Common Wisdom, Common Ground—Third Contemplation

Third Contemplation 

In talking about wisdom, we enter the wilderness of philosophy, which means LoveWisdom (philo/sophy, love/wisdom). When we hear the word “philosophy,” we may think of some kind of abstract stuff, or something silly that intellectual types deal with. Or, we may think of it as superficial or impractical, the way we might say, “I don’t have time to get philosophical about this. I need to get this taken care of.”  

But skillful philosophy is the way to get things done, without negative side-effects. The greatest healing we can experience is the healing that comes from wisdom, love, and beauty, which is the essence of philosophy—the essence of life. 

Philosophy is LoveWisdom, and LoveWisdom itself is the least abstract, the least silly, and the most needful thing, the thing everyone hungers for deeply, the thing that life itself depends on. 

LoveWisdom belongs to everyone. It belongs to the Earth and all her beings. It was given by God or by the Mystery or by the random arrangement of particles—not merely “given,” since it’s not an object, but interwoven into everything, as the sacred creative ordering, the alive and alove patterning that connects and gives rise to all things. However you think It got here, It’s here, and we all depend on It. 

LoveWisdom belongs to all of us, and all of us belong to it. Beauty is essential to LoveWisdom, and so is real happiness. We should think of LoveWisdom as meaning wisdom, love, and beauty, as a totally interwoven thing, experienced as great peace and great joy, a sense of wonder and sacredness. But the word LoveWisdom is easier to handle than something like WisdomLoveBeauty or WisdomLoveBeautyInsightInspirationJoyHealthHealingSacredWonder. 

Let’s be clear: There is no escaping LoveWisdom. That’s part of the “danger” in “dangerous wisdom”. Every time we try to avoid or evade LoveWisdom, we create problems. In our heart, we don’t want to evade it. But, in our head, it also seems scary, because it’s dangerous.  

We might say it seems really dangerous to face up to, but the greater danger comes in not facing it. This helps us understand why the world has so many problems, why we have a looming threat of nuclear catastrophe, why the water has so many toxic substances in it, why we need so many pain killers, why we have so much stupidity in our jobs and our politics. We have these problems because we avoid and evade LoveWisdom, and thus we made the world a dangerous place for us and for countless other beings. 

We actually want wisdom, love, and beauty. We want wise and compassionate leaders, with grace and dignity of bearing, a beauty of presence. We want work that has wisdom and beauty in it because that work has meaning in it, and because it solves real problems and helps the world in some realistic and skillful way, thus presencing compassion in action. We want a wisely and compassionately organized society. We want a beautiful culture and a beautiful world. We want to be able to feel compassion for people who are suffering without being scared we’ll get overwhelmed or they will take away something we need. 

In other words, in our heart, we don’t want to avoid LoveWisdom. We hunger for it. We long for wisdom, love, and beauty with an infinite ache. How, then, does society become so uprooted from wisdom, love, and beauty?