A Review of The Eightfold Path
Part VI: Right Effort
Dharma Talk -- Eric Kolvig -- September 3, 1998 -- Albuquerque, New Mexico

We've been making our final tour through the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha's teachings, and we come this evening to the sixth aspect of the Eightfold Path -- Right Effort or True Effort -- the energy required in order to sustain our spiritual practice. Basically, these eight aspects, that the Buddha suggested that we cultivate in order to liberate ourselves, divide into three groupings. The first is the wisdom grouping, of Right Understanding or wisdom, and Right Intention. The second is the grouping of ethical conduct, having to do with Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood -- how we actually speak and act in the world. The final grouping has to do more with our meditation practice -- with effort and mindfulness and concentration. Tonight we're starting that last aspect, after twenty months or so of dealing with the Eightfold Path.

I'd like to talk about this concept of effort. The Pali word for it is "viriya", and in the Buddha's teachings, this word "effort" or "energy" is used more often than any other word, if you go to a concordance of his teachings. It's remarkable -- it's used more than "wisdom", more than "nirvana", more than "compassion", more than "lovingkindness", more than "equanimity" -- all of these qualities that we think would be so common. But he talked more about effort -- about energy -- than about anything else.

In fact, the very last word that the Buddha spoke before he died -- at least in our English translation -- had to do with effort. At the age of thirty-five, somewhere around 528 B.C., he had this dramatic experience of awakening -- of enlightenment. Then, for forty-five years after that, he traveled all over northern India by foot, teaching, and it's said that he gave 88,000 teachings, and died at the age of eighty, around 483 B.C. It's said that the very last words that he said -- his final legacy to us, the words he chose to go out with -- were, "All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your liberation with diligence." So the idea is that, essentially, effort or diligence or energy is the fuel that drives our practice. If we consider the other seven aspects of the Eightfold Path as being the vehicle, this is the fuel, and without the fuel the vehicle doesn't move. So it's altogether important; if we really want to deepen our spiritual practice, we have to put energy and effort into it.

Just to give some idea about what this quality of effort is like, I'd like to tell two stories. One goes back many years now. In 1980 and 1981, I was in a long meditation retreat, and about six months into this retreat -- it was the anniversary of my brother's suicide -- I found myself suddenly dealing with very intense grief around my brother's suicide that I hadn't fully worked with. Being in deep meditation practice, it all welled up. I spent a week, basically, dealing with grief and dealing with this whole thing, and at the end of that week, I did something entirely illegal in a silent meditation retreat -- I wrote a poem about it. And then I did something even more illegal -- I shared the poem with a fellow retreatant, and I asked him to comment on it. And his comment was wonderful. He quoted from a novel of J. D. Salinger's, where one of the characters comes up to two other characters who are playing marbles, and one of the guys playing marbles is working very hard to get the marble to go in just the right direction, and the character says, "Don't try too hard." And that was my friend's comment about my poem -- that I was trying too hard. So that's one side of Right Effort -- not trying too hard.

If I may tell another story to illustrate the other side of it -- a few weeks ago, I was at a property north of Espanola called Los Luceros, which the Southwest Dharma Association is trying to buy to turn into a retreat center for the southwest region. It's an extraordinary property -- a very beautiful place. I was talking to the caretaker, who's a remarkable cowboy; a wonderful person who's quite uneducated but very articulate and clear. He was telling me about how hard it has been -- for some years now, he's been the only resident on this property -- and how hard it has been to protect it. There's a bit of a history with former owners of this property -- Los Luceros -- of not caring so well for the property, and not having a great relationship with the surrounding community. One sort of expression of that poor relationship is that people have broken in and stolen things. This cowboy -- the caretaker -- has been in some really difficult situations trying to protect the property. He's not a large man, physically, and he described an experience where someone had broken in and he confronted the person, and they struggled. And at one point this other guy had him down on the ground, and the caretaker said to him, "You're bigger than I am, and you're stronger than I am, but I'm not going to give up," which I thought was very courageous, because he was basically putting his life on the line there. And the other man so respected his courage that he let him go, and left the property. So, don't give up!

Right Effort is: don't try too hard, and don't give up. And it's really interesting trying to find the balance between those two things. So if you don't remember anything else from this talk, just remember those two things, because it's an extraordinarily subtle art, actually finding the right amount of energy to put into our spiritual practice.

It's important for us not to push too hard -- not to try too hard. And I say that knowing that there are spiritual traditions that push very hard in spiritual practice. I think it's very important for us to understand, for ourselves, exactly how much effort we should make, and to be able to stand up for ourselves when someone's pushing us, even a spiritual guardian, and say, "You know, that doesn't seem right to me" -- to really understand for ourselves. And don't give up. It's an interesting thing, that with any activity in our lives, if you try too hard, if you keep pushing yourself too hard, you're likely at some point to give up -- you hit burnout, you hit exhaustion, you hit frustration, and you say, "I can't really do this; this is too hard for me; this isn't working; I must be a bad person, and a bad meditator" -- you know all that stuff.

I think it's important for us to understand why we should make an effort, or expend energy, in our spiritual practice. Without a good sense of "why" -- a deep sense of our basic purpose for doing this practice -- it's very hard to generate the energy, because our conditioning is so strong -- our conditioning toward delusion, toward not understanding clearly what reality is. It's very hard to decondition that.

To get some sense of "why", I think I spoke a few weeks or months ago about how the Buddha, himself, came to his spiritual calling in his last lifetime -- in the lifetime he became a buddha. He had been raised a prince in several palaces -- he had one for each season -- and things had been altogether pleasant for him. He had never been exposed to anything unpleasant, so he was basically infantilized. And, at the age of twenty-nine, he decided to go out and see what was going on in the world. So try to imagine, after being so sheltered to the age of twenty-nine -- until early middle age -- finally going out and getting some exposure to what life was about.

So he insisted on leaving the palace for the first time. And his father, the king, tried to cover up anything that was unpleasant when the prince went out. But he saw what are called the heavenly messengers. He saw, first, an old person, and he had never actually seen an old person before -- he was kept from that. And he was absolutely shocked, and he said to his charioteer, "What is that?" And the charioteer said, "That's an old person." And the prince said, "Will that happen to me?" And the charioteer said, "Yes, it happens to us all." And he was absolutely appalled, and he turned around and went back into the palace.

And he came out a second time, and he saw a sick person -- he had never seen sickness. And again, this exchange with his charioteer: "What is that?" "That is sickness." "Will that happen to me?" "Yes, it happens to us all." And then he came out a third time and saw a dead person -- he had never experienced death. And the same exchange: "Will that happen to me?" "Yes, indeed. It will happen to us all." And he was confounded by this discovery of this fate that we all have -- to grow old, to get sick, and to die. And that became the great burning question for him.

He also went out a fourth time, and he saw a renunciant, who was practicing a spiritual practice. And that gave him the inspiration to leave the palace and to undertake spiritual practice. He describes this enormous question, or dilemma, that became a burning spiritual issue for him. He said,

So this guy got through denial [laughter] -- he was lucky. And so that became his great quest. After his enlightenment, he said, about this great dilemma:

So it's quite remarkable. Finally, in another place, he says about this great dilemma:

So it's an extraordinary offer that the Buddha makes to us, because none of us is exempt from this same dilemma in our lives. That's one way to express why we might do this practice -- in the deepest level, to come to unconditioned freedom -- to find that which is unborn, and is unailing, and is undying.

It was wonderful and very moving to me that the Buddha talked about the kind of humility that came to him when he was confronted with this reality -- when he managed to get through the wall of denial that his father, the king, had created around him by not allowing him to be exposed to anything unpleasant. He said:

Very powerful.

So, what can come from deepening our practice by pursuing this -- the "why", the purpose? Another expression of it, again from the Buddha:

Imagine being in a state where you were always at peace, no matter what is happening to you. It's quite radical -- it's quite revolutionary, what the promise of this practice is. It might seem totally off the wall to be talking about these things when we've been sitting here watching our breath, but if you're able to be totally present for your breathing, and really to penetrate more and more deeply into your psyche, it's possible to accomplish these things -- to come to a state where you're always at peace, no matter what is happening.

That's the promise, according to the Buddha, if you cultivate these eight things in the Eightfold Path, and that's why it's important for us to make an effort. In particular, the Buddha describes four great efforts. Essentially, the Buddha says that we are all just a collection of wholesome and unwholesome qualities of consciousness. He said the first effort is to abandon -- and that doesn't mean to repress or push away, but simply to let go of -- unwholesome states that have already arisen in your mind and heart. The second effort is to prevent from arising unwholesome states of consciousness that have not yet arisen into consciousness. The third effort is to bring forward wholesome states that have not yet arisen -- latent wholesome states. And the fourth effort is to sustain and strengthen wholesome states that have already arisen. So the practice is basically about eliminating, or deconditioning, or letting go of what is unwholesome in our lives, and strengthening what is wholesome. It's a conditioning process.

We all have love, for example, and hatred -- all of us -- and by doing this practice, there's a way that we are able, more and more, to let go of and abandon hatred, and to strengthen love, and it has a transformative effect on our lives. And that's just one example. So, how do we do it? There's a very famous metaphor, or simile, that the Buddha used. There was a monk in the Buddha's time who was making much too much effort in his spiritual practice. And the Buddha said, in effect, "Back off -- take it easy a little bit." And the monk was confused, and he said, "I don't understand how much energy I should be using in my practice." This monk had been a very famous lute player before he was ordained -- he was a very famous musician -- and the Buddha said, "Well, if you have a lute, and the string is very loose, what kind of sound do you get?" And the monk replied, "A very poor sound, if the string is too loose." And the Buddha said, "Well, if the string is too tight, what do you get?" And the monk said, "Not only a poor sound, but you can break the string." And the Buddha said, "Just so, my friend. That's exactly what it's like, in terms of effort, in our spiritual practice." If we're too loose in our effort, if we don't make enough effort, it doesn't work so well. If we make too much effort, we can break the string -- we can basically burn ourselves out. So it's finding that middle way, which is where the string is neither too loose nor too tight -- where it's beautifully tuned. Very easy to talk about, and very difficult to practice.

It's a lifetime undertaking, actually, to find Right Effort -- to find the right amount of energy to use in spiritual practice. It's a moment-to-moment undertaking, and a judgment, and I think it's really important for us to know that the only way we learn is to go to the extremes -- by tightening the string too much, and having the string too loose -- by trying too hard and then not trying enough, and giving up. I think it's really important to get that -- if we don't realize that, then we end up beating up on ourselves: "Oh, I'm not trying hard enough, I must be a crummy Buddhist and a lousy practitioner," or, "I'm trying too hard, I've been so foolish, I'm really a terrible person." All of this judgment that we can make about ourselves -- we have to realize that the only way to get it right, is to get it wrong -- really, and that's true for everything in our lives. We learn by experimenting. Is there anyone in this room who has had an unsuccessful intimate relationship in their lives? [Laughter] No one, I'm sure. How do we learn? How do we learn to be skillful in intimate relationships? We learn by doing it, and we learn by making mistakes, and we get better. That's my hope, anyway. [Laughter]

We learn by falling off one side or the other of the road -- whatever metaphor you want to use. It can't be done otherwise. We have to do it wrong, in order to learn to get it right. If we can get that idea in our heads, we will stop judging ourselves about our spiritual practice, and get rid of the idea of, "I'm not doing it right," and all that stuff. We do it right by getting it wrong. The mistakes are intrinsic. Two quotations from the wonderful English poet and printer and prophet, William Blake -- he says:

And then, a very famous statement of his:

We have to go to excess -- on this side, on that side -- in order to get to the palace of wisdom. If we can remember that, we will be kind to ourselves. If we can get it, a great load drops off our shoulders and out of our psyches -- the load of judging ourselves and feeling unworthy -- just by knowing, by giving ourselves permission to make mistakes.

There's no absolute formula for Right Effort -- for the amount of energy that we need to have in our practice -- there's just none. It's a moment-to-moment judgment. So there are times in my practice, when I've been doing intensive meditation practice, where it has felt right to be practicing twenty hours a day. And there are other times when it has been really important for me to back way off, and take it really easy. I think I've mentioned that I figured out a path, through the forest, from Insight Meditation Society into the town of Barre, Massachusetts, about two miles away. I found a path that goes through the forest all the way, so that I could go all the way into town to get some ice cream in the middle of retreats, when things got too tough. I'd buy the Boston Globe and I'd buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and I'd hang out somewhere and eat the ice cream and read the paper, and then make my way back through the forest to the retreat center -- refreshed, actually, and with more energy than if I had kept pushing myself. That was Right Effort [laughter] -- it worked as a way of refreshing the mind.

So there's no absolute standard or formula -- you have to figure it out for yourself. One of my teachers said to me -- years ago, and it was so useful -- she said, "Eric, you're going to have to do less than you want to be doing." Because of the particular conditions that I was working with, I realized that doing less actually accomplished more. And that's not what you hear, so often, in spiritual traditions. No one can tell you what your effort should be, no matter how wonderful a spiritual authority they are, because they can't know all of the conditions that are going on for you at any given time. You must make that judgment for yourself. I think it's very important for us not to turn to the models, and not to compare ourselves to others -- it's so easy to say.

And some of the models were absolutely, totally off the wall -- just a couple of examples. Bodhidharma, who was probably the most famous Buddhist since the Buddha, was this extraordinary being who brought the Dharma -- the teachings -- from India to China, many centuries ago. It is said about Bodhidharma, who was the founder of Zen Buddhism, that he was having some sleepiness in his meditation practice, so he cut off his eyelids. That's nuts! I do not recommend that, if you're feeling sleepy in a sitting. And his successor, who became the second Zen ancestor, came to Bodhidharma and said, "I really want the teachings. I want to learn this practice." And Bodhidharma said, "Go away. I don't have time for you." And so this person cut off their hand, and handed it to Bodhidharma as a sign of the purity and the intensity of their intention. That's crazy -- that's self-mutilation. But these are models that are held up to us. Bodhidharma also is said to have practiced so much in a cross-legged position that his legs withered away. So, those are really extreme examples, but there are plenty more -- there are plenty more in our vipassana tradition -- of people going to enormous extremes in order to accomplish their goal. The Buddha, himself, just before he came to enlightenment, made this statement:

A wonderful, noble intention, but I don't think we should take these things as models, entirely. We really need to find a way to make a sincere effort, and to be kind to ourselves at the same time. I find it easier to sleep with eyelids, frankly -- for myself, anyway.

So, the only way you will learn about the correct effort, or energy, to use in your spiritual practice is to keep asking for yourself, "What do I need?" -- making that decision for yourself, and learning this art. The Buddha said, "Cultivate these eight things and you will come to freedom." This is one of those things that needs to be cultivated. We need to pay attention to our energy -- to the quality of the energy that we bring to our spiritual practice.

It's important for us to know that we have to make this decision for ourselves, especially if we are people who have been wounded in some ways in our lives. People with strong psyches can probably push themselves very hard without much damage. But for people who have had trauma, for example, early in their lives -- who have emotional difficulty in their lives -- it can actually be catastrophic for them to be pushed too hard in spiritual practice. I've seen people have psychotic breaks because they have either pushed themselves too hard, or have been pushed too hard, in their spiritual practice. It's very important for people like that to go slowly, and I'm one of them. I have found that I have had to go slowly in my practice in order to stay balanced. If there's passion in my voice as I say these things, it's because I feel very strongly about this subject. I've seen too many people hurt, and I've seen too many people pushed in what feels to me, clearly, as inappropriate ways.

How can we practice Right Effort? In the whole aspect of ethical conduct of our lives -- in Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood; how we talk, how we act, how we work in our lives -- if we make too much effort, it's very easy for us to become moralistic and rigid and judgmental, if we become overconcerned about these things. That doesn't help -- that kind of rigidity, that kind of narrowness of moralism. If we don't make enough effort in our lives around ethical practice, then we can end up harming ourselves and harming others. For example, if we lie about something, and say, "Oh, nobody's going to find out," then lying becomes a habit. If that habit gets deeply enough ingrained, it becomes character, and then it's very hard to start to decondition that. It's like any addiction -- you can get addicted to lying. And if that happens by being too lax in our effort, it's very hard to decondition that -- to deconstruct it.

I think Right Effort in meditation is very simple. Whatever the object is that you're using as a meditation object, the only effort required is, when your mind has wandered into thought, making the effort to come back to the object. Then, once you're back with the object, there are two things that we cultivate -- aiming the attention at the object, and sustaining the attention on the object. Making an effort to aim, and to sustain -- to hold the attention on the object, so that the mind becomes more and more one-pointed and stable. And out of that comes all kinds of good stuff. So it's making that effort to keep coming back, and then sustaining our attention with whatever the object is. It's really combining a sense of commitment with a sense of relaxation. It's quite interesting -- to have the commitment to make the effort to be there, but not in a rigid way -- to relax back and receive whatever is happening, instead of grasping at it and trying to hold onto it.

It's a big subject -- Right Effort -- may we all find some kind of wonderful balance around Right Effort in our spiritual practice, and bring it to perfection.

* * * * * Questions * * * * *

Q: Would you be willing to talk a little more about when one of your teachers told you that you had to do less than you wanted to do?

Eric: Yes. In my particular circumstances, very often when I get deep in practice, what tends to happen for us -- and it's not linear -- as our practice really begins to deepen, what we do is to deal with a lot of personal stuff. Things from our history will come up, and at some point, we drop below the personal and we start to get to the transpersonal, which really doesn't have to do with personality or our specific conditioning -- we start to see universal things, like the fact that all things arise and pass away. For me, being in that area of the personal can be very challenging, because I had extreme trauma as a child, and repeated and prolonged trauma. So, for me, going back and dealing with history is, often, dealing with horror. At those times, it can be very delicate, because your mind becomes more and more subtle, and more and more finely balanced, as you're doing this practice -- even small events can have a big impact.

So when I start dealing with terror, for example -- from what happened to me as a child; the violence that happened when I was a child -- or rage, or other very powerful things, I need to go slowly. I need to go for long walks, instead of having long sittings. I need to sit with a cup of tea. This teacher, Michele McDonald-Smith, has this wonderful expression of Right Effort during that time, which she calls "useless gazing," and that's to get a cup of tea, and sit at a window, and gaze uselessly out the window -- you just basically take it very easy, in order to bring a sense of refreshment and space to the mind, and then you can go back to it. And what I was inclined to do was a kind of spiritual boot camp -- it was basically what my training was, from my original teachers -- make effort, and effort, and effort. And if you're working really hard, work harder! And that was my inclination, and then I would hit this wall of extremely difficult and painful emotional material, because of my history. Trying to force your way through that can be very unskillful. What you need to do is, when you hit something that's extremely challenging, you go into it, you open to it and you back off from it -- you go into it, and you back off from it. That's really the skillful Right Effort. So what she was saying is, you might want to be sitting and walking in a retreat for twenty hours a day, but you might need to sit for just four hours a day. When things are very difficult, you go very slowly and very easily. So I would take long walks in the forest, trying to be mindful but without any really tight effort, and that would get me through. And then I'd drop to the transpersonal and that stuff would fall away.

Q: I have found, in my own experience, there have been many times when I did want to make more effort than I was able to do, not because of what you were talking about, but because of being a working mom. So, I would very much love to go on a three-month meditation retreat, but I don't see myself doing that anytime soon, with a special-education child in elementary school. There are always things in this world that I have to come to grips with -- going through some grief and some sorrow in my meditation that, in this lifetime, I don't get to be a nun. In this lifetime, that wasn't the script. So instead of thinking, "Oh, I'm not going to be able to join with the divine," or "I'm not going to be able to have peace of mind because I can't sit in a monastery for three months every year," my practice has changed to, "OK, I can't sit and watch my breath as long as I would really want to, but I can make a habit of watching my breath when I'm standing in line at the bank." When I'm driving, I'll be aware of when my breath is becoming more shallow and just from my chest, and at that moment stopping, even if I'm in conversation with somebody, and just close my eyes for a fraction of a second and go, "Breathe." So when I heard that one of your teachers said, "You're not going to be able to practice as much as you would like," that's what I heard, because we don't all get that opportunity -- it's just not given to us. But that still doesn't mean that we're not going to have peace of mind.

Eric: You're absolutely right, and I just want to share an example. One of the most wonderful teachers I've had over the years was a woman from India named Krishna Barua, who was married and had children. She was drawn toward vipassana meditation practice, but she was living in a very traditional patriarchal society in India, and her husband thought it was the work of the devil, and he totally forbade her to do practice. And what she determined to do was to use every minute of her life to be aware. So when she was doing dishes or cooking for the children or sweeping the floor, she made an effort to be as present as possible, and it is said that she went through three of the four stages of enlightenment. She was a remarkable person. And when her husband saw the transformation that happened, he no longer objected. So I think what you're saying is really true -- we hold out this model of going off on long meditation retreats, and it's wonderful to do that, but it is possible -- very difficult, but possible -- to achieve the same thing in the midst of our lives.

Q: Nevertheless, we do have little aids. I set my clock five minutes fast, and I set it to beep on the hour, so if I'm really engaged in something and it beeps, I go, "Oh, it's time to pray," all day long, until I get into the habit of it, and then I no longer have to annoy everybody with my watch beeping. [Laughter] There are little things like that that you can do, that you don't have to be in a retreat, or join the Benedictine monastery, to have awareness of what you're doing all day long.

Eric: Just one other thought about this. Essentially what we're doing is cultivating two things -- a clear mind and an open heart. And I think, as a working mother with a child in grammar school, there may not be as much time for the wisdom aspect to develop, but there is lots of opportunity for the openheartedness -- for the love and the compassion -- and it is equally important. We tend to emphasize wisdom a lot, but openheartedness is just as important. So the script for this lifetime is, developing as much wisdom as you can, and really perfecting the openheartedness of compassion and love.

Q: Which then relates to the "why". You might say the long-term goal would be enlightenment and, for those who believe in reincarnation, the possibility of not having to come back, but for many of us, the goals are more short-term. They have to do with living each day with more balance and with more equanimity, and a bit more awareness. When I think in terms of that big goal, it sometimes seems so elusive to me -- it's easier for me to relate to the short-term goals.

Eric: Wonderful -- thank you. The Buddha said that the Dharma is good in the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end. I think that's absolutely true -- that we begin to see, in wonderful incremental ways, the way that we're changing in our lives. I just find it wonderful that I go through some kind of difficult exchange with someone, and I come away and I realize, "Oh, I just sailed through that," and five years ago I would have gotten into an awful mess with that person. It's so easy not to notice, but that is as much an expression of the change in our lives. Thank you for that.

Q: What if the block that you're running into isn't an emotional trauma that's difficult to get through, but just laziness or lack of time -- things like that? Would that be more likely to be a sign to push yourself?

Eric: I think that is a sign to push yourself. For people who are inclined to make a lot of effort, it's really important to say to people like that, "Take it easy." And for people who may not have a lot of energy for the practice, or may not be able to find time for the practice, then creating a sense of spiritual urgency is important. The traditional question is, "Death is certain, the time of death is uncertain -- what should I do?" We need to hold that, because we are always in denial about death. Death is certain, the time of death is uncertain -- what should I do? Or the wonderful teaching of the Buddha, where he says there are four extremely difficult things -- it's extremely difficult to be born a human, extremely difficult to come in contact with the teachings, extremely difficult to begin practice, and extremely difficult to take the practice to its full end. And I find that, for me, it's a wonderful motivator to realize that I've accomplished three of those extremely difficult things -- I'm a human being, I've come in touch with the teachings, I've begun practice. So, for me, there's a lot of motivation -- "Well, let's finish the fourth." So I think that's it -- to really reflect, "Why am I really here? Am I really here to hang out, in my old conditioning, to stew in my old conditioning? Or am I here to transform my conditioning?" That's the challenge. Thanks for that question.

Q: I'm curious about the separation of wisdom and heart, going back to the working mom, because for me, some of the wisest people I know are working moms who have this great openness of heart. You seem to separate out wisdom from heart -- where is the separation?

Eric: Right. There isn't actually any separation -- they're really two sides of the same coin. If you develop wisdom, lovingkindness and compassion come automatically with that. It's just that there are different practices that can strengthen these things. If you don't have a lot of chance to do formal practice, it's harder to cultivate the clearmindedness. It can certainly be done, but it's easier just to keep opening our hearts in any given situation. So I don't mean any kind of dualism -- they absolutely support each other, and if you cultivate one, you will be cultivating the other, too. And the reason for that is, that both wisdom and love see that there is no separation -- that separation is an illusion, a delusion. Both see the same truth -- in love, there is no separation; wisdom sees there is no separate self -- the basic understanding of both wisdom and love is identical.

Q: Maybe "wisdom" needs to be defined in this context. Perhaps wisdom has a more esoteric quality, because a lot of us have "earth wisdom", if you want to call it that, but the wisdom that I think Eric is referring to is seeing all that delusionary content in our lives.

Q: I think that the people that I'm thinking of have tremendous clarity -- that they seem very clear. Esoteric wisdom is what?

Eric: Wisdom is really simple -- it's seeing things as they really are. So, wisdom with a capital "W" sounds very august, but basically it's just seeing things as they really are. And certainly, wisdom can be cultivated in any circumstance in our lives. Thank you.

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