Who are the Wise?

 There was a story I read in a Sunday Newspaper some time ago. A chimney sweep had a large gnome and a couple of other smaller gnomes in his front garden and each week placed an Ad in the local newspaper advertising his services...."The one with the Gnomes". Then another man in the same trade moved in as a neighbour and put a few gnomes in his own garden. At that point just perhaps they should have had a polite word with each other, but instead the original chimney sweep added to his own set of gnomes with many more. Come the finish, each had countless gnomes in their gardens.

A typical chimney sweep's garden

Not sure just how it all ended up but safe to say that very little wisdom was involved. 

Concerning the subject of this blog, "who are the wise", I have found the words expressed by Suzuki Roshi worth pondering, and being a Buddhist he links wisdom with enlightenment:-

 "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity."

 Another worthy said of these words.......This remarkable statement tells us that enlightenment cannot be held by anyone. It simply exists in moments of freedom. 

We all seem to have such moments, or at least I like to think so.

Suzuki Roshi, also known as Crooked Cucumber, and he holds a keisaku, an awakening stick used for striking the unwary - so be careful.

There is a little story I have always loved and I have actually told it on many a Discussion Forum with mixed reviews! Whenever I think of it myself it always seems to relate to the subject in hand. Here it is.........

There is an old zen master who only speaks broken English, walking around his monastery with a newly enlightened westerner. At each and every statue of the Buddha the old master stops and bows deeply. The westerner looks on with increasing disdain and eventually exclaims "Don't you think that we are a bit above that sort of thing now? Speaking for myself, I think I would just as soon spit at those statues as bow to them" To which the old master says "OK. You spit, I bow"

An old zen master

I suppose the story could be about tolerance but surely there was a degree of wisdom involved in the old guys response? 

Well, alas, I'm waffling as usual. In this instance simply because I have no idea what wisdom is. But nevertheless, I can keep the quotes going. Here is Stephen Batchelor, one of my favourite Buddhist writers. Mr Batchelor is known for what is called his agnostic approach to various Buddhist teachings (those such as reincarnation for example) and comes in for a lot of stick from the more doctrinaire Buddhists. Anyway, here we have him speaking of the way words of wisdom just might issue from us in our better moments.

 After speaking of a psuedo integrity that responds to a moral dilemma only by repeating the gestures and words of a parent, an authority figure or a religious text, he writes:-

 (we sometimes act) .......in a way that startles us. A friend asks our advice about a tricky moral choice. Yet instead of offering him consoling platitudes or the wisdom of someone else, we say something that we did not know we knew. Such gestures and words spring from body and tongue with shocking spontaneity. We cannot call them "mine" but neither have we copied them from others. Compassion has dissolved the stranglehold of self. And we taste, for a few exhilarating seconds, the creative freedom of awakening.

Well, that is it really. If anyone has some sort of take on wisdom please post a comment.