by Dr. Ed Bastian

Generally speaking, the word wisdom often connotes a holistic knowingness harvested from the totality of one’s life experience, including knowledge gained through intellectual conceptualization and empirical observation. From a spiritual perspective however, Wisdom (note the capital “W”) is generally said to be the result of a transcendent insight that surpasses, informs, and then guides our everyday thoughts, perceptions, and mental projections of reality.

by Cynthia Bourgeault

1. Wisdom is not a philosophy or a curriculum, but a way of knowing. It’s not about knowing more but knowing deeper, knowing with more of yourself involved. 2. Wisdom is three-centered knowing:  it engages mind, emotions, and body in a single, integral act of perception.

by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Wisdom, Chochmah in Hebrew, is the first of God’s manifestations and the means by which creation happens. I am the deep grain of creation, the subtle current of life. God fashioned me before all things; I am the blueprint of creation. I was there from the beginning, from before there was a beginning. I am independent of time and space, earth and sky.

by Swami Atmarupananda

An infant opens its eyes and ears to the world, and perceives an ocean of sensation. Gradually it learns to distinguish patterns – mother, father, its own hands, its feet. The ocean of sensation begins to make sense as patterns emerge. An ocean of indeterminate sensation gives way to understanding: the beginnings of knowledge.

by Shaikha Camille Adams Helminski

The Prophet Muhammad said, “Wisdom is like the truly faithful one’s stray camel; he (she) will recognize it when he (she) finds it.” Within the Way of Islam and the mystical path of Sufism, wisdom is received through the Qur’an (revelation of the “Book of God” conveyed through the heart of the Prophet Muhammad) and the example of how the Prophet, himself, lived, as well as through the “Book of Nature."

by Shaikh Kabir Helminski

The Generous Source of our being has brought us to this world and has given us intelligence, insight, compassion, and the possibility to discern: the subjective perspective from the objective, appearances from reality, beginnings from endings, the transient from the enduring.

by Dr. Ed Bastian

Shariputra, any noble son or noble daughter who so wishes to engage in the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom should clearly see this way: they should see perfectly that even the five aggregates are empty of intrinsic existence. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form too is not other than emptiness. Likewise, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are all empty.