Question from Swamiji: Can you define "wisdom"

[Guest guest]

Dear Swamiji,

 

With respect and joy ~ you are really giving our minds and hearts a

workout with these questions! I went to college to learn about art,

how to do it primarily, but I took 21 credits of art history because

I loved learning about it so much. Then I could talk up modernism or

impressionism or post modernism with the best of them. But that was

only intellectual knowledge, or as my stepdad would say, "book

larnin." Of course, this is an important step or we wouldn't be

spending so much time reading and learning about the Chandi and how

to do pujas and so on. But if we think this is "wisdom," then we have

allowed our minds to trick us.

 

To go back to my art experience, it was only when I picked up my paint

brush and put away all my thoughts, desires (oh, it should look this

or that way, or I should be able to see it), preconceptions,

judgements, and most of all my ego (I should have the best painting

in the class...good grief!), that anything I would wish to name "art"

really occurred. Those were indescribable moments of "no mind" and "no

time." Who was doing the painting? I don't know. The same with my

music. Who is creating the music? With this I am on surer ground,

because I go through the same process, but very often the process

just takes me over, and I know it is God/dess creating the music ~

the words, and melody, all of a piece, and they just pour forth from

me. I am a vessel. These are some of the richest moments of my life.

 

So I believe wisdom only comes when a person entirely lets go: of

judgement, of desire, of preconception, of need, of security. It is

like jumping off a cliff, but then, that is when you really "see" and

you really "know," and very often it is indescribable, which brings me

back to art and music and poetry, and for others to Divinely inspired

scripture ... because mere ordinary words are totally insufficient.

 

How could anything as beautiful and significant as "om

namschandikayai"* come from mere thinking or knowledge? Thank you for

asking this marvelous question.

 

Jai Swamiji ~ Linda *Om We bow to the Goddedd Who Tears

Apart Thought

 

P.S. Please don't anyone think I am recalling any of these passages

from mere memory. My illness has shot my memory full of holes. I

recall reading them, then I go back and find them, so I can share

them.