Hasten to cultivate wisdom;
make an island for yourself.
Freed from stain and defilement
you are released from birth and death.
Dhammapada v. 238
When we feel faced with insurmountable confusion where do we turn? Probably the best we can do at that point is firmly resolve to work on patient endurance. Ideally though we won’t wait until obstructions feel insurmountable; we will prepare ourselves in advance. Once we’re in the furnace it is hard to know up from down; forward from backward. True wisdom sees clearly, independent of conditions. It is how our heart would function if greed, aversion and delusion were absent. This understanding shows the direction we need to be going. And we can urge ourselves along this path by seeing the consequence of the lack of wisdom, which is reactively taking sides ‘for’ and ‘against’. For example: if we encounter bullying, do we endeavour to understand the causes for that behaviour or do we default to judging the bully? It is always understanding which leads to right action, not taking birth as someone who is ‘for’ or ‘against’.
No comments:
Post a Comment