FBA Podcast, “The Alchemy of Wisdom,” Yashobodhi introduces the perfection of wisdom in a series on the Six Paramitas at a West London Buddhist Centre Sangha night in May 2012. Followed by questions and answers.
Free Buddhist Audio
The Alchemy of Wisdom
(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. (speaking in foreign language) It's the Alchemy wisdom, which I hope would attract some people. I'm finally really, really interested in this topic of wisdom. And I've really been enjoying preparing the talk, actually. But I've also noticed that some sort of surgery, because as I've been mentioning, we're gonna give a talk about wisdom, because apparently when you think about wisdom, you start to think about some sort of thing. So I'm not particularly what I'm interested in wisdom as a perfected quality, as a quality of enlightenment by some. Much more interested in wisdom as a process. That's deepening and deepening as we go along. And I'll just say that I've always, I can't remember not having this interest in wisdom and pointing to kind of how things work. And it's actually, when I was ordained in the true Ratna Buddhist order, I got this name. I received his name Yasha Bowdo, my preceptor gave me his name Yasha Bowdo, which knows she was awakening is beautiful, which I was really happy with that kind of explanation. But she gave another explanation for my name as well, which was, which is she who has the perfect wisdom or knowledge by which one becomes a Buddha. It's, I've always felt like the first bit of my name was a bit easier somehow, because as a process, awakening, I feel quite a natural process. So I don't think one particular got to kind of do a lot in order to achieve something, you know, by that name. But somehow I always felt that next bit, that next bit of my name is much more of a challenge. But just preparing for this and reflecting more on this and getting interested in this topic of wisdom, I feel much more at ease with it somehow. So we're doing this in context of the six perfections, sort of six soparametals. And the last one is wisdom. And so it's, so in its perfected, in its perfected said it would be enlightened wisdom, but it is a process. So we're just working, we're just working on it. And it's just happening. When we're practicing, wisdom will come, wisdom will manifest itself somehow. And so I found it quite fascinating to read about wisdom and to think about wisdom and reflect upon wisdom, but I also find it slightly frustrating because I always really want to get to the bottom of something and there's loads and loads of things that I'm potentially interested in, that I have not had time to reach people. But so I've had to find a really prune, prune my talk and take bits out and concentrate on particular other bits. But I just felt in itself, it's interesting that the process of somehow of this talk being assembled, we're coming into beginning must be informed by some sort of wisdom, you know, at least, there must be some sort of wisdom happening in order to create any kind of talk or article or any kind of talk about Buddhism. And I've also felt just doing this talk thinking about this talk that the mind is always wanting to prefix things and settle things so I've had to just try to keep an open mind at least in exploring the topic. And another thing is that I thought, I really wanted this talk to be very good and then always when I'm preparing a talk, it's nowhere as good as I wanted to be. But I was actually thinking, well, then again, I'm thinking about the perfected thing of something that is in a particular shape or that is, but it doesn't need to be, it's just the process. So actually, I thought that was really great to think about it in that kind of way. So the, some of the components of this talk is I'm going to talk a bit about the embodiment of wisdom and then a bit about some definitions of wisdom and a bit about wisdom as a process. But then we've got the three levels of wisdom and I've got particularly interested in questioning, just the whole process of questioning playing the part in how wisdom comes into being. And so I'm going to talk a fair bit about that too and a bit about how to work with wisdom. And I'll be finishing trying to put it in the context of the other part itself. So just let's see how far I get in the course of this time that I'll be doing this. Let me see if I can find out that story like this. So I've been using some books. I've been reading a bit here and there. I've been using some books by some Rakshita, one that's called "Wisdom Beyond Work", which I really like, which is about the Pranya Paramita literature and a book called "What is the Dharma", a book about Buddhist psychology, know your mind all by the same author. And then I've also been looking at access to insight, which is an amazing resource on the internet if you're a real interested in the original writing to bring down the students. And to particularly start by a guy called Tami Sara that I found interesting. And also been looking at an article by a woman who's a psychologist, who's also very much worked very much in form by Buddhism and she is called Jean-Christola. Oh, I was probably nervous, I correctly. I've never heard of her, but I just found it really interesting. I'd also been reflecting a lot about the nature of wisdom and trying to experience the wisdom in my body and all that kind of stuff. So let's see where I get to. So friends about embodied wisdom, I think it's really important when we think about wisdom to not think about it as a sort of abstract quality because you'll never ever be able to meet wisdom unless it's embodied by a person. So wisdom we can find, we can't find as a quality somewhere floating in the universe, but it's actually embodied, it's in a person, it's in each of us, I suppose. So that's just, I think there's an important aspect of thinking about wisdom. And another thing about it is, well, I think, what we've been doing in meditation just now, I thought was excellent because that is something about the Buddha keeps stressing, there's this famous line, Buddhism, which is in the scene, only the scene, in the herd, only the herd. There is something that is so wholesome and important about just being with the body and being with this basic experience. And that's wisdom and being with basic experience, they are just totally, totally related. The one, you can't find the one without the other. So the, some of us might have heard this term, a bit more and some have a type of supposes, it's called, it's perpancha, perpancha. It's proliferation. So what we tend to do when we're feeling something is adding a lot onto it with our thoughts. So for instance, we feel a bit of an unpleasant feeling in the body and we start thinking about, oh, maybe I'll get a bit ill, I don't want to be here anymore, I want to go on a holiday. My life is all full and how am I gonna get out of here and I'm always gonna be unhappy. I mean, really, sometimes this can happen. You can just have one particular feeling, one particular feeling in the body or even one memory and it can spark up a whole load of sort of, we call it proliferation. And that's got nothing to do with the basic experience. It's just what we add on and on and on and on and on to experience. So the idea eventually is to try to stick as much as we can to this basic experience and to keep this perpancha, this proliferation, to keep that sort of, to try to prune it back somehow, to try to create space in the mind. So we don't proliferate too much because the proliferation often leads us to a slow suffering. It makes us, for instance, respond to situations that are actually only in our minds. They're only actually happening in our mind. For instance, Priscilla says something to me and I've got all these sort of thoughts about what she says and then I respond to this and say something horrible to our friends. It's only because it's all happening in the mind but when I look back at what she's actually said to me, I could just, if I could just stay with that, there's just really no need at all to have all these thoughts and to say something horrible. So that sort of, that is it in a very, very simple way. So the idea is to try to see if you can experience this basic experience of body and whatever is manifesting in your experience without adding a lot to form. So I found this, this is a quote from the dharma pada. Simply talking a lot doesn't maintain the dharma. Whoever, although he's heard next to nothing, sees dharma through his body is not needless of dharma, is one who maintains the dharma. I quite like that. Something about seeing the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha through the body. Another translation that they've got is touching, touching the dharma through the body. I really like that because it really brings us back to a very simple level of experience. And those have been trying out to just see if I could find wisdom in the body, how that would work or how that would feel in the body. And I felt, and you might, you know, if he tried sometimes, might come to similar conclusions is that I felt it should be something like openness and it would have like a quality of freshness to it and it would have depth, somehow it would have a lot of depth and it would have a sense of freedom somehow. This is what I felt when I was trying to jitter this inquiry about how does this feel wisdom in the body. So anyway, so this is just a point about how important it is to try to get back to this basic level of experience, doing monument. See if I can get to this. Yeah, definitions of wisdom, that was my next bit. So I think I may have mentioned this already, but in trying to think about wisdom, I think it's important not to see it as a thing that we're trying to see if it's something that's very fluid and that's more like a process maybe. We tend to think a lot in nouns, and whereas apparently everything is much more fluid, if you can think about it in terms of the verbs or things that are moving. So I see wisdom as something that's very much a fluid, fluid kind of quality, rather than something that is fixed. Yeah, so some definition to you. And this is a definition by Sanger actually, by the way. With Pranea, which is another word for wisdom, one is able to sort out the qualities of the compounded from those of the uncompounded, distinguishing clearly between that which is impermanent, insubstantial, painful, and unlovely, and that which is permanent, real, blissful, and beautiful. So I'll repeat that. With Pranea, one is able to sort out the qualities of the compounded from those of the uncompounded, distinguishing clearly between that which is impermanent, insubstantial, painful, and unlovely, and that which is permanent, real, blissful, and beautiful. Another definition by wisdom means seeing reality face-to-face, not thinking about it, not entertaining ideas about it, but seeing it directly and experiencing it for oneself. So something, and I think we're talking about the perfected quality of wisdom. Now, if you would really be able to see reality and things as they really are, we're talking about a quality of wisdom that is quite advanced, but somehow we sometimes get these glimpses and what these intuitions about how things really are, and that is wisdom coming into being. And maybe, if we'd go back to that first definition, people might have recognized these qualities from far impermanence, insubstantiality, and painfulness, which are, they're also called with re-election as the three marks of resistance. And if you think about experience or phenomena, and you're thinking about, and you're really contemplating on them, you could see that, but this is all Buddhist philosophy, that they're impermanent, and that they don't have a real substance to them, and that there is a painful quality in them. I don't think I've got, I mean, it will be very, very long talk if I would go into all this. So I just, let's leave that there, maybe come back to that later. So that is just a way of describing, a way that Buddhist philosophy is describing reality. So some of the, some of the three characteristics of reality is that everything that arises is impermanent and doesn't have an essence, and there's something unsatisfactory about it, because it's not permanent, and because, well, anyway, I'll just leave that there. I just, this is one of the definitions that I thought would be quite helpful. As I said, I just wanted to explain it for example, if I even understand it. So something about wisdom is that you can get more insight in how experience arises, and that experience arises in dependence on conditions. And if you look at the experience in that kind of way, it's much easier to respond to whatever's happening in a wise way, that you know how to respond to a particular situation, for instance. And it's also easier, if you do really would penetrate or understand how your experience, or somebody else's experience arises, because there's all kinds of conditions into place. It is somehow just much, much, much easier to, to study with this basic, basic experience of the body, and not get caught up in all kinds of theories and all kinds of stories that you're telling yourself about your experience. So in another addition to this definition I read out, is that this wisdom, this wisdom, this surname between what is impermanent or permanent in substantial, substantial, substantial, et cetera, is to see what is unlovely, and what is beautiful. I quite like that. So there seems to be something about this, whatever it is, this faculty of wisdom, that is not an intellectual analytical kind of thing, but it is something that's very much connected to feeling. So it's got a very strong, warm feeling, quality to it, to it wisdom has. So if you would see things as they really are, if you could really see how things come into being, you would respond to that in a warm and compassionate kind of way, so that's the idea. That's the idea behind that. And compassion and wisdom are sometimes called indigestion, especially with Tibetan tradition, as two wings of a bird. So you can't really have the one without the other. It's, you know, the one is an aspect of the other. So this beauty and medicine and compassion element, that is this appreciative quality of wisdom. I think I'll leave it at that. So the bits about wisdom as a process. When I was thinking about wisdom as a process, I feel maybe an image that came to mind is a natural process, an organic process. So I think we set out with a particular amount of wisdom somehow, if you could say in the mountain, some sort of connection to a wisdom quality. And that seems to grow if you're practicing ethics, for instance, if you're practicing meditation, this element of wisdom is going to emerge more strongly through time. And my image was quite an image of a tree, for instance, growing. So it's going very, very slowly. How exactly it's growing, it's quite a mystery. It needs a particular conditions, but sometimes it's got these spurts as well, when it gets a lot of water, you know, or whether the sun comes out and sometimes it doesn't grow very fast because of particular conditions. But the process in itself is quite organic. I wasn't thinking of, you know, the image of a flower didn't quite work because it's passing away so quickly, doesn't it? It is quite a, I feel it's got quite an old quality sound. So the image of it as well, isn't it? So wisdom as a process also means, for me, that you cannot arrive at one answer. That always holds true. So it's something about this fluid quality of wisdom, is that it's always responding. It's responding to the particular conditions that are around you at the time. So an answer to that or a response to the world that emerges from that will always be different. It always will always fluctuate through your life. And then your condition shifts. So I've got a definition here by this one, I'm Jean Crystaler, and she says, wisdom is an emergent process that occurs when the ritual generally self-protective reactions of the conditioned mind are suspended and transcended, allowing integration of more complex processing to occur. Well, actually, I think, if we look back through the meditation, which has been doing down the stairs, for instance, I think that is what we're trying to do is to let go into this more basic experience. And then you probably also notice that that means there's a lot of those kind of, a lot of the, what would I've been calling perpuncher, this proliferation, is getting a bit calmer, it calms down a bit more. So it's a bit like maybe a sky with clouds, and when the clouds disappear, there's this space for the sun to come through. So that's how you could see this one as well. So it's in your being, and when the clouds, and all the quite superficial thinking is calming down is widening up a bit more. You've got this quality of wisdom that can manifest in your experience. In various degrees. Yeah, and also, just being more calm and still will allow that wisdom to emerge from the depths somehow as a response to your thinking or to what's happening to you in your life. So if you think a bit about wisdom as a process, traditionally we've got these three levels of wisdom, you may have heard of them. So there's three levels of wisdom. You've got the wisdom that comes into being because you're listening to somebody, giving a talk, a reading, a book, or that kind of thing. And the second level of wisdom is the wisdom that emerges because you're reflecting on things that you've read, or things that you've heard. And the third kind of a third level of wisdom is a wisdom that arises because of your, when you're getting into a war, for instance, when you go on a treaty, you get only a more space to meditate, you go on a holiday, whatever you do, you get into the space where there's more room for you to come to play your experience. There'll be some sort of intuition or understanding happening on the basis of what you've been experiencing in your life, what you've been reading about, what you've been thinking about. And that's, I feel, is a really mysterious process. That's a bit like the alchemy of wisdom, something that is happening in the depths because if you just allow it for it to emerge and how exactly it's happened, we just really don't know, but it is a result of us. Hearing about, well, in this case, what teachers were thinking about reality or reflecting on reality is something that we, that has really struck us and it's really, that we're really contemplating and trying to process. I actually think that it's, for me, I just, I'm making this movement. I think it's something about it trickling down somehow in your energy. And yeah, but something I've been thinking a bit about how does that work in the body with wisdom? And I do feel the thoughts are kind of happening out here and then you've got this whole process of it trickling through somehow. And sometime in meditation, I remember this years ago I was on a study retreat meditating and I just know just something in my energy. I don't know, something happening, something coming up and up popped the question. It's just a question coming up. I found it ever so interesting 'cause it really seemed like a bit like one of those bubbles coming out of the mud somehow and he stirred a mud in a pool. So it just came up and it just came up as a question. And I got really interested in questions at that time and I do, how I see it now, is that it does somehow provide or build a bridge between that wisdom or this sort of intuition of reality and understanding and the intellectual mind. Another image I had today was about a piece of, it's actually not my image, I read about this image. It's when you've got a jigsaw puzzle for instance and you're just looking for that one piece. It just seems like a question comes up and it comes up as that shape of a puzzle or a jigsaw puzzle somehow. So you've got this particular kind of thing that's missing in your understanding and it comes up as a particular question and somehow in the question, the qualities of whatever it is that's true or this kind of wisdom is already inherent somehow in the question. It's kind of the question points to reality, points to wisdom somehow. Anyway, it's very important to do all this stuff about questions and I was googling it and trying to find literature or anything I could read about maybe research on questions or, but there's not much to be found but I did find it's all beautiful documents about questions which is written by people Tony Sarro. I really liked that, it's just called skill in question. So he's been looking at the role of questioning in the Buddhist tradition, just the art or formulating questions, answering questions. So he's written this book about it. I've not managed to read it all but I will. I've got it on my iPad. So it's probably gonna be read at some point hopefully. So somehow these questions, the process of question is like an opening up and making a connection to the unknown. So the way he talks about questions is that they give shape to our ignorance. I really like that actually to think about it in that kind of way, to give shape to our ignorance. So a lot of these, the original teachings of the whole level as original as we have them that we call the Pali Canon and a lot of that is happening in the shape of questions and answers. So it's usually the Buddha being asked a question by somebody and then he'm answering it. So a lot of the teachings that we've got, we've received in that kind of form. So one of the things that I found really interesting is that he has a talk with some advice about which questions you should ask. I find that, I find that really fascinating. So just suppose that, he says suppose that you meet somebody who's really wise, the Buddha says, what would you ask them? Would you ask them? So this is a fragment from one of those sources. This is the way leading to discernment. When visiting the contemplative or Brahmin to ask, what is skillful when open to serve? What is unskilled for? What is blame worthy? What is blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated? What's having done by me will be for my long-term harm and suffering or what having done by me will be for my long-term welfare and happiness. I especially really like that last question because it's, I won't be the only one, sometimes I do do things that I'm not happy with. I'd rather not do them. But the whole thing is that if I, or anybody, at that time would be asking myself that question, it's like, is this something that will make me happier long-term? Or is it something that will make me unhappier in the long-term? I'll probably think a bit longer, before I actually do whatever it is that I'm not happy doing. So I think that's quite interesting to use that as a tool. But he's also talking, in the Buddhist tradition, there's also a lot to talk about questions that are actually, you know, some of the questions that the Buddha didn't want to answer because they didn't, he didn't find them relevant. But he, so this is Thay Sahar Bikum talking about that. He, so that's the Buddha, focused solely on questions related strategically to the end of suffering. So that is questions that would actually help in attaining a goal. For these reasons, he classified questions as they're related to this focus, according to the response strategy they deserved. And he arrived at four sorts. Those, well, let's not go there. That's some, I just find it really interesting that this is, when you read more about Buddhism, well, the longer the longer I'm studying Buddhism and hearing about Buddhist texts, the more I find it's so revolutionary and simple. This whole thing about, you know, really just going back to your basic experience, you know, and all this other stuff that you might be thinking about. All this, all these answers, all this speculation, you know, just let it go, just let it go, you know. I'm not saying I can, but it would make life much more simple and happier, I think, if you were able to do that a bit more. So there is a very famous, a famous passage in, this is in this case, it's the Chula Maluku bar, that's sutta, yeah. But if I say this thing about the poisoned arrow, the problem that's probably a bit more familiar with something. I'll just read it out, it's just, it's an example of, it's an example actually of this process that I've been naming Prabhancha, proliferation, that we might sometimes do. So I just read this out, it's true, it's your paragraphs. So this guy is called Malunkia, Malunkia. Malunkia, if anyone were to say, I won't live the holy life on the develested one, as long as he does not declare to me that the cosmos is eternal, or that after death that the target scenario exists, or does it exist, the man would die, and those things would still remain undeclared by the sutta, that sutta does another word for the Buddha anyway. So he's making a point about asking all these questions about how old is the universe, and what's happening to the body of the die, and what's gonna happen with the other soul, and do we have this, and do we have a that. So it's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison, his friends companion, Skintzen, and relatives were provided with a surgeon, and the man would say, I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a Brahman, a merchant, or a worker. He would say, I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name and clam name of the man who wounded me, until I know when he was too medium or short, until I know whether he was dark or really brown or golden colored, until I know his home village tower city, until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a lumbow or a crossbow, until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo thread, senior head or bark, until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated, until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded with those of a falter, a stalk, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird, until I know whether the shaft which which I was wounded was bound to the senior of an ox, a water buffalo, a lander or a mopee. He would say, I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft which which I was wounded was that sort of a common arrow, a cart, arrow, a bard, a couch to this war or an oleander arrow. So this man would die, and those things would still remain unknown to him. So there is this thing about, you know, asking the right questions. In order to get to this area of wisdom, and so these are all kind of, I could say, in the area of questions that are a bit pointless. It looks like staying out of the city. So that's some bits about, well, you know, that I'm really interested in this, but I'll probably be questioning, so I'll probably read a bit more about it 'cause I think a bit more about it. So another thing that I was wanting to include and I haven't included, I did, there was a blurb that wasn't sent out luckily, but as I said, I promised I was only, of course, they're going to talk a bit about the five knowledges and the four types of knowledge I've decided not to do that. On the basis of, I read them, but I don't think, I feel I haven't understood them properly. They don't do much for me. I don't resonate with them. So I can't see any point in talking about them. So that's the, so if you were expecting them, you're not going to happen, you can read them back. - So what are these things you're not going to talk about? - The five knowledges or the four types of knowledge? Sorry about that. - What are they? - Okay, if you must know, but the five knowledges, you know, they're related to the five for lists. There are all these ways of, do I really need them? I don't want to talk about them. So why are you talking about them? - Because I promised them, I promised them, because I wrote these below, I promised to talk about them, because I'm not doing it. Because I feel I don't understand them sufficiently and I'm actually not that interested in them either. - Fine, fine, fine, fine. (audience laughs) - It's true. (audience laughs) - Okay, so let's just move on. So I've got these little bits about working with wisdom. And it's just ways I've been thinking about that, if we tried to invite wisdom into your experience a bit more. And I actually think this works in itself, inviting wisdom. It's something about opening up and being staying really calm. And waiting for something to emerge, because something will emerge from the depth. So I have noticed as well that if you've got the problem and you're agitated or anxious or angry or even, the solution is never gonna come out of those states of mind, because they're kind of, they make you quite narrow-minded. So you always have to, whatever, the wisdom will come, if you wait for it, if you allow for it to manifest. But it's just really no use in trying to expect a solution from those mental states. So something about just relaxing. They're just relaxing. And I also sometimes try to practice this in meetings. Or meditation, or sometimes in conversation, you know. Just relax and you're just waiting for something to emerge, but it's wiser or deeper somehow, that's helpful. So I feel that really works for me, you can try yourself, see what you think. So another thing that I think might be useful is that if you're in a particular situation and you don't feel you've got that sort of immediate access to a deeper space or a wiser space, that you're, to see, imagine what a wise response might be in that situation. So that might be helpful sometimes. And I do feel that those recommended questions are quite good, you know, this thing about this thing that's happening now, or that need to, you know, in the bigger picture, that need to more happiness for me and other beings, or will it make us less happy? Yeah. And obviously, I mean, the traditionally, we're studying the Dharma, studying the teachings of the Buddha, we're thinking about them or hearing about them meditating, those are all ways to invite more wisdom or to create more wisdom into your experience. Yeah, so lastly, I think I was going to contextualize wisdom in the six parameters. It's the six of those perfections. And you may remember, may not remember, but we've had five previous ones. So this is a list of six. And the first is giving, or a Dharma. And then we had ethics, Sheila, and the area, energy, sheltering patients, and the Dharma meditation. So this wisdom, I think, Paramahana mentioned that as well. It's like, it's sort of slightly different, you start with wisdom and kind of end-group wisdom, but you need, obviously, wisdom in all these, with all these particular elements, all these perfections. So you need wisdom in order to know what is ethical, so basically, you need to be able to understand that actions have consequences. And so if you do a particular thing that will lead to more suffering, for instance, or you would do a particular other thing, and will somehow make things a bit open and spacious and positive, you definitely need that element of wisdom to come in any kind of ethical practice. But also, it works the other way as well. If you do manage to, for instance, make a decision that will cause you to be a bit more positive somehow. Maybe it's just a very simple decision like, have your meals ready early, or if you're not somebody who goes to bed in time, you know, go to bed earlier, or just make sure you've got enough sleep. It will make a massive difference in your experience, and somehow there'll be more space for that wisdom element or the quality of wisdom to be remembered. If you're a karma, there's more opportunity to connect to this deeper space of wisdom, for instance. So that works basically with all of these, all of these perfections that we've talked about. Meditation is quite obvious, I would say. So if you're sitting in meditation, it's like, you've got to decide what to do as well. You know, just deciding what kind of practice you've got to do, has got that element of wisdom in it somehow, or a lack of wisdom sometimes, maybe. And also just looking at your experience, you always apply this element of wisdom, interpreting your experience. You might sometimes not interpret your experience in meditation correctly as it were, or helpfully somehow. So wisdom and just the experience of meditation to really go hand to hand, in hand. And so that's when it works with all of these who have six perfections. They inform each other. So in the whole, I do feel there's some process of wisdom, it's like a ripening process, maybe, even with the weak. So it's working mysteriously, it's working in the background, it's like a processing happening in the background or funny. And I quite like this idea of, if you do practice, meditation, ethics, some reflection, maybe, it's your experience of your life, it's like spinning gold on the straw. I always really like that image. But in a mysterious way, we don't know how it's happening, but you're practicing, and it turns into something that is quite beautiful and useful, something of a stronger connection to this quality of wisdom. So the raw material for practice is obviously our lives and everything that's happening around us. So that's the alchemy process of wisdom. And just let's finish with this. I have an enigmatic text, but I quite liked it. It's also from the earlier writings, all the earlier texts in Paddy Cannon. So perceiving in terms of signs, beings take standard signs. Not fully comprehending signs, they come into the bones of death. But fully comprehending signs one doesn't construe a signifier. Touching liberation with the heart, the state of peace unsurpassed, consummate in terms of signs, peaceful, enjoying the peaceful state, judicious, and attain that of wisdom makes use of classifications that can't be classified. I quite like to speak for that of you. And I probably quite know exactly what it's meant. But some of these texts and Buddhism, they're really, really beautiful, and you kind of sense some sort of reality, some sort of wisdom in them. But it's still, it's still, I just find it really mysterious. So these are really ingredients, some of the ingredients for the alchemy of wisdom. And I think that was me for two nights. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]