EPILOGUE: PRACTICING WISDOM

IN EARLY SPRING 2007, I went away for a few days’ retreat at the Sky Farm Hermitage on a hilltop north of Sonoma. Sister Michaela and Brother Francis welcomed me and showed me around the four guest cottages. I stayed in one that had been made from an old wooden wine vat, about twelve feet across. They had cut out windows and a door and turned it into a simple and satisfying monastic cell in which to live for a few days. I cooked my own meals in the refectory and picked up wisdom books from their little library—Thomas Merton, Brother David Stendl-Rast, Simone Weil. Each morning I got up before sunrise to do my Qi Gong practice among the live oak trees, sometimes alone and sometimes joined by Sister Michaela.

The silence, beauty, and isolation were a wonderful background for my reflections about making waves and riding the currents through a lifetime. I thought of the institutions I had launched and their ongoing success. None of them have developed in just the way that I would have planned or predicted, but they have taken on lives of their own, with excellent leadership that has realigned their programs to meet the shifting opportunities and demands of a changing world. They were all founded with a commitment to making waves, and they continue to do so.

I reflected on the practice of wisdom, the theme that has come to dominate my life. I imagined what a law firm thoroughly grounded in wisdom practice might look like. The lawyers would give more time to silence and introspection, and to assuring that their lives could be lived and enjoyed in balance, that career and ambition did not squeeze out family and personal growth. In their professional work, clear seeing would be valued—free from the screens of cynicism and materialism on one side, and ungrounded utopianism on the other. Core values of interconnection, humility, and kindness would be reflected in their choice of cases, the way they related to adversaries, and the positions they advocated. They would be as zealous and determined in serving their clients’ interests as any other lawyer. They would work with their clients to explore the long-term consequences of the issues they took on. The lawyers would regularly check into the extent that they were honoring their commitment to cultivate wisdom and support each other in that commitment. They would monitor the success of their overall program to assure that the practice of wisdom was serving their public interest goals, and they would reassess their goals to see if they could be deepened to reflect the wisest understanding. The novelty of the project would call for a suitable modesty and caution in their hopes and expectations.

It is possible to imagine the practice of wisdom having a similar impact in many fields—such as philanthropy, medicine, and business.

The practice of wisdom doesn’t give answers, much less assure that we will arrive at a state of being wise. But it can give resilience, balance, and depth, enabling us to confront adversity and suffering in our personal lives, as I have found in connection with Susan’s cancer.

The practice of wisdom can also help with the management of difficult, contentious problems of public policy without falling back 259on clichés and stereotyping. Even one person who is committed to the practice of wisdom might shift the dynamic in a way that creates a space for the emergence of wisdom. In the political sphere, it is possible to imagine a time when voters will take a candidate’s wisdom into account in choosing leadership.

The fellowships offered by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society suggest one way to restore the practice of wisdom to its proper place in the education of young people—not as an abstract subject of intellectual analysis, but as the forging of the container that holds all the other subjects of study.

Each of us can bring the practice of wisdom into our careers, our politics, and the life choices we make, deepening and empowering our work for a more just, sustainable, and reflective world. It nourishes our equanimity and resilience to deal with overwhelming problems, our capacity for maintaining balance in our lives, and our ability to see clearly the conditions around us and understand them in a large perspective of constant change and interconnected relationships. It can help us deal with the problem of burnout—the exhaustion of idealistic ventures where there is a bottomless well of needs and our efforts always fall short. Practicing wisdom can create a new framework for addressing the unprecedented challenges facing the world, from nuclear proliferation to global climate disruption, with insight, clarity, and hope

Practicing wisdom keeps us alert to identifying wise people when they appear in our lives, and gives us the capacity to open to their wisdom and to learn from them. The practice of wisdom has transformative potential—for each person individually and for societies collectively at this critical moment in history. It can give us the courage to take the radical initiatives that are necessary to build a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world. It can help keep our lives in balance—making waves and riding the currents.