Recognizing Wisdom

Our practice is cultivating a continuity of awareness to understand the processes at work in our minds, in particular the processes that create dukkha – distress, dissatisfaction, struggle, or suffering. The simplicity of noticing experience and cultivating continuity of awareness, coupled with the intention to understand suffering, allows wholesome qualities to begin to grow: qualities such as confidence, patience, love, equanimity, concentration, mindfulness, and wisdom. 

The development of liberating wisdom is one of the fruits of practice. While we may have wisdom about many things, the wisdom that comes with practice is more specifically connected to understanding dukkha. When dukkha is understood, a release can follow. This kind of wisdom is freeing, liberating; wisdom is the understanding of dukkha that releases dukkha. We cannot decide, I’m going to release dukkha. When liberating wisdom arises, dukkha is released. Suffering, stress, and dissatisfaction, are released. So we cultivate the conditions for the arising of wisdom, and let wisdom do its work. We need to be patient while continuing the practice of awareness, knowing when we need to make personal effort to be aware, and when we can simply be present and aware.

Liberating wisdom is a wholesome quality that functions in the present moment and can be recognized and directly known in the present moment. Just as recognizing other wholesome qualities supports their development, so too, recognizing the arising of wisdom is a condition that supports the further arising of wisdom.

There are many ways that liberating wisdom can be experienced and recognized. There are probably too many ways to name, so I’ll just offer a few. You may recognize some of them.

When we are observing something challenging, being aware of a of struggle, we might recognize, even for a few moments: This is struggle happening, this is just something happening in the present moment. With that recognition there can be a shift, a sense of space around the struggle, and it is okay to be with that experience, even for just a few moments. Wisdom arising allows that shift to happen. We can recognize this shift as wisdom at work.

We might understand how causes and conditions come together in the moment. You might recognize, for instance, a memory arising, notice the memory triggering a chain of thought, and how that chain of thought leads to the arising of an emotion. Seeing this directly, as a sequence of events, we can understand the conditioned nature of this whole unfolding process. Understanding the conditioned nature of all aspects of our experience is wisdom at work.

We might recognize that reactivity is directly felt as suffering in the present moment. This may be a little harder to recognize as wisdom at work! And yet the direct recognition of This is suffering is an insight. We might not feel a shift that gives us space around reactivity, yet still we might recognize: This reactivity is suffering right now in this body, in this mind. This is suffering. A shift of perspective is needed to recognize reactivity as suffering. Early in my practice, it came as a shock to me to notice how painful the experience of anger was. In the moment before, I had been involved in the story of anger, thinking about how miserable it would make the other person for me to be angry with them, and I was unaware that it was painful in this body and mind, right here, right now. Wisdom creates a shift of perspective that allows us to recognize that reactive emotions, states of mind based in greed and aversion, and delusion, are suffering in the moment. Liberating wisdom at work.

We might notice a sense of self arising based on causes and conditions: A sense of self might arise out of a thought, an image, or a change in our external environment. For example, you might be doing walking meditation in solitude and then somebody walks in to the room. That change of conditions can create the sense of self arising: the feeling of being seen and observed by another is a powerful condition for the arising of a sense of self! Noticing the arising of the sense of self as dependent on conditions is wisdom at work—wisdom understanding that the sense of self is a conditioned phenomenon.

We might recognize that reactivity is not actually directly arising from something in our external environment, but is based on an idea. On one retreat, I was doing walking meditation and experienced aversion when someone started walking close by. Understanding that aversion is usually a response to something unpleasant, I began to be curious about where the unpleasant experience was arising. Checking each of the sense doors, the experiences of smell, taste, touch and sound didn’t seem to be involved. Seeing the person close by triggered a bit of unpleasant experience, but the seeing itself really wasn’t unpleasant. So I began to be curious about what was happening in the mind. After a few more passes of walking, I saw a thought: “They’re weird,” and felt a little bit of fear. In that moment I was a bit startled. The aversion was a result of something that the mind had simply made up! Seeing that clearly, the aversion vanished and there was immediately a sense of loving kindness towards the person. So, sometimes we can see that we are reacting to something that our own mind has constructed, and wisdom sees how useless that is. Wisdom starts the letting go of that reactivity; there is a feeling of release. Again, wisdom at work.

Wisdom often has a flavor of releasing some form of suffering. Feeling those shifts, feeling the experience of release can be a hallmark of wisdom at work.

The experience of release gives a kind of feedback: we directly experience why it is helpful to cultivate wisdom, why it is helpful to practice. We understand: this is a way that the heart and mind be can more at ease, at peace, have more well-being. This understanding is not abstract, but is experienced now, right now.

Rather than looking for wisdom, be available for it. Let it show itself. We become available for liberating wisdom to arise through the practice of cultivating the continuity and the stability of our awareness.