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4.WISDOM, THE THIRD TRAINING
The third training in the list is wisdom, in this case a very special kind of wisdom that I will often call “ultimate” or “fundamental”
wisdom. This may also be rendered as “understanding” or “insight.”
The whole trick to this training is to understand the truth of the sensations that make up our present experience. The great mystics from all traditions have reported that there is something remarkable and even enlightening about our ordinary experiences if we take the time to look into them very carefully. Those that undertake training in wisdom have decided to do the experiment and see for themselves if this is true or if those old dead dudes were just making it all up.
Obviously, the first assumption that must be made is that there is some understanding that is completely beyond any ordinary
understanding, even beyond the altered states of consciousness that can be attained if we train in concentration. The next assumption is that there are specific practices that can lead to that understanding if we simply do them. The third and perhaps most vital assumption is that we can do them and be successful.
The assumption that is rarely stated explicitly but often implied is that we must be willing to stay on a sensate level, at the level of the actual sensations that make up experiences, if we wish to gain the insights that are promised by the mystics. The corollary of this assumption is that we must be willing to set aside periods of time during which we abandon the ordinary way of working in the world that is called training in morality and even the unusual way of working with altered states of consciousness that is called training in concentration.
We assume that the teachings on wisdom point to universal truths, truths that can be perceived in all types of experience without exception.
We assume that if we can simply know our sensate experience clearly enough, then we will come to understand for ourselves.
The primary agenda for doing insight practices is to increase our perceptual abilities so that the truths mentioned by the great mystics become obvious to us. Thus, rather than caring what we think, say or do, or caring about what altered state of consciousness we are in, when training in wisdom we actively work to simply increase the speed, precision, consistency and inclusiveness of our experience of all the
Wisdom, The Third Training
