> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.zenmedicine.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Blood & Ink: Sacred Knowledge
- URL: https://www.zenmedicine.co/77/
- Published: 2025-01-08T14:17:52.000Z
- Updated: 2025-02-09T15:58:14.000Z
- Description: indigenous knowledge / deep responsibility / the ignorance excuse
- Author: Eric Brown
- Tags: Blood x Ink

## **The Hopi, a Native American tribe, have a term called ‘sacred knowledge’…**

It is knowledge that *comes with responsibility*.

It’s a package deal. Gain the knowledge, get the associated responsibility.

Humour me for a moment, as we explore a *metaphysical* implication of this.

The flipside could be: *Be careful what you learn, because if you don’t act on it properly (responsibility), you will suffer greatly.*

There’s something profound in this.

Because while many of you—and certainly myself—view gaining knowledge as a good thing, you lose one essential thing every time you learn something new: *the excuse of ignorance.*

You lose the get-out-of-jail-free card of saying *“Ahh I didn’t realize I had to do that,”* or *“Oh, I wasn’t sure I wanted that anyways.”*

Without the ignorance card, it is simply your fault. And you know it.

As much as we may hope, you simply cannot lie to yourself.

**The pain of not doing something you *know* you should have, or *wanted to*, can far exceed the momentary discomfort of making an ‘innocent mistake’ because you didn’t know better.**

Over the long run, it’s easier to *do the thing*.

You can’t run away from it. Knowledge is a Pandora’s box, once it’s opened, it’s open.

Rob Burbea in his fantastic work on ‘Soulmaking Dharma’ extends this as far as *anything that enters your imagination*, you have a responsibility to steward.

Things arise in your consciousness, sparks of inspiration, a calling toward a path, a momentary epiphany, because they are **YOURS** to work with. Even a dream can be considered a form of ‘new knowledge’.

And you don’t act on that at your peril.

**Do the best you can until you know better. Once you know better, do better.**

The temporal distance between the idea and your action is the suffering you will incur.

Knowledge and responsibility. Knowledge and response-ability.

This is Sacred Knowledge.

Let’s act on it,  
EB.