Who are the wise, what is freedom?

 

More waffle than question - I just find it therapeutic. And if the long wall of text is off putting, pop off to somewhere else where u cn b wt u wnt 2 b. This is more just a stream of thoughts as they came (waiting for a bus) with a bit of tidying up.

Here is the Kalama Sutta, from the Buddhist Theravada texts:-

Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing the evidence or with liking for a view after pondering over it or with someone else's ability or with the thought "The monk is our teacher." When you know in yourselves: "These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness," then you should practice and abide in them....


Many seem to think that this is some sort of freethinkers charter, but the words "commended by the wise" should give pause to think further. The Theravada texts themselves make it quite clear just who the wise are - i.e. anyone subscribing to their own monastic tradition, and perhaps who has actually made it bear fruit.

But, who are the wise? What do you think? The NT says that "not many wise are called", but I tend to think that that speaks of another form of "wisdom" - worldly wisdom. And maybe, if we want to stay stupid, we can use those NT words to make a virtue of our own ignorance.

William Blake wrote, in the "Four Zoas":-

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.


Is the price so high?

And what of freedom? True freedom. Once again the Christian NT has a verse:-

You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"

So what is truth, in which we shall find freedom?

Jesus never answered Pilot's question when it was put to him. Yet how can it be answered in words? Yet many turn the living truth into words; just one set, which then become idols, to be "believed" and to clobber others around the head with! It is written!!!!!! "Believe ye or suffer the consequences, your choice" and all the rest of the bullshit.

Surely truth is ever new. "If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in" (Thich Nhat Hạnh)

I tend to think that freedom, truth and wisdom go together.

Again from the Theravada texts:-

“So this holy life does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end.”

Once again, as I see it freedom and wisdom go together. I think wisdom is in part being free of the often oh so prized individuality of the ego, conditioned since birth. Of all its 'I've thought this since I was knee high to a grasshopper and nothing has made me think otherwise. The cement of our conditioned opinions, set in stone. Our individuality - challenge it if you dare!

And only love is free and wise. If we are growing in love we are growing in wisdom and in freedom.

Just recently here I was told that I was a "know all", and that to quote a Christian mystic was to be unsaved. WTF was that all about?

Here is Meister Eckhart, Christian mystic and Dharma Brother. He speaks in theistic language, but as already said somewhere in this rambling waffle, words can corrupt the living truth that blows where it will....

A free mind can achieve all things. But what is a free mind? A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God’s most precious will, having gone out of what is its own. There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and its strength.

Hallelujah!

And off I go to get the shopping.......