-- Cyd Bergdorf, 1998

Re: Wisdom - the Highest Intelligence by Dave Slater [in Vidya 177]

My Mom was an inveterate small car driver and had an Austin Mini for many years. I was dismayed when they stopped producing that car. Being six foot four people look at me like I am crazy when I say I wish I had one. Perhaps that is also because I don’t know how to drive. The advantage of the Mini of course is that you can just as easily pull it with a donkey as drive it (which suits me fine)...

In his article "Wisdom - the Highest Intelligence," Dave Slater suggests that "we need lots of clever ideas on the effective processing of clever ideas" in order to realize wisdom. However, there is another perspective on wisdom which suggests that we become wise automatically when we simply stop trying to be clever. This is an interesting perspective because it suggests that wisdom is not an ability in the same way intelligence is. Rather wisdom is knowing one’s limitations independent of what those limitations might be.

As Slater suggests, the problem of wisdom is being able to adopt an absolute or "holistic" perspective from within the immediate situation. There is a teaching of the Buddha that relates to this discussion on wisdom. This teaching is called the six "paramitas." The word paramita ("going to the other shore") is a metaphor for relating to the experience of uncertainty in everyday life.

The paramitas represent a learning process. They are: generosity, discipline, patience, effort, meditation and prajna (or wisdom). They present a step by step method for engaging wisdom in the presence of doubt and confusion.

That one would start with generosity appears to be an interesting approach. The opposite of generosity is the general instinct of self preservation. The basic message of this is that confusion is not a fundamental, but rather relates to another process, namely that of maintaining an identity of some sort — whether that is "your" physical body, ideas, emotional state or any other sensed order — beyond a certain degree of consistency. Outside of that concern, that of maintaining the status quo or equilibrium, there are no real problems. We note that creative insights typically have the effect of appearing to destroy a standard whilst creating a new standard — hence the frequently vicious and vocal opposition to genuine insight: changing what the equilibrium is is confused with destroying that equilibrium. (For example, saying the earth is not the central point in the universe is not saying there is no order in the universe.)

From the perspective of generosity, survival is seen as an impossible task: it can never be more than temporary. Generosity fundamentally means embracing change.

The next one, discipline, is the opposite of carelessness. Carelessness is a form of cowardice: you don’t want to deal with it so you ignore it. Overcoming carelessness becomes an issue when it is obvious that your priorities have changed. Without the goal of survival, you really need to think about what is important overall from all perspectives without prejudice and without concern for the outcome for oneself.

Discipline is an enormous commitment to make. One that is frequently challenged. Thus the paramita of patience comes into play. Patience relates to very abruptly calming the mind. It is an indicator that the learning process of the paramitas is one of rethinking our attitudes rather than simply developing external solutions or creating comfort. Once the attitude changes the external solutions are found to be self-evident.

At this point the condition of the mind becomes an issue. You create a lot of difficulties for yourself by being inattentive. Effort is the whole process of starting to relate with that. Effort is seeing that mind is not a passive object but rather an ongoing evolutionary process. Effort is also a process of becoming more open-minded. You actively engage situations that don’t agree with you rather than avoiding them.

Patience presents a challenge that is met by presence of mind. This leads directly to meditation: not "meditation exercises," but realization of the living qualities of mind itself. It is a panoramic experience. The opposite of meditation is smugness. The sense that you don’t have to relate to anything beyond the given formula of the moment — the attitude that you need an attitude to maintain your existence. Meditation overcomes this by simply not pursuing the option. The question of whether or not you are following the right approach is simply not engaged. Instead the concrete aspects of the situation become the focus. You take your inspiration from the way things are rather than your beliefs on how they should be.

It is interesting that we talk about wisdom but we haven’t really defined what it is, per se. Given that there is no need to maintain any specific condition, the basic consistency of behavior implied by wisdom seems to be contradictory to a realistic point of view. However, if one considers the appearance of being "wise" to be a sort of side-effect of becoming wise it is possible to be wise without strictly defining it in the ordinary sense: when you stop being foolish, stop deceiving yourself, then you are automatically wise — you can’t be anything else! The fact that you are aware at all is wisdom itself. From this perspective the difficult thing perhaps is being foolish.

The self-revealing nature of the process is the final paramita of prajna. Typically prajna is symbolized by a sword which cuts through self-deception with such efficiency that it cuts through itself as well. Wisdom is the process of living. Perhaps the paradigm shift of wisdom is so abrupt (and so obvious) that the difficulty may be our fear of succeeding as opposed to any implied difficulty in attaining the goal.