A Fistful of Sand

Click here to receive or newsletter or Check out our Website One of my favorite lines from college freshman English literature is still etched in my mind. It is James Joyce’s novel The Dubliners and reads, “ Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” Mr. Duffy was a one-dimensional bureaucrat who lives an unattractively plain, colorless life. He represents the post-modern everyman: cut off from his feelings, defined by rules and protocols, and lacking purpose and meaningful connections. Buddhist practice is often characterized as being completely rational and firmly implanted in “reality” (whatever that word might mean to you). The popular image is that it leaves no room for sensitivity. There are many people who self-identify as Buddhists of one sort or another that live in their heads finding the distance to their bodies a long walk. In classes I’ll sometimes ask a student how far away he is from his feet. I often get an answer like “five and a half feet or so”...

This word wisdom , like m o st words in the English language has a not very precise meaning. Ask 50 people what the word means and you’ll get 50 different answers. Some will be similar and others very different. In the Buddhist Scriptures the word wisdom is used to describe something subtle, deep and vast depending upon the person that is bringing it to use. When we use wisdom to investigate our mind to drive out our defilements, that’s called “using wisdom correctly — pañña . The Buddha did not use the term “Right Wisdom” — samma pañña — because wisdom is just what it is. It grows out of the Eightfold Path. One does not have to be an expert on the Scriptures to know how to divorce himself or herself from the defilements. In many cases where the mind is so nit-picky or stuck on words, it might be a good thing not to investigate the Scriptures. Such a person would just get hung up on this definition or that word and never get to the point. The Dhamma is described in the Scrip...