field. When you approach, you discover that you have mistaken a scarecrow for your friend. You are bound to be disappointed. It is not as if either the mischievous scarecrow or your friend tried sneakily to mislead you, it is your own ignorance that betrayed you.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist
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Further quotes from the book What Makes You Not a Buddhist:
- Emotionally not possible
- Change is inevitable
- Eventually we are disappointed
- Beyond nonviolence and meditation
- Like a child at the cinema
- Four seals
- Enjoying the bliss of ignorance
- The real source of fear is not knowing
- The impossible is possible
- Happily ever after
- Like moths to the flame
- Fearlessness
- Shielding ourselves and others from the truth
- Driven by ambitions
- Understanding the nature of enlightenment
- Nonviolence
- Corrosion begins as soon as creation begins
- The primordial absence of defilements
- Products and parts
- Emptiness