Itineraries Fall 2009 | Partnerships In Aging

Contents:

Elder Wisdom by Caroline Bassett

The Tao of Longevity by Drew Leder

Bird Wisdom by Margaret Owen Thorpe

Serving from Spirit by Robert C. Atchley

The Yellow Brick Road of Not Knowing by Jane F. Gilgun

Autumn’s Way: Releasing and Simplifying by John G. Sullivan

Books of Interest: In Search of Wisdom, review by Barbara Kammerlohr

Poems: Collected by John Clarke

From the Guest Editor…

This issue contains two related themes, the fall with its bounty and the wisdom that the autumn of life brings.

My article called “Elder Wisdom” uses a 101-year-old woman as an exemplar of this kind of wisdom. I describe what wisdom is and how people get to be wise, something that elders, because of our age and experience, have a running start on over youngers. But be warned. As I point out, just because you’re old doesn’t mean you’re wise.

Drew Leder’s “Tao of Longevity” with its lovely illustrations explores the concept of longevity using the Tao Te Ching for guidance on living wisely and well.

The article “Bird Wisdom” by Margaret Thorpe will make you laugh when she describes dealing unwisely with former husbands and how wisdom is about patterns and relationships. Along these lines, be sure to move your cursor over the fancy colored question mark and the bare gray landscape for a surprise.

Robert Atchley’s article “Serving from Spirit” speaks tenderly about spirituality and manifesting wisdom and compassion, sometimes simply by tending to things or people that need tending. This could mean picking up a piece of trash, helping a pregnant woman carry her groceries to her car, or teaching adults to read.

In “The Yellow Brick Road of Not Knowing” Jane Gilgun explains how not-knowing and wisdom go together if we can dare to be open and available to others. She talks about horses, lovers, the violence in her own heart, and celebrating uncertainty.

John Sullivan in “Autumn’s Way: Releasing and Simplifying” tells us how the arc of descent in the second half of life calls for different things in us than the arc of ascent. You will enjoy the wide range of people, stories, poems, and quotes that he brings to us.

Finally, Barbara Kammerlohr reviews How to Live by Henry Alford. Only in his mid-40’s, he has explored the concept of wisdom and the part that aging plays in its acquisition.

-Caroline Bassett

Elder Wisdom by Caroline Bassett

Caroline Bassett, PhD. is founder and director of The Wisdom Institute which helps people move more intentionally toward wisdom in their organizations, communities, and lives — through research, conversation, writing, and giving talks and seminars. She also teaches at two distance learning universities and is a certified Master Gardener and avid tango dancer. You can view the website of TWI at www.wisdominst.org.

Recently, on a trip east from my home in Minnesota, my sister and I visited a 101-year-old friend of the family, an exemplar of elder wisdom, who lives in rural Massachusetts. Aunt Jane, as we called her (not her real name and some details have been changed to protect her privacy, but she really is 101 years old) ruefully acknowledged that she has to use a walker now and a hearing aid that she hates. She lives alone, drives, uses e-mail, and when we saw her, she was writing an article for the local newspaper. My sister Katherine and I asked a lot of questions — pumped Aunt Jane — about family friends from the old days of 30, 40, and even 50 years ago — and about herself. As I told her, when you’re a kid, the grown-ups are just there, like a kitchen table, with no intrinsic interest of their own. It’s only when you are older yourself that you see the growns as individuals and become curious about them.

Aunt Jane has an astonishing memory, remembering the facts of what happened and keeping the thread of the story strong and clear, avoiding side-tracking herself with other tidbits of interest. She remembered that the son of friends had been exempt from the service in World War II because he did spectroscopic analyses of cargo. And she remembered the names of the three wives of this man’s brother, the last of whom was a “long-faced doleful lady and the love of his life.”

What makes her so remarkable a specimen? It was not only that she has her health, that she never complained or even mentioned her aches and pains and resentments, that she lacked self-pity, that she talked frankly, openly, and uncritically about the people we asked after. It was that she was demonstrating what wisdom looks like.

My definition of wisdom

Let me put here my definition of wisdom so that we can work from it as we look at Aunt Jane and her life. Wisdom is having sufficient awareness in a context or situation to behave in a manner most likely to produce outcomes that are satisfactory for all involved, including the biosphere. I’ll talk about each of the three key elements of the definition separately: sufficient awareness, certain behaviors, and satisfactory outcomes.

First, in her stories Aunt Jane simply recounted the facts as she recalled them, without denigrating anyone so that she would look better. She knows that it (“it” being the world) is not about her. If she has any, old anger and resentments did not appear (although I wanted to ask if there is anyone she could not forgive, but I didn’t get the chance).

Besides the factual recounting, it was clear that she had deeply cared about these people. Caring about others is a central component of wisdom, along with — paradoxically, it may seem — detachment and the ability to see clearly and unemotionally what’s going on.

Second, the behaviors that can lead to the desirable outcomes for her include her emotional resiliency and coping with adversity, two qualities where elders have an edge on youngers. For example, she has survived an alcoholic husband (since he was 19!) and two brothers and three sisters, all younger, one of whom had tuberculosis and had to have a lung removed. Her parents did not speak to each other for 20 years because of an argument they had. Other behaviors include not holding grudges or feeling superior.

And these lead to the third part of the definition, satisfactory outcomes. Yes, as a Quaker, she has done some work for peace, but I am talking about something else, something smaller and more intimate. In this town a whole group of people has coalesced around her. Instead of being invisible as a lot of older people are in this culture, it is clear that the town cherishes her. She has created community. A year ago when she turned 100, several birthday parties were held for her, one of which was a surprise that took place at a local winery with a maximum capacity of 40–50. Seventy people showed up. Each Labor Day for the last five years she has been holding a picnic on the farm that has been in her family for 298 years. (Yes, this number is accurate. The family “acquired” the land after King Philip’s War.) Thirty or forty people attend these picnics, and I am planning to attend next year.

Her wisdom, though she would not acknowledge it, is, I believe, to create a gentle community. No, she doesn’t “create” it intentionally. It happens around her, and she honors and sustains it. Community is people being together, knowing and supporting each other.

The story of Aunt Jane is to give you an example of wisdom on a homey scale, the kind that you and I are likely to be part of or create. Wisdom doesn’t have to be WISDOM, a huge earth-changing thing. It can be small, local, and quiet.

The wisdom of elders

Just because you are an elder doesn’t mean you’re wise. Just because you are smart doesn’t mean you are wise either. We all know people who are really intelligent, but they just aren’t wise, either in the sense of prudence (not running a red light) or in the sense of insight, that is, having an idea of what’s a Good Thing Now and In The Long Term. We also know senior citizens who are just as stubborn or ignorant as they always were.

So, what does make you wise? But first, what is wise, anyway? Again, here’s my definition: Wisdom is having sufficient awareness of the context or situation to behave in a manner most likely to produce satisfactory outcomes for all involved. The satisfactory outcomes are considered the common good, on a large or small scale. If I tell people I will invest their money so that they will receive a brilliant yield and I do so for a while, but my name is Bernard Madoff and I was really doing it for my own gain without any benefit in mind to you at all, then this is not the common good. If, however, we raise money to get new books for a library, this activity has something for everybody. Narrow self-interest is not the common good, but neither is saintly self-sacrifice. The common good serves the commons.

How do people get to be wise?

How do people get to be able to have this kind of awareness to know how and when to act to get the desirable results? One main way is to be older. Elders have more life experience and have seen things come up and go down. We have seen the consequences of certain actions and know that some choices usually end up better than others. We know that certain things simply work better than others. Maybe you can get away with running stop signs a few times, but sooner or later (probably) you’ll get caught or be in a wreck or hurt someone else. It’s just not a good idea to be a scofflaw in some things. Having seen some friends of my parents die of lung cancer from smoking, I can say that not smoking works better than smoking.

Besides life experience and seeing consequences of actions, being able to regulate emotions can lead to wisdom. I described Aunt Jane’s emotional resiliency and generosity of spirit. A lot of elders have decided to forgive transgressions and move on. My friend’s husband had affairs and she finally divorced him, even though they had three young children, after much anger and trauma. Some time went by, and the poison that had infused her body from those years of emotional neglect and abuse seemed to drain out of her. She could talk about and meet her former husband and his girlfriend with equanimity. She told me that she had just decided to let it all go. But it took a while. I wouldn’t say that she forgave him, but she wasn’t infected any more. Even better is going to the next step and actually forgiving someone who has injured you. This is something that some elders seem able to do, when I, from where I stand, don’t see how it is possible. I hope to someday, as I move into elder wisdom.

Four kinds of wisdom

I have given several examples of wisdom and wise behavior, but they may seem all mixed together to you, minor things with major ones, small deals and big deals and really big deals. There is a difference in kinds of wisdom. In my research on wisdom, I have found four different kinds or levels of it, the difference arising with the complexity and/or the scope of the situation.

Pearls Before Swine, or prudence. Wisdom of this sort includes everyday common sense and the aphorisms and truisms that apply to it. These memorable short phrases help you through life and are usually small in scale or complexity. By that I mean that they are most often about preventing you from getting into a difficult situation, or at least an undesirable one. Here are some examples: “Don’t throw pearls before swine.” “If you see the teeth of a lion, do not think that it is smiling at you.” But this wisdom needn’t only come in previously concocted statements. It can as easily be found by simply noticing that it looks like rain today and you think you’ll take your umbrella. This is a wise thing to do because it is prudent.|
As you can see, the Pearls Before Swine kind of wisdom works mostly on a personal or small-scale level and is related to being cautious so that you save your own skin. There’s another kind with which we can use our life experience and look ahead to various possible outcomes.
Ever After, or predicting consequences. This kind of wisdom derives from life experience and seeing how things play out. Elders are good at this because we have more data than youngers to go on from having seen plenty of events occur or decisions made, followed by the aftermath, for better or for worse. For example, in college I was planning on majoring in biology but my father counseled me not to for two reasons. One, I am not good at numbers, and two, I like to read novels. So I chose a French major instead, which turned out to serve me handily as I used the language in the Peace Corps in Morocco and then in travels in francophone countries. Or, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune of August 26, 2009, the CEO of Sun Country Airlines “publicly apologized and wisely offered the unfortunate passengers a refund” for six hours stuck on board waiting for a flight from New York City to take off to Minneapolis. That was thinking about consequences. If he hadn’t apologized and offered the refund, the passengers would be angry and choose another airline in the future. I expect that you can recall at least several situations where you had an idea of what the consequences might be.
On a broader level than predicting what the results of this or that action might be comes yet another kind of wisdom, the Good Thing. This kind of wisdom applies to situations with greater complexity.
A Good Thing Now and in the Future. This is wisdom on a wider scale than the other two, with more complexity involved. It is a good idea, a thing that is good to do right now and is good going into the future too. Here’s an example: eating locally. A fairly new idea, the concept of consciously eating locally makes sense because we support farmers near us, our neighbors perhaps, and because we spend less money on trucking the fruits and vegetables from far away, thus making a dent in saving the environment. Also, it just plain tastes better. It is an obvious thing to do but someone had to name it and once named, now we can use it. Another example is literacy for all. In the modern world, if you can’t read, you can’t do much or go much of anywhere. If you can read, you can get a driver’s license, and you can buy the kind of soup that you want and know if you should dilute it with a half cup of cream or three cups. It makes a difference! What kinds of Good Things can you think of?
There’s still one more kind of wisdom, the one with the greatest complexity and the widest range. I’m calling it Standing on the Mountain, or long-term perspective. Again, this is a kind of wisdom that we elder can have an edge on over youngers because we have been there, done that — and seen the whole of it.
Standing on the Mountain, or perspective. This means being able to see the whole of a thing and not merely the parts so that you can understand more about what is going on. You can see not only consequences but also patterns. You might be familiar with the Nazca Lines in Peru. On the ground they look like shallow designs made by rocks on the ground, lines that go here and there, with no discernable rhyme or reason. But if you go up the mountain (or nowadays, in a airplane) and look down, you will see figures of spiders, birds, and monkeys. So, from the distance you can see the pattern but close up it looks like random lines.
I would suggest that some of our greatest leaders have seen the Nazca Lines, so to speak. They have seen a very big pattern and have striven to create or maintain it. For Abraham Lincoln it was his fight to save the Union. That was important to him because in the mid-19th century, a representative democracy was still a relatively new experiment in methods of government. Before, there had been tribes, feudal states, and monarchies. An elected government where the minority had a strong say in what went on was new on the planet, as was a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and Lincoln was dedicated to preserving it. Another example closer to home is Martin Luther King, Jr., who saw that the current discrimination against Blacks served neither them nor the Whites nor the country, and he worked against it.

The wisdom from Aunt Jane’s Life

However, the contributions that most of us will make to satisfactory outcomes are likely to be on a smaller scale than Abraham Lincoln’s. I’m wondering about the wisdom that we can learn from Aunt Jane’s life. What I have found are these, and I would like to know what conclusions you would draw.

Pay attention to what’s going on around you. See the whole picture as best you can.
Connect and care. Care about other people. Don’t hold grudges, and forgive if you can. Accept people as they are. For the ones that bother you, think about what story you would tell about them when you are 101.
What outcomes are you involved in that are really worthwhile? Remember, they can be small, quiet, local, and gentle. A homey scale is just fine. It makes a difference to those who take part in it.

Aunt Jane’s Parting Words

After I told Aunt Jane that I am looking forward to seeing her at the picnic next year, she said that Katherine and I should let our hair grow. I guess I’ll be doing that. Who is to gainsay a 102 year old?

The Tao of Longevity by Drew Leder

Drew Leder, MD, PhD. is a professor of Eastern and Western Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He is a nationally known speaker and author of five books, including Sparks of the Divine, on the sacred lessons contained within everyday things, and Spiritual Passages, his book on the spirituality of aging.

Knowing others is intelligence,
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force,
Mastering the self is true strength.

She who is contented is wealthy.
She who perseveres succeeds.
She who stays in the center endures.
She who dies, but does not die,
Has attained true longevity (shou).

— Tao Te Ching, verse 33

What is it to attain true longevity? This question rings a bit foreign to our Western ears. We speak instead of getting old, and view this not so much as an attainment but a fate to be denied, delayed, and despised. Who wants to get old? Better to be young and vital, new and fresh.

Each addition to our yearly total can thus feel like a subtraction. How did I get to be ___?! (You fill in the number.) We may approach our birthdays a bit like the dieter who reluctantly steps on the scale, accused by an ever-expanding number. In a Western context, aging can feel vaguely shameful, associated as it is with the loss of power, energy, and sexual attractiveness, and the ever-nearer approach of death. Getting older — feeling older — looking older…what was I thinking of!? How did this happen? Why did I let myself go?

Yet in the context of ancient Chinese Taoism, and traditional Chinese culture in general, longevity is an accomplishment of which one should be proud. To have grown long of years is to have done something right. It speaks to qualities of endurance, perseverance, flexibility, and harmony that have preserved one among the living.

We find this notion hidden in the very word we most dread — “old.” It derives from the Indo–European base-word “al,” meaning “to grow, nourish.” From thence comes the Greek aldaino, “make grow, strengthen,” and althein or althainein, “to get well,” along with the Latin alere, “to feed, nourish, increase.” To be old is not that which has lost its vitality, become weak, sick, and diminished. The etymology implies the opposite. The “old” is that which has flourished and sustained itself. It has proven strong enough to endure, healthy and vital enough to survive. We grow old. With each birthday our life increases. We need not feel ourselves a shrinking, slinking thing.

Many traditional cultures respect the accomplishment of longevity. Elders are seen as worthy individuals, exhibiting fortitude and good fortune, perhaps blessed by the gods, and possessors of invaluable life experience and wisdom. Not so in our society. We tend to prefer the productivity, technological savvy, and sexual prowess associated with youth. The 19-year-old girl, not the 90-year-old woman, is plastered on posters, our aspirational figure.

A useful corrective is found in Taoism, the spiritual–philosophical system that flourished in ancient China and, with Confucianism, has done much to shape its culture. The Tao Te Ching venerates the sage. In one sense, the sage is ageless. He/she is neither young nor old, neither this nor that, but is identified with the broader cycles of the Tao that include heat and cold, day and night, youth and old age, life and death. The Taoist sage has no preferences or fixed identity. He/she embraces the process of change.

However, the sage in Chinese tradition is often imaged as an elder. We are familiar with the stereotypes — the wizened and wise karate teacher, the old crone-healer, the master of herbs, the white-bearded meditator living in a cave by a waterfall.

Stereotypes often embody some lasting truth: Long life experience can yield deep insight, and insight, in turn, can lead to long life.

More than most traditions, Taoism has developed a spiritual science concerned with the prolongation of life. In distorted form this led to a quest for elixirs of immortality, or meditational and life-style practices that would literally conquer death. Such is not the way of the philosophical Tao Te Ching. Death is a part of the life cycle and, when the time is right, should be embraced rather than resisted. However, the Tao Te Ching does have much to say explicitly and implicitly about the attainment of longevity. The spiritual energies of the Tao manifest in this world, not in some heaven to which the soul longs to flee. The sage dwells in this world, and in such a way that her life energies are sustained rather than prematurely terminated.

So what can we in the West learn from this tradition? First, to venerate longevity, rather than to scorn growing old. Second, the techniques and attitudes that are conducive to long life and vital spirit. To this we now turn to the Tao Te Ching for guidance, albeit in a brief and suggestive fashion:

People are born soft and gentle.
When dead they are hard and stiff.
Plants are born tender and supple.
When dead they are brittle and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unyielding are disciples of death.
The soft and yielding are disciples of life.

The unyielding army cannot win.
The unbending tree will snap.
The hard and stiff will meet a fall.
The soft and supple will prevail.

— Tao Te Ching, verse 76

This verse, through a series of images drawn from social and natural settings — people, plants, armies, trees — presents a recurring theme: That which is soft and yielding will outlast that which is brittle and stiff.

By contrast, our western images of strength often emphasize hardness. The superhero is a “man of steel.” Our soldiers advance into battle, defended by body armor and long-distance missiles. A life setback? Tough it out, keep a stiff upper lip.

The Taoist verse emphasizes that continued vitality is more about suppleness and “going with the flow.” A river doesn’t try to force its way through a mountain. It is soft enough, yielding enough, to find the contours of the land, seek the low places, stream around the obstacles until it reaches the sea. Thus it endures. So, too, the Tao Te Ching implies, does the sage endure. He/she is flexible in the face of life’s obstacles, capable of avoiding the stress that arises when we battle other people and circumstances. Stress, we know, is a killer. It can manifest in the form of heart disease, strokes, destructive habits such as smoking and overeating, and a proneness to accidents or even suicide. “The unbending tree will snap…the hard and stiff will meet a fall.” That which goes against the Tao ends up in premature demise.

One secret to longevity is thus this attitude of “easy does it.” Many of us know such a person who embodies this principle. It’s not that he/she is simply passive, a weakling. On the contrary, their fires may burn bright. But the sage isn’t wasting energy complaining about what cannot be changed or fighting aggressively against “enemies.” The sage works with the life situation, not against it, and thereby remains a “disciple of life.”

In Verse 55 of the Tao Te Ching, this sage is equated with a newborn child:

His bones are soft, muscles weak,
Yet his grip is powerful.
He does not know about the union of man and woman,
Yet his penis stands erect.
He screams all day without getting hoarse.

This is true harmony.
To know harmony is to endure.
To endure is to be enlightened.

This may seem like startling imagery, especially when connected to the aging sage. Yet it reminds us of the etymology of “old” — to “grow, strengthen, increase.” That which endures, attains longevity, has within it a principle of generativity.

Again, we may know someone who embodies this, or find it within ourselves in our better moments. The sage has an innocence, a spontaneity of response, a creativity reminiscent of a young child. In a natural setting, listening to a piece of music, or immersed in conversation with a friend — he/she is fully present, like a baby gazing raptly at her toes with the one-pointedness of a Zen master. Such activity is not “exhausting.” Rather it generates energy in oneself and others. It is life self-renewing.

According to legend, the Tao Te Ching was written by a sage named Lao Tsu who, traveling by buffalo to uncharted territories, paused to set down his wisdom for a border guard. “Lao Tsu” is not a proper name but an honorific title that can mean “old master,” or, alternatively “old child.” This strange oxymoron may by now make sense. As a wintry tree puts forth new shoots, so too the long-lived elder is generative and re-generative. These “shoots” may come in the form of new grandchildren, new relationships, new activities, new awarenesses, or just being alive to whatever this moment brings. As Florida Scott-Maxwell writes in The Measure of My Days, “My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.”

New life comes not only from energetic engagement, but something quieter. Verse 16 of the Tao Te Ching counsels:

Empty yourself of everything.
Keep deeply still.
Watch everything arise and return.
Each thing grows and flourishes
Then returns to its root.
Returning to the root is stillness,
The way of nature.
This is what endures.
This is what enlightens.

Not knowing what endures
Brings disaster.
Knowing what endures,
The mind is open,
The heart is open.
One acts nobly,
In accord with the way of Heaven,
The way of the Tao.

This is the source of long life
Without exhaustion.

How do we return to the “root” from which life springs? The Tao Te Ching advises a generous supply of stillness and emptiness. As I grow older I value quiet more than I used to. Meanders in an open park, dog by my side. A summer evening, slowly cooling. I keep broader margins on a day than once I did. My to-do list is briefer. I pray and meditate (though not as much as I could), watch baseball games (probably more than I should) that take forever to unfold and find that is part of their pleasure. So, too, Russian novels, and doing Tai Chi forms. The sage — not me, surely, but we all have a piece of the sage within — does not exhaust his life forces, but husbands them by returning to the root, the home of stillness, the place from which the world arises, and into which it dissolves each night and finally at death.

We will fear the silence of death less the more we make our home there. We may also find this silence lies at the heart of life and its ever self-renewal. It is the root, and the route. It is generativity and longevity.

She who stays in the center endures.
She who dies, but does not die,
Has attained true longevity (shou).

— Tao Te Ching, verse 33

Bird Wisdom by Margaret Owen Thorpe

Margaret Owen Thorpe is a remarkable mind who weaves information into original, and often surprising, pictures and patterns. Yet she is no pedant. Rather, she comes from people who were “colorful characters” . . . always ready to spin a yarn. Her writing includes original commentary, feature stories about people and businesses, history, and practical guides. She has been a developer, manager, and executive in state and county government. She then went to the private sector to work in health care, doing market development for a start-up company now ranked in the Fortune 500. She is now an independent advisor, working with the University of St. Thomas Small Business Development Center in Minneapolis. She remains the historian she was educated to be, hunting ancestors and their antics. She also volunteers with Feline Rescue, Inc., in St. Paul.

A few summers ago, I was working in my back yard. I’d taken the phone outside so I wouldn’t have to rush back in, all muddy and wet, should it ring. I had a bird feeder hanging from a tall pole near the deck. I took the feeder down to refill it, carried it into the garage, spilling some seed on the path as I went. No sooner had I set the feeder down to fill it than the phone rang. I left the feeder in the garage and went to answer the phone.

The caller was someone with whom I often had long discussions about “the weighty issues of the world.” So I sat down on the deck steps and settled into conversation. Pretty soon, winging in at full speed from the trees, came a lady grackle. She landed on top of the feeder pole, ready for lunch. She looked. No feeder. No food. She cocked her head and looked at me. “Where’s lunch?” She waited less than a minute. She gave me another look. “Not gonna feed me, huh?” And she flew from the pole straight to the small pile of seed I’d spilled on the path – and proceeded to have her lunch.

Ms. Grackle displayed a direct wisdom that we humans too seldom have. She didn’t lose sight of the results she wanted – lunch. She didn’t organize a task force to investigate reasons for the feeder’s disappearance. She didn’t send a memo to other grackles – and, possibly, blue jays – advising them that the food was missing and action was required. She didn’t even hire a consultant to facilitate a retreat – “Who Moved My Feeder?” She just adapted and proceeded directly toward her goal.

So what’s wrong with us? Does becoming older really make us wiser? If it does, what do we know at 60 that we did not know at 30? Anything? And what’s wisdom, anyway?

When our parents said, “You’re old enough to know better,” they were suggesting that we’d gained sufficient experience at whatever age we were to know not to do whatever it was we’d done. They were saying that being alive delivers experience – and that we should learn from those experiences to do better. OK – but what’s “better”? And is it wiser? What our parents really meant was, “You’ve been around long enough that you ought to know that we don’t approve of that.” Might have something to do with wisdom – might not. Depends on how wise your parents were, right?

Perhaps a more objective view of wisdom from experience is that we’ve learned, by trial and error, what works – and what doesn’t. Of course, knowing whether or not something worked means knowing what we were trying to accomplish in the first place. Ms. Grackle knew. She was hungry. She wanted to accomplish food in her beak and belly. We humans don’t do so well at keeping our eye on the prize.

It took me two spouses, two incidents, and fifteen years to learn that, if I was seeking to persuade a spouse that I was right and he was wrong, I was not likely to get that result by flinging a bowl of food at him. Of course it felt really good at the precise moment when I tossed the bowl of plums at the first guy – and just as good at the moment when I heaved green beans at the second one – but neither fellow changed his views one bit. And it didn’t feel good at all when I, all by myself, had to scrub the purple plum stain off the wall and pick the beans out of a 1970s shag rug. So I now know that sailing food across a room doesn’t work to persuade. Am I now a wiser person – or just a less messy one?

If wisdom comes only from experience, then we’re going to make an awful lot of mistakes trying to discern what works and what doesn’t. Many of them will be nastier and messier than plums and beans, too. A person might be 86 years old, with lots of life, and still be quite unwise. There’s more to this wisdom thing than just experience and time, isn’t there?

Try thinking about people you consider to be pretty wise – not just the legends – Solomon, Sophia, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, the Dalai Lama. Think about living, walking, talking folks you think wise – your teacher, preacher, rabbi, bartender, neighbor, hair stylist, uncle Fred, aunt Jean. Why do you see them as wise? Not just smart or knowledgeable or trustworthy or honest – wise. Why do you draw upon that special word – wisdom?

The people with wisdom whom we know don’t exactly fit the stereotype, do they? They seldom spout eternal truths. They don’t sit serenely in mountain paradises dispensing pithy summaries of life’s meaning. They probably don’t write profound prose and poetry of Biblical or Aristotelian or Confucian stature. They probably don’t even live above Boulder, spinning “theories of everything” and “integral visions for business, politics, science and spirituality.” They do go through life getting done what they want to get done without a lot of fuss, muss, bother, and shedding of feathers. Rather like Ms. Grackle, in other words.

The wise people we know aren’t self-effacing or compliant. We likely consider them leaders, and we go to them for insights when we have difficulties. Yet they don’t create whirlwinds most of the time. Often they say very little. But when something needs to be said, when a line needs to be drawn, they say it and draw it – firmly, clearly, and without hesitation. Everyone stops beating their wings and puts their feathers back down. How do the wise ones do it?

Let’s continue with birds. What do we mean when we say “a bird’s eye view”? We mean wide perspective as seen from up in the air. We imply that birds see the whole picture, not just individual items. We suggest that their view is clearer and more revealing than ours at ground-level. We know that, as people, we can see some things only from height. When I was in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, I saw only scrub and salt brush, bush by bush, typical of the desert that the canyon is. But, when I stood on the road above the canyon, I could still see, 1,000 years later, where the pre-Columbian canyon residents had grown their crops – squash, corn, and beans – much as the Pueblo nations do today.

How? Today’s scrub is smaller in the sections where earlier people grew food. They irrigated with rain water collected above the canyon and brought down through and over the mesa rock. Over time, salts and other minerals leached into the water and were deposited in the agricultural locations. The soil remains saltier and more alkaline than is ideal for plant growth. We could, of course, test the soil and discover this condition – but we can see it for ourselves. Sight is more memorable than data, isn’t it?

Carrie Bassett, in her article in this issue of Itineraries, mentions the Nazca lines in Peru. It provides a much more dramatic illustration of what a bird’s eye view does. As she notes, if you walk or ride on the plain, what you will see is rock, rock, and more rock. All rock. Everywhere. Just rocks. But, if you’re brave enough to get in a small plane, high on the west slope of the Andes where the wind currents are truly alive, you will see that the rocks are not just rocks; they are arranged to show a hummingbird, a spider, a monkey, and more – from above.

What our feathered friends, then, are seeing in a bird’s eye view – and what we, people, see when we, so to speak, rise above – are patterns.

I propose that patterns – and the ability to see them – are the keys to wisdom – to practical wisdom that handles difficult situations for us and among us. Practical wisdom from patterns hands us tacit guidelines for how things work. Patterns give us a world view that lets us know what matters – and what doesn’t. We don’t have to spell out the contents of the view bush by bush, rock by rock. In fact, we shouldn’t because it destroys the meaning of the pattern. There is knowledge in the pattern – in the whole – that ceases to exist when we dissect the whole into its pieces. Here is a list of pieces:

Drafthood, reducer ring, baffle assembly, heat trap, cold water dip tube, anode rod, temperature and pressure relief valve, drain valve, thermostat, manifold, orifice, main burner, pilot assembly, pilot tube, thermocouple, screw 10-32 x .312 PH RD MACH, pilot shield, inner door, outer door, palnut, air shutter.

If we do not see patterns, whatever wisdom we have comes only from tedious trial and error.

Wisdom comes from paying attention to the relationships that form patterns – among objects, in human situations, in complex systems. When we collect all the information but cannot discern what matters and what does not, decisions to act or not act,. and how, become difficult – and often incorrect.

A wise person actually can see the forest for the trees. She knows what information pertains to her goal, purpose, intended result – and what information does not. The irrelevant information fades out of the picture; the relevant information comes into sharp focus. The sharpened focus becomes knowledge. Knowledge becomes understanding. Understanding tells her what to do – or to not do.

Does age have anything to do, then, with wisdom? Probably, even if it’s only the trial and error sort of wisdom. My discovery that flinging food at spouses did not persuade them to my point of view eventually led to a probably wiser conclusion – that the particular disagreements were not significant – but that my frustrations and dissatisfactions went far beyond the topics at hand – and that I needed to address the fundamental issue – the relationships. So I did.

We say “older and wiser” as if it’s a given. A September headline in the Wall Street Journal suggests there’s more to it: “Older, Wiser, Slower — After 50, Avid Athletes Find That to Stay Healthy, They Must Let Go of the Need to Win.” We have less energy to spend, whether we like it or not. If we don’t slow down and focus clearly on what really matters, we may not make it too far past 50. Slowing down brings wisdom from seeing less detritus and more substance.

So the visiting grackle with her bird’s eye view knew that what mattered was where food was – not where food wasn’t – even if food was no longer where it had once been. Where it went – or why it went – did not matter.

People we deem wise appear calm and in charge because they do not need to frantically scratch in piles of data to find the pony. They aren’t fretting about corporate colleagues wearing white socks with dress shoes or too-short skirts or whether or not the receptionist will remember to water the plants. They focus instead on understanding what needs to be done – and how – to create a new product that people will really want to buy. Wise faculty members focus upon new molecular biology insights and upon successful ways to communicate with students, not upon who was sitting with whom at the last faculty senate meeting. Wise people pay attention to what matters. The bird knew that very well; let her teach.

Serving from Spirit by Robert C. Atchley

Robert C. Atchley is a distinguished professor of gerontology emeritus at Miami University, OH, where he also served as the director of the Scripps Gerontology Center. Atchley was previously a professor and chair of the Department of Gerontology at the Naropa University, in Boulder, CO, and is the author of Social Forces and Aging (published by Wadsworth) and of Continuity and Adaptation in Aging and Spirituality and Aging, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Among elders, service is very often a spiritual experience. For many, service is a source of much joy and satisfaction. Uplifting is a word often used to describe experiences of service. Much of this service happens in the context of friendship and family networks, but elders are also mainstays of service in many community organizations.

The serving-from-spirit concept is based on the idea that effective service in the community is rooted in two things: 1) a cultivated connection with the experiential spirituality that lies within each human being, and 2) knowledge and skills needed to be effective in whatever arena of service one chooses. Serving from spirit is a stance from which to be of service and a model of how one can grow spiritually and at the same time become more effective in service to the community.

In their book How Can I Help? authors Ram Dass and Paul Gorman assert that service stems from the human impulse to care. We can see this especially clearly in how communities respond to disasters such as floods or tornados. At such times, the impulse to care for one another is overwhelming. The impulse to care is a noble inclination, but it tells us little about how to care or what will be effective. Service over the long run requires that we build on the impulse to care.

The serving-from-spirit model begins with the goal of being spiritually grounded while serving. As people grow spiritually, they develop levels of consciousness and awareness that alert them to the obstacles thrown in their paths by self-centeredness. Ego-based service is first and foremost about the ego’s needs. A reflective process of examining personal motives for serving can help identify ego-based motives. Enlightened service rises above the ego to more clearly see what is needed. To move toward enlightened service requires skill in remaining spiritually centered while doing the work of service.

Many well-intentioned people find their service less satisfying than they would like because they do not have essential information about the structure and operation of the field in which they wish to serve. Most areas of service have their own unique concepts and language about what they do and how they do it. “Paying your dues” involves getting the experience needed to ensure being sufficiently informed to serve effectively. This does not mean passively accepting other people’s definitions of what is good, true, or beautiful; it means making sure to understand the situation before weighing in with suggestions for change.

A person who is accomplished at serving from spirit is able to stay spiritually centered amid the ups and downs of working in an organizational environment, often in situations involving people who are in desperate need. Those serving from spirit are also very knowledgeable about how to work within the organizational context and/or with the types of people who are to be served.

Listening to One’s Entire Being

People find their way to spiritual paths and to community service in a large variety of ways. The mind, the ego, the heart, the body, and the soul can each lead us. But if people are only listening to one part of being, then they are not taking advantage of all their resources for being clear about what they are doing, or thinking about doing. Listening to one’s entire being involves cultivating sensitivity to each dimension of being. This possibility is greatly enhanced by contemplative practice—meditation, rumination, and inner stillness and quietude. In this sense, contemplative practice is an important companion on both the inner spiritual journey and the outer journey of service. Contemplative practice can put people in touch with higher levels of consciousness, from which it is possible to see clearly the workings of mind and ego, the shape of true compassion, actions that would truly be of service, and a pace that is healthy for the mind and body of the server.

Mindfulness and Transcendence

Mindfulness and transcendence are important qualities to bring to the spiritual journey and to bring to service. Mindfulness is being right here, right now. It is an intense awareness of the present moment. With mindfulness people are able to see more clearly what is before them. They are more likely to see what will actually be helpful in serving another human being or serving an organization. In this framework, it is not so much a matter of doing for others as “I” would like to be done for, but doing for others as they would like. It is a matter of doing service that is not self-centered.

To employ mindful service, we also need a vantage point that transcends our ordinary consciousness of self. Ordinary consciousness is ego-centered. We are the main character in the drama. But as soon as we begin to witness our ordinary self, we have transcended that self and can see it more clearly than we possibly could from the middle of our ego-agendas of desire or fear. To the witness, we are only one of the characters in the drama and not necessarily the most important one at a given moment. When we look into the eyes of another person and realize that we are looking at another being just like us, we can experience a unity level of consciousness. Witness and unity consciousness are both transcendent levels of awareness that make it more possible to grow spiritually and to serve effectively.

Becoming Wisdom and Compassion in Action

Being wise and having compassion are not all or nothing. They are qualities that exist in degrees. They are not something we have, they are capacities we can develop. They are qualities that we might be able to bring into being in a given situation. If we have cultivated wisdom and compassion, then we have a greater capacity to manifest those qualities, but this happens in the present moment. Whether we can manifest wisdom and compassion depends on how centered we can remain. When we are in a situation of service, we are usually called to be wise and to be compassionate. How well we can do this depends a great deal on how long we have been practicing wisdom and compassion. In practice, a circle of sages is always more effective than a single sage precisely because even sages cannot be all things to all people.

Often we think of service as something that involves volunteering or working within an organizational context. However, service is really an intention that we can take with us into a wide variety of situations we find ourselves in. What would happen if we went joyfully about our daily lives seeing every person as someone we could potentially serve, in however small a way? What would happen if we took every opportunity to tend our planet and our environment? Many times these are not big programs or long-term tasks but instead are things we can do moment, by moment, by moment. It only takes a few minutes to deeply listen to someone who needs a receptive ear; it only takes a few seconds to pick up a piece of trash. The feeling of service is something that happens in the present moment, whether we are doing it in an organizational context or purely on our own.

The Yellow Brick Road of Not Knowing by Jane F. Gilgun

Jane F. Gilgun, PhD, LCSW, is professor, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. She does research on the meanings of violence to perpetrators, how persons overcome adversities, and the development of violent behaviors. Her books and articles are widely available on the internet at Amazon Kindle, scribd.com, and lulu.com. She also has videos at www.youtube.com/jgilgun.

I’m at my wisest when I am in a state of not-knowing. At those times, I experience myself as open to experiences of various sorts, such as to nature, to my horses, and to other people. My experience is in soft focus and slow motion. What is happening has not happened before. What I have learned in the past and know intellectually is in suspension. Only when I reflect back on this state of not-knowing do I intellectualize my experience and gain knowledge. Perhaps knowledge is experience reflected upon and intellectualized.

Unfortunately, these states of not-knowing are rare. They require a sense of safety and trust, of relaxation and openness. If other people are involved, they have to be willing to engage themselves in the moment along with me and let go of rational thought and anxieties.

As I think about states of not-knowing, I realize there are various types. Some are a bit of nirvana, while others are thrilling and sensual, while still others are gripping and suspenseful. There probably are other types as well, but three is enough for now. Sometimes the nirvana-like situations envelop me without my consent. For example, while driving a coastal highway in the west of Ireland, my consciousness shifted on its own. I was alight in the puffy pink clouds that arose above the coast. Or the time I was doing yoga and everything stopped except for the rainbow-colored waterfall that flowed within what I later learned was the chakra between my eyes. I knew nothing but that waterfall. Or the day I walked Third Beach in Newport, RI, and experienced the unmediated joy that I was going to live after an operation for a tumor that could have been malignant. In each of these times, I was in what I would call heaven. I was wise during those moments. I was the unmediated me, with nothing between me and the experience of something I believe is mystical.

Being with my horses is zen. Nothing else exists but the rhythms between me and them — their huge eyes, soft breathing, and furry ears. Anxiety, the pressure of time, guilt based on actual or imaginary transgressions — these do not exist. Then I am wise.

I like the state of not-knowing when I’m with other people. This happens at times with friends. We talk, and we do things together, sometimes without talking. We are outside of our own concerns and anxieties, emotionally available to each other and out of the constraints of time.

I’ve also had this experience with lovers. The experience is like zen. During those times of not-knowing there’s a flow and a sense of being outside of time and of myself, soft and aloft. Even the sexual pull that arises between me and a lover is a form of wisdom. I give myself over to the experience which can be a highly emotional intense gratification, but wisdom all the same because these experiences have not happened before and they happen only in the moment. Reliving them is not the same as being in them.

Another form of not-knowing arises when I’m in the more formal roles of professor and researcher. When I work with students on their projects, I have to put myself in a state of not-knowing in order to understand what they want to do with their projects. When I get a sense of what they want, I can make suggestions about which yellow brick roads can get them to the Emerald City. In other words, I have to start with not-knowing, get a sense of what they want, and then suggest how they can proceed, again not knowing if they will take me up on my suggestions. I am most unhelpful when I think I already know what they want. Role-based not-knowing has its own pleasures, but it is not the same as the transformative experiences of nirvana and zen that I have described.

A final state of not-knowing that is quite common in my life is the not-knowing I experience when I conduct research interviews. My research topic is violence and how persons cope with adversities. I also seek to identify and understand the belief systems that guide their thinking, emotions expressions, and actions. I know a lot in general about violence, human development, research methods, and myself. I know nothing about the person I am interviewing. Being in a state of not-knowing means I am listening and can hear them. The only way I know how to do this is to put myself in a state of not-knowing.

Knowledge, then, is a form of knowing. It is information that people have that can be put into words. People construct personal knowledge systems when they reflect back on their own experience. We construct more formal knowledge systems when we absorb what others teach us.

Wisdom, on the other hand, requires not knowing and being emotionally and psychologically open and available to others, who then feel safe enough to express their most sensitive experiences. We are wise when we respond with knowledge connected to experience and when we offer what we know as tentative, subject to revision.

What I have written so far can be extended to mean that wise people can put up with anything, including disrespectful, abusive, and violent behaviors. Being in a state of not-knowing does mean that my defenses are down, but it does not mean that my senses are dead. Threats to my emotional and physical integrity prick me into another state of mind: high alertness and instant appraisal of the threat. I can stand up for myself and for what I believe is common decency. I can appease by being silent or not resisting. I can retreat. In no way does a wise person let others get away with behaving badly.

There are many strategies for responding to bad behaviors while maintaining not-knowing and emotional availability. My preferred approach is to understand those who are behaving badly. That is why I have spent more than 25 years interviewing persons who have committed violent acts. I have been in a state of not-knowing for decades in regard to violence. At times I feel stupid and embarrassed by my stupidity. I joke about being a slow learner. Yet, I am a slow learner. I continue to work ploddingly on a comprehensive theory of interpersonal violence — writing bits of it over many years: descriptions, explanations, and analyses, I continue to experience not-knowing. I believe that not knowing will be key to any theory that I finally construct.

One of the most surprising discoveries of this research is how little I knew about myself. In field notes about an interview with a man who had murdered and then raped a college student at a university where he also was a student, I wrote:

As he talked, an image of a bullet hole between his eyes came unbidden into my mind. I thought I had shot him, though I had not moved as he told his story. I was sick at heart. Later, I was enraged over what he had done. Anna [not her real name] was nothing to him, an object maybe, but not a human being, not a young woman at the brink of her adult life, with a future to look forward to.

In an article, I reflected upon the unmediated experience:

I remember feeling surprised at the image and then detached. I may have experienced a smudge of satisfaction that he was dead, that he deserved it, and that a bullet between his eyes had stopped his earnest narration of horror. These are themes that I have seen repeatedly in the narratives of the perpetrators I have interviewed.

Much of this writing is an account of unmediated experience. As I reflected upon the experiences, I believe I learned something important, something I call wisdom. I learned about the violence in my own heart. Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago wrote “…the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a part of his own heart?” I did not know about the violence in myself and how satisfying violence can be. I saw that I too have ideologies that justify violence. I did not know this until I put myself in a position of not-knowing. I certainly was not looking for this kind of self-knowledge, but there it was.

Wisdom arises from reflecting on unmediated experience. Accepting what we learn from unmediated experience may be a yellow brick road that might get us to wisdom, however temporarily. Stupidity envelops us when we think we know something and we do not. Arrogance characterizes certainty that we know something when we do not. Wisdom arises when we are open to experience and emotionally available to others.

Not knowing can be difficult for young people especially. There is something about being young that seems to require certainty. A friend who recently celebrated her 62nd birthday said, “It used to be hard for me to admit that I am wrong. Now I can. I’m not perfect. I’m a flawed human being.” Wisdom is not only the province of elders, but it can take many years to know we don’t know and celebrate it.

Autumn’s Way: Releasing and Simplifying by John G. Sullivan

And I rose
in the rainy autumn
and walked abroad in a shower of all my days.1

A shower of leaves falling on a rainy autumn day. A glory and a grieving. An exaltation of color, then a rain of leaves. See them showering down, as a quiet rain. See them falling as spray lifting off a waterfall and descending, releasing and returning to earth — to the earth that is their home and ours.

In Autumn we sense a turning of the year. The rising currents of Spring and Summer have reached their peak. The falling energy of Autumn and Winter appears. Return to an earlier question: How shall we approach this side of the cycle? Shall we see it as decline and diminution or as something else? I suggest that we approach this arc of descent under a number of descriptions:

simplification and return to nature
letting go and letting be — becoming aware of thoughts and feelings
forgiving and being forgiven
letting go and letting be — returning to the Source

We shall explore each in turn. But first a reminder. I have been taking the four stages of life from ancient India and overlaying them on the four seasons. In this picture, the stage of Forest Dweller appears in the midst of the downward and inward energy of Autumn.

We might summarize in this way: The arc of ascent from Student to Householder is about accomplishment, about doing and striving and achieving one’s place in the world. The lure of fame and fortune urge us on. The arc of descent is about something else, a different energy, a different resting. We might think of it in this way:

In the first half of life, we strive; in the second half we release from striving.
In the first half of life, we seek to be somebody; in the second half we allow ourselves to be nobody (and perhaps — since we are less attached to one way of being and may understand others better — we may become, in a sense, everyman/everywoman as well).
In the first half of life, we look to power, prestige, and possessions to define us; in the second half we release from identifying with power and prestige and possessions. We allow ourselves to stand in the mystery of who we are as a unique reflection of all that is, already having all we seek, already being more than we can imagine.

The Autumn dynamic is similar to how Michelangelo spoke about sculpture. He said that making a sculpture was easy. All one had to do was find a block of marble in which the figure already existed and cut away what did not belong. In our case, even the metaphor of “cutting away” is too active. Perhaps better to say that we allow to fall away whatever was never who we really were nor are.2

1. The Call to Simplify and Return to Nature

Imagine the arc of descent beginning when a man or woman retires. In ancient India when one’s work life is finished and the children leave home, a person was invited to move from Householder to Forest Dweller. The first invitation to the Forest Dweller is to reconnect with the natural world. This has always proved renewing. Think of contact with forest, with wilderness and wildness, with the great ocean, with the sky-seeking mountains, with the vast stillness of the desert. To leave the bustle of city life and retreat to the more primal setting of nature itself.

A first practice in simplifying is to open our senses and reawaken our delight in simple things. Become reacquainted with the four elements dear to our ancestors: the earth, the water, the fire, the air. Examine rocks and minerals. Touch the good earth with its plants and trees. Realize that we, human ones, are companioned by the creatures of sea and earth and sky. All our kin. Surely this sense of situating ourselves in the great web of life, in the great family of all creatures, has never been more timely.

Poet Wendell Berry speaks of the healing powers of the natural world in his poem “The Peace of Wild Things”:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.3

In the West, the gentle St. Francis of Assisi, in his Canticle of the Sun, spoke of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Mother Earth, and even Sister Death. His counterpart in the East, the beloved Japanese Zen monk, Ryōkan Taigu, loved playing with the children and delighted with all forms of life. His death poem was this: “showing their backs, then their fronts, falling maple leaves.”4

We do not have to retreat to forest or mountains or ocean to return to nature. We can awaken to the beauty of simple things around us and within us. Indeed, the call for elders who are earth elders has never been more pressing. Two monastics in our time sound similar notes. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of “interbeing,” and writes:

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; without trees, we cannot make paper. . . . So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.5

Thomas Berry, also a monastic, speaks of the need in our time to shift from seeing nature as a collection of objects to seeing nature as a communion of subjects.6 Thus, the Forest Dweller both returns to simple elemental things and sees these beings as fellow creatures, as part of one’s own Great Family, able to be encountered as having an interior as well as exterior life.

First, a simplification. A return to the present and the presence of mystery at each moment. As the poet e. e. cummings says, “Now the eyes of my eyes are open, now the ears of my ears awake.” Opening the senses in the present moment — this is one invitation to become Forest Dweller.

Second, a release that allows expansion. As we become less attached to roles and duties, ideologies and identities, the canvas of who we are can expand to include all our brothers and sisters and all our kin. This is a first paradox of releasing. The more I let go of specific definitions, the more freely and deeply I can participate with all beings. As we shed roles and identities to enter the zero point, we find we are already in a great communion or community. The Roman playwright Terence said: “I am a human being and nothing that is human is alien to me.” This is a beautiful embrace of the entire human family. The Forest Dweller can say more: “I am a unique participant in the web of all life and nothing in this circle is alien to me.” Willing to become nobody, I find I have become, in a certain sense, everybody.

2. Letting Go and Letting Be:
Becoming Aware of Thoughts and Feelings

Two Zen stories from among my favorites emphasize letting go.

A Western professor comes to visit a Japanese Zen master. The Zen master pours him tea. The tea begins to spill over the top of the cup and onto the table. Finally, the professor can stand it no longer. “Can’t you see it’s full?” he cries.

The Zen master pauses — and with the hint of a twinkle in his eye says: “That is the way you are. So full of your own opinions, beliefs, certainties. How can I teach you Zen?”

The invitation: Empty the cup. And the image here of emptiness is a central one to the Buddhist tradition. Let us explore it step by step. What needs emptying? The mind and heart. Emptying of what? From the mind: old ideas, beliefs, opinions, certainties, identities. From the heart: clinging, condemning, and identifying (identifying with our attachments and our aversions).

A second Zen story goes like this:

Once upon a time, two Zen monks were returning to their monastery after a long journey. As they came upon a swift running stream, a lovely young woman came toward them from a grove of trees where she had been waiting. “Noble sirs,” she said, “I am traveling to aid my mother who has fallen ill. She lives across the stream and to the south. But the stream is so swollen that I cannot cross for fear I shall be swept away. Will you help me cross, good sirs?”

The elder of the two monks nodded graciously, picked up the young woman and carried her across the raging stream. On the other side, he lowered her gently to the ground. The young woman expressed her thanks and continued on her way toward the south. The two monks wished her well and turned to the north to continue their journey home. Neither spoke for an hour. Then the younger of the two said to his companion: “I have been wondering: Do you think that it is right and proper for us who are monks to touch a young lady, especially one so beautiful as she?” The elder monk smiled and said: “I lifted her up and put her down an hour ago. You are still carrying her.”

In all inner work, we can distinguish between (1) what is happening and (2) how we are relating to what is happening. We relate to something in two main ways:

through our intellectual meaning-making (how we understand, interpret, “language” life)
through our emotional value-creating (our liking or disliking, our attachments or aversions, our desires and fears, greed and anger)

Then, alas, we lock in our meaning-making and our value-creating by telling ourselves, “That’s just the way I am (or he/she is, or they are, or the situation is).”

Yet, we can learn to observe our language and observe our emotional responses — how we name things and how we generate desire and fear, allure and anger. We are meaning-makers and value-creators. On each of these poles, we can become fixed and fixated.

Still, there is hope. If we create the conversations in which we live, we can alter those conversations. We can let go of small-minded conversations and replace them with larger-minded conversations. If we generate our emotional responses to people and situations, we can alter those emotional responses. We can let go of small-minded, suffering-causing responses and substitute larger-minded, more beneficial responses.

In the story of the two monks and the beautiful woman, the elder monk represents the larger-minded possibilities in us. The younger monk represents the smaller-minded possibilities in us. Constricted thought forms, larger thought forms. Ego-centered emotional projections or compassionate empathy. If we are awake and alert, we can choose. Opening the mind and opening the heart gives everyone more room to be.

3. Forgiving and Being Forgiven — With More Room to Be

Letting go — as the waterfall releases the water, allowing it to fall joyously — airborne now, and still on its way to the sea. In this movement, this current, I see the Forest Dwellers participating in Autumn. Having released old stories and let go of greedy, angry emotions, something ever ancient and ever new appears.

When I release from identifying with my thoughts, with my ideologies and identities, then what lies at the depth in you and in me has a chance to become manifest. I see the dancer and the dance. I see the inner light, and bliss enters quietly.

We return to what is. And that is perhaps the most challenging of statements. Who are we and what is going on within and around and among us? I think of each person and situation as having a surface and mid-point and a depth. “What is” must be a large enough context to acknowledge the surface difficulties and the mid-level observations and the mysterious depth that has many names and no name.

Let us apply the lessons of Autumn to our relations with our parents. All parents gift and wound their children — our parents gifted and wounded us, and we gifted and wounded our own children. Furthermore, our dialogue with our parents — living or dead, in spoken words or in our heads — is never finished. Throughout our lives, we are comparing and sorting out. As we get older, as we have children, we may return to our parents with a bit more compassion. How young they were when they had us. How much they dreamed of how it would be. Gifts and wounds. As we get older, as we have our own children, we begin to recognize that:

some of what we once called” wounds” turned out to have been “gifts in disguise.”
some of what we once called “gifts” turned out to be “wounds in disguise.”

So I propose that we seek to forgive our parents. As we forgive our parents, we will find that we are forgiving ourselves at the same time.

Forgiving our parents for not being all they wished to be — for being often unskillful or confused.
Forgiving our parents for not being all we wished them to be.
Forgiving ourselves for asking the impossible of our parents and perhaps also of ourselves.

By forgiving parents I mean to recognize that they, like us, are limited human beings, often unskillful, not always able to bring about what they wished to do or be. When we let go of the impossible dream of perfection, when we drop our shifting — often conflicting — measuring rods, we may notice that in their very particularity, in their very struggle, our parents have a unique glory — one always there yet unnoticed by us except in moments. Perhaps we see anew the sacrifices they made and the persistence they showed.

To forgive in this context is to bow to parents exactly as they are at the surface and at the depth. It is to recognize in them all their surface disturbances, fears and uncertainties, hopes and dreams, weaknesses and avoidances. And it is to recognize their deep nature, their full unique beauty. It has been said that, for each of us, there is —in the other world —a stone with our true name on it. And we do not even know that name. To see our parents as God sees them is to see both their surface disturbances and their unique, unrepeatable beauty and inestimable worth. To see them as sacred and also imperfect.

No matter how often we see or remember our parents, we can always return anew. We can drop the old stories. We can come to them with a larger heart and more compassionate eyes. How do we enlarge our hearts or, to change the metaphor, how do we polish the mirror of the heart so that we may see more of what is there? One master said: “To polish the heart, smile and speak in kindly ways.”7 We can commit ourselves to doing that, right here and right now with regard to our parents — to smile and to speak in kindly ways. If our parents are with us still, we can do that in their presence. If they are no longer with us, we can do that in their absence.

4. Letting Go and Letting Be: Returning to the Source

Perhaps a “releasing moment” is joined with every “acting moment.” First, we practice acknowledging situations and people exactly as they are in surface and depth. The practice of releasing — of letting go —moves us to equanimity, to a state where we are able to be more attentive to our brothers and sisters and less blinded by our personal karmic formations. The Buddhist tradition speaks of the Four Immeasurable Abodes or Minds: love (or loving-kindness), compassion, joy (or sympathetic joy), and equanimity.8 All are interdependent. When we practice one deeply, the rest come along with it. Love deepens when it is sensitive to suffering and joy and finds a serenity in facing whatever comes. Compassion is enriched by love and joy and equanimity. And so for each. Yet in Autumn, I wish to speak especially of equanimity — a loving, compassionate, joyful equanimity.

Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century mystic, instructs us to think of equanimity as a hinge. The door swings back and forth but the hinge9 remains steady and constant and unmoved. Equanimity is both the practice and the fruit of letting go. It is to face whatever comes as containing a way through. Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” points the way:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.10

If we meet each with love, with compassion, with joy, then surely equanimity will arise. In equanimity, we shall touch all four abodes in the face of whatever arrives.

Yet there is a further movement — link it with letting be. This is a state wherein we rest at the source of all. Union, communion, unity, community, all are present. Or in a different narrative, God and humankind and all beings are experienced as a oneness and we are that.11 As the old Bedouin said to Lawrence of Arabia: “The love is from God and of God and towards God.”12 And we may enter the stream — where? There! Anywhere! At each moment and in each place. We can enter the stream and allow the deeper waters to bath us through and through.

In a first draft of releasement, we do the releasing and we create that which we release. In a deeper sense, we neither create the obstacles nor do we do the releasing. No “I.” No “Thou.” Nothing to release! Autumn is moving to the depth of Winter waters. And, in the waters, we catch a glimpse of the Sage-in-us.

The Zen Master Seng Ts’an offers a hint as he reminds us, “When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been.”13

Notes

1 See Dylan Thomas, “Poem in October” in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: 1934–1952 (New York: New Directions Books, 1957), p. 113

2 The challenge to those reared in a culture of doing is to stop seeing the tasks of Autumn as more striving — striving to let go! This confuses repression with releasement. The beliefs and roles that bind us are illusory to begin with. They never were the truth of things. Letting them go is waking up to that!

3 See Wendell Berry, Collected Poems: 1957–1982 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985), p. 69.

4 For more on Ryokan, see John Stevens, trans., Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan (Boston: Shambhala, 1996).

5 Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), p. 95.

6 Thomas Berry (1914–2009) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Passionist order who recontextualized religion, education, commerce, and government in a cosmological or cosmic context. See his The Great Work (New York: Bell Tower, 1999), p. 16 and elsewhere, for the distinction between viewing the natural world as a collection of objects vs. viewing the natural world as a communion of subjects. See also his The Dream of the Universe (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988) and, with Brian Swimme, The Universe Story (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).

7 I believe that this quote is from the Sufi teacher, Sheikh Muzaffer. “Sheikh Muzaffer used to say that every smile and every kind word softens the heart but every hurtful word or action hardens it.” See Robert Frager, Heart, Self & Soul (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1999), p. 62.

8 These Four Immeasurable Abodes (or Minds) — also known as the Brahma Viharas — are love or loving-kindness (maître), compassion (karuna), joy or sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upeksha). I am following the treatment of Thich Nhat Hanh here. See Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (New York: Broadway Books, 1992), pp. 169–175, as well as Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1998), pp. 1–9. See also Jack Kornfield, A Path with a Heart (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), pp. 190–191, where he notes that the near enemy of love is attachment; the near enemy of compassion is pity; the near enemy of sympathetic joy is comparison; and the near enemy of equanimity is indifference.

9 See the thirteenth-fourteenth-century German mystic, Meister Eckhart’s short treatise On Detachment (Middle High German abegescheidenheit — releasement or letting go) in Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, editors and translators, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense (Mawah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 285–294. The “hinge” metaphor is on page 291. On Eckhart, see also Reiner Schürmann, Wandering Joy: Meister Eckhart’s Mystical Philosophy (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2001).

10 See Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson, The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 109.

11 As the Upanishads teach: Tat tvam asi [the One, the Ultimate] — thou art that.

12 See T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin and Jonathan Cape, 1971), p. 364. The quote is a favorite of the Notre Dame theologian and spiritual writer John S. Dunne.

13 Quoted in Nancy Wilson Ross, The World of Zen (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1960), p. 271. See also Frederick Franck, Echoes from the Bottomless Well (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1985), p. 91.

Books of Interest: In Search of Wisdom, review by Barbara Kammerlohr

A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still On This Earth)

How to Live is the result of Henry Alford’s quest to better understand wisdom and the part aging plays in its acquisition. In his mid-forties, this award-winning humorist explores the nature of wisdom research, reflection, and interviews. The journey took him to libraries, Web sites, small cafes, restaurants, hotels, beaches, and, most fruitfully, into the minds of the septuagenarians he interviewed

How to Live is the first attempt at a comprehensive look at wisdom that I have seen. Though such publications probably exist in academic circles, I have seen none that appeal to a general readership.

Alford admits the task he set himself to is a daunting one: “The term wisdom has had roughly eight million definitions over the course of history. Every culture…has had its ideal of wisdom and has recorded it either orally or in writing.” Worse, no one has published a comprehensive history of wisdom literature. There is no Oxford Companion to Wisdom, nor even a Wisdom Literature for Dummies.

The book goes back and forth between the knowledge the author gleaned from his research in libraries, his insights into wisdom, and his character studies as he struggles to bring clarity to this little-understood human trait.

A string of fascinating character studies scattered throughout the book keeps it lively. The story of Alford’s own mother and her struggle to bring an end to a marriage of many years is especially moving. Ram Dass, spiritual guru for many baby boomers; is among those interviewed. Other names most will recognize include Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom, and Edward Albee. There is also no shortage of “odd balls”: a pastor who thinks napping is a form of meditation; a retired aerospace engineer who eats food out of the garbage and urinates on the sidewalk.

A section on aphorisms contains the story of Ashleigh Brilliant, the world’s only “full-time professional published epigrammatist” whose goal in life is to have epigrams — those pithy sayings which “express an idea in a clever and amusing way” — recognized as a genre of literature.

Alford includes several aphorisms as examples of one type of wisdom, among them: “Trust in God, but tie your camel.” Other examples came from Brilliant’s Web site:

“I have abandoned my search for the truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.”

“When I find true wisdom, I will let you know (if letting you know still seems important)” (both from page 246).

I made a foray into Brilliant’s Web site myself and found these gems:

“Doing it wrong fast is at least better than doing it wrong slowly.”

“My sources are unreliable but their information is fascinating.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit, though I persevered to the last page with How to Live, I found it awkward reading in many places. The character studies — each about a unique individual determined to manifest that uniqueness — are well done and hold the interest of any reader. Some readers, however, myself included, would question whether, however fascinating Alford’s old people are, they can be called wise. Where is the wisdom in urinating on the sidewalk in broad daylight or sticking it out through decades with a marriage to a substance abuser?

I frequently tell myself (and anyone else who will listen) that I want to be a wise old woman — not a silly old woman. Reading How to Live, I had to confront the possibility that I probably don’t understand wisdom, much less how to become wise. The effect was much like an experience from the period of my life when I was studying Buddhism. I found myself in a room with several other seekers and a visiting Roshi from Japan. We were trying to understand koans and their purpose. The teacher gave us the example below and then seemed determined we should answer its the question:

“When you meet the Buddha on the road, greet him not with signs or sounds. How shall you greet him?”

It took me only a few seconds to recognize that this was not a question with a logical answer. It was therefore silly, and I hate silliness. My mind began looking for an exit strategy that would get me out of that room without calling attention to my hasty departure. At that precise moment the teacher demanded to know my thoughts on the koan. Irritated and embarrassed at being singled out, I shot back:

“This is a waste of time for me. Ask someone else. Frankly, I would not recognize the Buddha if he walked in the room right now!”

The teacher beamed as if he had found a star pupil. “Exactly! The first step in seeking Buddha nature is to realize what one does not know.”

So it is with wisdom and How to Live. The book takes the reader face to face with the realization that there is no simple definition of wisdom even if recognition of wisdom is a prerequisite to becoming wise. The process of realizing this can be irritating, and that irritation can easily be directed at the author who had the courage to go in search of something he did not know.

Poems: Collected by John Clarke

Fall Guise by John Clarke

Autumn, unlike wisdom, they say,
comes if you wait or if you don’t.
“Death? ….. That would be beauty’s mother …..,”
the insurance executive claimed.

Fall! — Oh felix culpa!
Happy, happy fault!
Fall-it! Hair’s width away from service ace.
Edenic coin rendered freely —
call it in the air as it turns.

Autumn’s dying slant of light
lends such color to the old
brick walls, the young
cheeks — those sunburnt
hands we used to hold.

As days dwindle down …..
oh precious, precious
few, oh few …..

Leaving us strewn
upon sidewalks, gutters
of spent desire, hope
mulches itself still.

Our aging — subtler than clockwork —
sputters, sprouts, and blossoms
from mere greeny splendor into
luminous luscious orange yell-
ow purpled brown reds! —
all seamed and stroked by
auras green beyond green.

Trees chuckle to see us —
we fallen mirrors who can’t see
our own autumnal radiance now.

Though perhaps that’s a mercy
to spare us the shock
when such beauty becomes
winter’s iced seeds awaiting
some all-changing spring
into love’s dark never-to-be-seen.
Again. Oh again.

On Prayer by Czeslaw Milosz
(Trans. by C. Milosz and Robert Hass)

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word “is”
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say “we”; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay — how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Assurance by William Stafford

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.