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Wisdom 101: An Ongoing Project

First Topic: The Wisdom Which Has Gone Beyond, And Come Back To Tell Us What The Other Shore Is All About

Conclusion: Part 1

So how do we get out of this mess and back to a place where we can recognise this wisdom? How do we invite wisdom, mystery and wonder back into our lives?

There's good news and bad news about that: the good news is that wisdom, mystery and wonder slap us in the face every day with every experience. The bad news is that we have become such experts at filtering the wisdom from the information that we process that we are missing almost every opportunity to achieve enlightened living as a way of being.

As beings of the earth, we cannot help but speak the earth's language in all that we do; through every cell and molecule. This can develop into a conscious thing, or a 'skillful means' practice that brings us closer to the core of our being. Here's a poem about the 'language of the birds' (as the alchemists call it) from the brilliant Isobel Dixon that expresses this concept better than many Sutras, commentaries, philosophies and countless tractates on the mystical process:

• The grass is full of codes.
• The signs are everywhere:
• used condom, apple core, a baby's sock.
• You might suppose this is just rubbish
• left by lovers, picknickers, and last night's yobs
• but I know better:
• Objects in your path are never
• without some significance.
• A trail of crumbs, a rusty lamp, a shiny bean-
• you must be quick to recognize the hand of fate
•  
• and so I'm walking clockwise
• round the common, seven times seven
• before the dawn deciphering; hoping the crumpled Irn Bru tin,
• the globe of shiny foil,
• the punctuation of the smoked-down stubs
• each one uniquely marked)
• will open up the world and its great mystery to me.
•  
• For if the mountains are proclaiming glory
• but they can't be seen,
• what is it that the scattered litter here is whispering?

Going to the other shore and beyond does not require re-stretching the legs to sit in full lotus, or never seeing a movie again. What it does require is fearlessness and the decision to pick up the sword of Manjusri, or the staff of the ancestors, or the drum of the Sun and Moon and dance the dance that dancers dream so that we can embody wisdom and create for ourselves a world that exists for the benefit of all. It requires an uncompromising commitment to the knowledge that an enlightened life is possible now and for all, and a relentless pursuit of the opportunity to engage the challenge of being a wisdom bearer: to live for the benefit of all beings.

There is a lot more to the issue of fear and the self that will be explored in future sessions of the "Wisdom Which Has Gone Beyond", so watch for Part 2 soon.

© Roy Kirkland, 2005