Wisdom Teachers

Wisdom Teachers

"The three teachers who impart wisdom: suffering, thought, and a truthful heart."
     ___ Welsh triad, (trans. CM)


    It is often said that on the path to spiritual wisdom we must suffer in order to learn. Certainly whatever breaks us out of the path of ingrained habit leads us into a wider and deeper existence. Those who have endured great sufferings are indeed sometimes forged by their terrible experiences into wiser people; adrift from what is normal and familiar to them, perhaps even forced into the regions of pain and terror, they have experienced the full enormity of suffering and come out whole. There are also many people who feel that suffering is an over-rated teacher, however.
    It takes an active curiosity, in conjunction with the perseverance to research human motives and behavior, to reach new understandings about our experiential sufferings and how they can be altered or accepted. The exercise of thought can lead us, in turn, to the truthful heart within us - unless, of course, we remain bound in fetters of useless analysis and recrimination about our condition. A truthful heart has no room for blame or revenge. It maintains its own living watch on what life sends, transmuting the toxins of difficult experience into a regenerating draught, siphoning away whatever cannot be changed.
    The way of freedom is to draw upon the compassion plumbed by our suffering, upon the clarity of our thought, and upon the essential truth of our whole human existence.

"Select one difficult experience from your own life and - with compassion, clarity and truth - consider what wisdom has been revealed to you."
[From: The Celtic Spirit by Caitlin Matthews]