A short section from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism Do not take Intoxicants Intoxicants have been with humanity for a very long time; caffeine, tobacco, peyote, alcohol, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, marijuana, etc. Why is this so? Why have so many intoxicants been used by even our earliest, ancient ancestors? Why has humanity spent so much time and energy seeking them out? It might simply be that (as we will discuss in the Chapter 11.1 The Four Noble Truths) li

Master Jingzong; English translation by Foyuan, edited by Jingxing Painting by Han Xi Shan A proverb says, “[In a chess game], bystanders see the game better than the players.” The famous poet Su Shi also had this to say, “One cannot see the true shape of Mount Lu because one is in the mountain.” The [chess] player cannot see clearly his situation because of self-interest, improper motives or a fixed perspective. The casual observer, however, can see and understand the whole

Introduction to wisdom in Buddhism

Do Not Believe Everything You Are Told Wisdom, to a large extent, is learning to see the world, not as we think it is, but to see it as it actually behaves. An excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism What do you believe when the president of the United States stands before you on national TV, addresses the nation and tells you that global warming and the very idea of climate change is nothing but ‘fake news?’ Do you believe him, because he’s the president and noth

An excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism When we speak of wisdom and its role in public discourse, it’s rarely about an individual, private citizen. Instead, it tends to be about public figures - those who open themselves up for criticism and put themselves in the limelight to be seen and to be critiqued, judged and held accountable. Rarely would a private citizen want their lives, past transgressions, decisions, policy choices or intellect exposed to public scrut

We examine morality and ethics and how they relate to wisdom in Buddhism.

A brief excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism. The term, ’morality’ it would seem, is easily defined as that which concerns good vs bad behaviour or right vs wrong and to what extent. For any given society, community, tribe or family, this is relatively straightforward. The Oxford Living English Dictionary defines morality as principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. The OLED goes on to suggest The extent to which a

A short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wisdom in Buddhism. Being truthful and thinking, deeply, before speaking, is a fundamental skill leaders need to learn if they wish to be considered 'wise.' This excerpt is part of a much longer article dealing with the need for wisdom in political and business leaders. Effective Public Communication Skills One does not need to be a ‘great orator’ in order to be an effective public communicator. When we think of great orators or the p

From our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism You may also enjoy Pain and Suffering in Buddhism Death and Dying in Buddhism Life of Milarepa FREE Early or Anchoring Bias When we hold a hypothesis and begin to seek information to confirm or deny its validity, there is a strong tendency to believe any early data that tends to confirm our hypotheses. That is to say that we might ‘anchor’ our evaluation on the early data. The danger is that we don’t continue in the search for mor

A selection from our upcoming book, Wisdom in Buddhism - from the chapter on conversation Bringing Light As alluded to in the introduction of this book, a dark age has descended upon us. We are in a time of social and environmental degradation. We are witnessing a coarsening of words and muddled thinking. We are in a time of war, although, to be fair, humans always seem to be in a time of war, but the various forms of war we can wage now are greater than ever before, with

A Story of Compassion - From our upcoming book, Wisdom in Buddhism A Story of Compassion A story is told in the Jataka Tales of a land ruled by King Benares, in which a beautiful deer that is born with an unusual golden fur, silver antlers and eyes as bright as sparkling jewels. As this deer matured, there gathered around him a large herd and he became known as King Banyan Deer. At the same time, in a distant part of Benares, another buck was born, equally splendid and as he

An excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom In Buddhism, due for release early 2018. This is from the chapter on Bias in Decision Making Attributing Intention This bias is really a subsection of attribution theory, which is beyond the scope of this book, but it is worth a mention. Attribution theory looks into how an observer is able to use gathered social cues to arrive at causal explanations for events or judgment about another persons behaviour. For the most part there are t

An excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism This selection is from the chapter Eight Forms of Bias in our Thinking 1) Early or Anchoring Bias When we hold a hypothesis and begin to seek information to confirm or deny its validity, there is a strong tendency to believe any early data that tends to confirm our hypotheses. That is to say that we might ‘anchor’ our evaluation on the early data. The danger is that we don’t continue in the search for more information, be

An excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism Wisdom, a Practical Definition from a Buddhist Perspective ... when we take into consideration everything that we’ve looked at so far, we can begin to synthesize a working, practical definition of wisdom – at least from a Buddhist perspective Common Good First we need to understand the concept of “common good.” Our definition for the purposes of this book, is that of an end state or condition which benefits all or a signif

This is an excerpt from our upcoming book Wisdom in Buddhism Whatever you believe, remember that you may be wrong. You need to be fearless about thinking, because sometimes you’re going to be wrong. And when you’re wrong it's going to hurt. The difficult thing about being wrong, is that it feels exactly the same as being right. You feel, clever, righteous, vindicated, honourable, exonerated and smug, just like if you were right. “The moon is made of cheese,” feels exactly

A brief excerpt from Wisdom in Buddhism scheduled for release early 2018 A look at how Buddhism can encourage the circumstances that help give rise to wisdom. "... After you’ve examined all of that and sorted through the likely possibilities and applied your super-set of mental faculties; intellect, deep thought, foresight, humility, humour, learnedness, philanthropy, historical perspective and humanitarian point of view, you can make a wise choice. Once you set aside your