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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Where Wisdom Comes From

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu spend quite a bit of time referring to sages. Who are they really talking about? How does a person become sagacious?

I've been thinking about this query lately and it dawned on me that people who lead uneventful lives -- ones in which they incessantly toe the proverbial line -- rob themselves of the opportunity to gain wisdom. One of the best methods for learning is to misstep, mess up, screw up or take the wrong path. We grow the most when we make mistakes and then learn lessons from them.

So, a sage is NOT someone who has led a life of crystal clarity nor a person who has made few, if any, missteps along the way. People such as this might be smart, but they probably won't be very wise. No, a sage is someone who has lived their life to a full extent and has learned from all their disharmonious decisions.

The upshot of this is that ANY of us can don the robes of the sage. As long as we're each open to the learning opportunities that each life provides, we have the capability to become sagacious. Sagacity doesn't mean that we won't make any more missteps, but we will learn from each of them too.

4 comments:

  1. or, as i once heard it stated: "good judgement comes from experience. experience comes from bad judgement." :-)

    --sgl

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  2. Teaching without words,
    performing without actions:
    that is the sage's way.

    "The Modern Taoist Sage"
    By Jos Slabbert

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  3. What great timing to read this. I've lived a happy but pretty uneventful life for my first 32 years of existence. You know the drill, go to school, then college, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. Work my butt off for a large corporation so I can be paid well and have financial security...

    But I've slowly become bored because it's too easy and without mistakes I don't become any wiser. But what really has me thinking about all this is to picture myself 30 years from now. If I'm still here living an easy life, accomplishing nothing interesting and just surviving and passing time until death comes - that's such a sad concept.

    My wife and I have been talking a lot about this lately and we're coming up with a grand scheme to add some excitement and risk in our lives.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Life is not about excitement and risk. If one is bored, one is not paying attention.

    ReplyDelete

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