From Whence Comes Wisdom?

Last night, the Contrarian and I sat down to watch a documentary on the “lost years” of Jesus. As most of you know, nothing at all is known about the life of Jesus from age 12-30 or so. The bible is completely silent. There has been much theorizing of course, and there has been talk that he journeyed to the East, and India where he studied and lived in the Buddhist or Hindu monasteries.

The show turned out to be not very good, casting no real light on the subject at all. It ended up being nothing but innuendo and guessing, and somebody claims they saw, and stuff like that. At one point, at a Monastery in India a claim was made that the Dalai Lama had at one time seen the actual documents wherein Jesus time there was described.

The Dalai Lama disputed this fact, claiming no information whatsoever, but when on to talk about how all religions everywhere teach basic concepts of love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, and so on. He went on to remark that we must be about the business of reconciling among ourselves because we have this basic structure in common.

To make a long story short, the Contrarian wondered, “The Dalai Lama is undoubtedly a very wise man, yet is there any way to inculcate wisdom? Surely they taught him well from childhood, but just as surely wisdom does not necessarily emanate from knowledge.”

For those of you who are a bit rusty, when a Dalai Lama dies, his replacement is sought, and is found normally within three years  in a suitable infant, usually from Tibet. A number of tests are done to “insure” that this is the reincarnated Dalai Lama. If so, the child and parents are moved to a place where the child receives the necessary instruction to take on his new role.

Is it mere luck that this wonderful Dalai Lama is graced with wisdom? I am not sure, but I began to think about what might be the foundation of wisdom. Surely knowledge and education are most useful, but they are not required surely. Everyone has heard it said, that “he is wise beyond his years” and plenty of folks have met someone who is not educated, but still wise.

I turned to the bible for help, and in the Wisdom of Solomon, I found:

The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction. (6:17)

For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. (7:26)

and in Sirach,

All wisdom is from the Lord, and with him it remains forever. (1:1)

Wisdom comes from God, which certainly makes sense as we would all agree (at least all believers) that God is the most wise. And in being wise, we reflect God as in a spotless mirror.

But Solomon says that it involves the “desire” for knowledge, not actual knowledge, and that seems key to me.

Wisdom I believe comes to those who look beyond themselves to the greater world around them. They “desire” to understand the world. The look, listen, think. They watch. They examine. They compare and contrast. They are “present” in the world, experiencing it fully.

In doing so, they begin to see the patterns, how things fit together, how relationships are built and grow, how they wither and die. How to avoid pain, how to grow from it. How to teach and how to learn. They see, all this and more.

They are the folks who are not the life of the party but still totally engaged. They are delighted in the delight of others, sharing but also calculating what moves others forward or back, into intimacy or withdrawal. They draw the conclusions. They predate the experiments and psychological and sociological papers detailing the results of studies. They have already seen the results, because they pay attention.

Most of us are not wise, though some of us would like to be. I am not sure that most people wouldn’t rather be rich or famous or “learned” in some field. They are in a nutshell students of humanity. But not just humanity for they see beyond humanity to human relationships with things and other living things. They see the rhythms of life if you will, the give and take, the peace and violence, the tit for tat that makes up the mosaic we call life.

Plainly, they “get it.” We like to hear their wisdom, but frankly, I think we most often look for some personal advantage in what they say, rather than the beauty of the truth they expound. There isn’t much “money” in wisdom.

There is peace in wisdom I think. Plenty of us would desire that, but desire is as far as most of us get, because wisdom isn’t easy. It’s painstakingly hard I think. It means not being number one and front and center. It means lurking at the edges. It means plenty of solitude and internal work.

It seems tailor made for monks and such. No one will ever accuse Donald Trump with being wise. Jimmy Carter may be there, or nearly so.

I would like to be, in fact I would  consider it just about the best compliment. But I’m not sure how wise people respond to compliments. Humility seems the cornerstone of wisdom too.

It’s a puzzling thought, wisdom. Elusive, elegant, wispy. But somehow, to me at least, it is something to strive for. Listen more, speak less, learn.

Whom do you find wise?

No Knowledge to be Found

I’ve never been one to let the lack of knowledge stand in the way of an opinion. After all, speculation is a time honored pursuit. I would agree, that in some circumstances it might be prudent to announce before hand that one is engaging in the fancies of one’s own mind rather than relying on actual known facts. This is especially so for brain surgery, mountain climbing and plane flying.

Nothing brings more satisfaction that working a problem out logically, only to later find that you were indeed right. But the penalty for being wrong is not much more than a shrug of the shoulders, so the practice continues. I recall one day a number of lawyers sat in an office and ruminated about a set of facts. We all agreed, after much discussion, that the logical result was X. Of course we were quite wrong as it turned out. Law, alas is not well known for being logical, created that way, no doubt, to keep lawyers in business.

Which leads to another conclusion, or the first conclusion, whatever. And that is, that the same set of facts can logically lead to more than one logical result. One would think not, but it seems so. There are rather famous syllogisms that prove that rather clearly.

Which leads to the topic of the day, poetry. Yes, I’m sure you had already guessed that, being the logical creature you no doubt are. Poetry is illogical to me, always has been, and more importantly, it made me feel stupid, like I was the only one in the room who didn’t get the punch line.

Yes, yes, I get the simplistic poetry, the stuff that all rhymes and even I can compose. It’s that weird stuff that seems to have words willy nilly shoved together, bumping against each other in no discernible order or, dare I say, logic. I read it furiously, then grimace, then set it down, carefully looking around to make sure nobody has seen me. God forbid they should ask, “what did you think of that?” All I could say would be the mumbling, “oh, deep, very deep. Makes one think. I’ll have to ponder long before I can follow the extensions to their ends.”  Saying nothing, while saying enough to bring a nod of agreement. Ain’t language grand?

Then I learned. Or more particularly had it explained to me. It might have made some sense to the poet, or maybe not. Maybe he just liked the flow of the words, and the juxtaposition of certain phrases. But to you, the reader, it means whatever it means. It can conjure up any thought, memory or idea. There is no right or wrong. It’s meant to evoke, not make a statement.

At least some of it. I recall a prose writer or two being asked about the meaning, metaphor and allegory present in their work. “Never meant any of that,” they often insist. Such is the stuff of the literary critic, those who have created a way to make a living out of doing something unreal–telling the world what X “meant.” I’ve said the same about the art critic. Pretty much the same applies to the movie critic. You see the pattern here no doubt?

Last night we watched an interview with W.S. Merwin on Bill Moyer’s Journal. Bill kept asking, “this line, what did you mean?” and Merwin continued to reply, with something rather inane and simplistic and then turn it back on Bill, “what did it mean to you?”

Which when you think of it, is a pretty good gig. I mean, scramble and line up a bunch of words in pleasant sounding array. Then use a gimmick if possible, no capital letters, or in Merwin’s case, no punctuation. Paste a title on it that may or may not be mentioned anywhere in the piece, and voila’, a poem has emerged. Nice way to make a living, if you can do this in a way that makes people “feel” something. If not, then don’t quit your day job.

Merwin, it seems confirms my suspicions when he says that poetry emerges from what we don’t know. (See, I told you that I would connect it all up for ya!) And that also seems to be true, since we are about the business of evoking wispy feelings and thoughts, disconnected “present” moments of time. We get led to ponder the great mysteries of life as it were, and by definition, there is no “knowledge” only questions and tangents to follow to new forks in the road.

So, it all makes for a good way to wile away the hours. I’ve done it with prose, which I find an easier medium. Have I succeeded?