My working definition of wisdom, being wise, is “Doing the Right Thing” It’s good to know what the Right Thing is, but the important part is Doing the Right Thing.
What is “Right”? It’s the thing that moves you, the beings around you, the world, towards happiness, peace, enough comfort to allow art, safety. Whatever the activity that moves your world in that direction is the Right Thing to do.
It’s not always obvious what that thing is! Do you always act boldly, or do you wait and go carefully? Do you step in front of a moving train to save a rat? Our life is full of ambiguous situations and judgement calls. That’s why developing wisdom - knowing what to do - is so important.
But wisdom has another side of it, which is knowing What Not To Do. If the Right Thing is the action that moves your world towards happiness, peace, enough comfort to allow art, safety, love, etc than the other side of wisdom is NOT doing the things that move your world AWAY from happiness, peace, enough comfort to allow art, safety, love, etc.
Forgive me if I’m being captain obvious here. It’s taken me a surprisingly long time to understand and internalize this.
In the Buddhist literature, we call this “not doing harmful things” Renunciation.
And as with the wise actions, things to renounce are not always obvious.
We do have some obvious ones that most humans have agreed upon across thousands of years and dozens of cultures: Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, etc.
Meditation practice itself is a little act of renunciation - we renounce, for a few minutes a day - our mobile phone, our snacks, our talking with others. Not that those things are always bad… but that doing them mindlessly, habitually, is not helpful for developing peace, compassion, love, wisdom and all the best things in life.
Personally, I’ve gotten SO MUCH benefit from renouncing alcohol. Since July I’ve had all these incredible things to drink, including lots of my favorite drink - water. But none of those drinks have had alcohol in them. It’s been amazing! I’m sleeping better, I’m clearer and happier in the morning, I don’t have to worry about what I said last night, it’s amazing!
Makes me wonder why I kept drinking stuff with alcohol in it before?
So I’ve Renounced alcohol. I used to think renouncing things was a sort of dictat from the authorities, so naturally I didn’t like it.
Now I see it as a personal decision that I’m making to improve my life experience.
But again, it’s not always obvious what to renounce and what to keep doing. So here are some things that you may or may not want to renounce in your daily life and in your mindstream.
- Talking shit about yourself to yourself. Being negative, derogatory or insulting to yourself
- Spending time with people who make you feel ill, powerless, dumb or angry
- Distracting yourself with TV or phones so much that you don’t take care of yourself
- Drinking alcohol
- Beating yourself up about things that happened many years ago
- Regretting not asking that person out, not getting down on one knee, not taking that job, etc.
- Hating someone
- Holding on to prejudices because “That’s how I was raised” or whatever
- A million other thought patterns or habits that hold us back from relaxing, connecting, smiling, serving others.
Then, having decided you are ready to set this enormous heavy package of outdated habits down, you have to figure out how to do so. That’s when our previous discussions about getting to know them, hosting them, welcoming them in and serving them tea, asking them “What have you got to teach me?” comes into play. But that’s a whole other topic.
Ok, let’s sit.
Linda says “It’s active! Instead of praying for deliverance from some fucking thing, you renounce it.”