We either ask or answer countless questions through the day, without even being aware of them. If you pause to think, we are constantly asking mental questions when not verbal ones, some of them as simple as ‘Can I dash across the street before that car reaches here?’ ‘Do I have enough milk for the coffee?’ Based on the answers to these, we act. This is the most basic level of questions and answers but they certainly are not all.

Students of English literature would be familiar with Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ But there are other famous quotes on questions, like my favourite one by Voltaire: “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”, and this one by Claude Levi-Strauss, which stresses the importance of questions as tools of learning — “The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.”

Another famous one is by Carl Sagan, who, in his book in his book, The Demon-Haunted Worlds: Science as a Candle in the Dark says, “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

I however beg to differ with this. There are all kinds of questions of other kinds – malicious, aggressive, insulting, rhetorical and gossipy, not to mention the patently stupid and inane ones, even granting that they are sometimes used as conversation-starters or icebreakers. What else would you call a question like, ‘Are you eating?’ asked of a person who is, well….eating? I find the idle ‘timepass’ questions people ask Google of the same category..

Small children are the best ‘questioners’ in that they let their curiosity drive them into asking incessant questions, with an intent to understand their surroundings. I remember my young nephew start with the simple, ‘what is this?’ and continue with, ‘Does it cry?’ ‘What does it eat?’ And sometimes he would even ask, ‘Where is its mother?’ — questions that were common to both living and non-living things. Here was the thing: it was his way of finding out if was a living thing which in his worldview would make sounds and of course, eat! And it could eat, it needed a mother, right?

Their natural curiosity never lets them drop a question about what catches their eye and repeat the question over and over till their mind is able to comprehend something about their current object of interest. Not all adults are tolerant of their repeated questions and sometimes either ignore or scold them to stop bothering them. But there are also a lot of adults who patiently reply the same question over and over till the child is satisfied or moves on to another topic. They even use the opportunity to teach the child new things related to the original question, thus widening their knowledge base from a very young age.

The curiosity of the child takes a beating once formal schooling starts. With the exception of exclusive schools that nurture this trait and helps a child learn at his or her own pace, the education system is mind-numbing, with facts and theories fed into the minds of children. With crammed syllabi, lack of time and motivation of teachers, the questioning mind slowly gets dulled into a sullen acceptance and conformity. With obedience to rules and regulations placed at a premium, questions are often considered expressions of insolence and disobedience towards authority.

Often students baulk at asking a question to clarify a doubt when his classmates are all sitting quietly, apparently having understood everything. Oh, how many times have I held my tongue when I wanted to ask a question to clarify my doubt during a class, because I didn’t want to look stupid or dumb. What I never realised is that perhaps I was perhaps one of the few who had at least understood a part of the lecture. I remember being told many times that if one doesn’t have any doubts in the class, it either meant that we had understood everything or nothing at all.

Having said that, where would the world be without questions? There would pretty much not have been any inventions or discoveries, no streams of study, no philosophical schools of thought, no buildings or roads, no means of transport, and at a more basic level, no clothes, houses, and food that is not directly eaten off the land, water, or air. Questions are the single most important factor that helps us gather information and gain knowledge. Mark Twain acknowledged their usefulness when he said, “I keep six honest serving-men. They taught me all I knew. Their names are Why, How, What, When, Where, Who.”

Of these, the last four (what, when, who and where) largely provide us with information or elicit specific replies to simple questions. But the how and why questions are the ones that have been the reason why scientific knowledge and philosophical thought streams have grown and developed in the world, as pointed out at the outset. We need the Why and How, if we want to process that information into knowledge. (This doesn’t apply to philosophical musings and existential questions like ‘Who am I?’ ‘What is the purpose of life?’ etc.)

When the purpose of asking a question is to widen one’s knowledge, it is important to ask the right and relevant questions. Asking such questions is an art and a skill. Our ancient rishis built vast reservoirs of knowledge we are blessed with, only by asking relevant questions and seeking answers to them. There are entire Upanishads that are based on questions, to prove this. Kena Upanishad (Kenopanishad) and Prashna Upanishad (Prashnopanishad) are two of them. Both have ‘question’ in their titles – kena meaning ‘By whom?’, and Prashna meaning questions.

At its simplest, Prashnopanishad is an explanation of the mantras of Mundaka Upanishad covering Six Questions and their Replies, all leading to self-realisation and enlightenment. Kenopanishad is all about finding out ‘by whom’. It guides the seeker to ask the right questions to find the relevant answers, for example: By Whom is everything moving, growing and decaying? By what force is the embodied life and all those that I meet sustained? And what power exists beyond all of manifestation? (Read more here)

Questioning and debating are central to Sanatana Dharma. A committed seeker has Vedic texts, philosophies based on them, and commentaries on them by scholars of ancient India to serve as guideposts in the quest. This is why there are so many streams of Hindu philosophy and schools of thought, all of which are the result of this questioning spirit. Sanatana Dharma does not demand implicit obedience to the ‘word of God’ as in Abrahamic and other instituted religions, where questioning is considered blasphemy with dire consequences.

Well, so much for philosophical and religious questioning. Even in other fields, be they academics, science, philosophy and even in the corporate world, asking intelligent and pertinent questions is considered an important asset. In fact, in the corporate world, employees are looked upon favourably if they have this trait, as it paves the way for growth, both of the persons as well as the company.

“We run this company on questions, not answers,” Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, used to say. (Read the full article here).

It is said that one has to question everything and deduce things for oneself without blindly accepting whatever is presented as facts. A questioning mind is a growing one, as it has the freedom to learn the truth — seeking and then experiencing it, learning alternative perspectives along the way. I do hope this post on questions gets at least some readers to question it and try to add their perspective to it in the comments!

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