Ignorance

Even a learned man must bow before an illiterate Sage. The illiterate man is simply ignorant; the learned man is learnedly ignorant; the Sage is also ignorant, because there is nothing for him to know. Ramana Maharshi.

The world, filled with attachments and aversions and the rest, is like a dream: it appears to be real as long as one is ignorant, but becomes unreal when one is awake. Shankara.

In other living creatures ignorance of self is nature; in man it is vice.  Boethius

I stood in the middle of the world and I appeared to them in the flesh. I found them all drunk. I found none that were thirsty. And my soul was troubled for the children of men, for they are blind in their hearts, and they do not see that they came empty into the world.  Gospel According to Thomas

You have abandoned the one who lives before you.  Gospel According to Thomas

The most cowardly, irresponsible and self-defeating thing I can do is to live and die without bothering to look and see who's living and dying.  D.E. Harding

You examine the face of heaven and earth but you don't know what is where you are, and you ignore the present moment.  Gospel According to Thomas

Do not look for teachings... for the Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Ramana Maharshi 

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. Yasutani Roshi 

A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.
Lucretius 

In darkness are they who concentrate only upon the finite. In greater darkness are those who concentrate upon the infinite alone. Isha Upanishad  

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