Vipassana cultivates wisdom. But to better understand what this means, we need to create a specific definition for wisdom.
Wisdom is often defined as the knowledge of what is "true" or "right". These are terms I find heavily loaded and highly open to interpretation. I want to offer an alternate definition.
In business, knowledge management is a new popular buzzword. Under the theory of knowledge management, they offer definitions for data, information, and knowledge:
Data is the raw facts, statistics, ratings and outcomes that can be known.
Information is the organizing of data into meaningful groups, such as databases, text collections (like this blog) and the like. It is an understanding of the relations between data.
Knowledge is the grouping and application of information to context, such as rules, procedures, skills, and the like. It is an understanding of the patterns of information and how they can be best used in a specific context.
To continue with the same line of reasoning, here is my definition for wisdom.
Wisdom is the prioritization of knowledge. It is "knowing" what skills and rules are more important than others. It is achieved through understanding patterns.
By changing what information we filter in and filter out, and how we weight that information, we become exposed to a range of patterns we would not otherwise. It is in this way we start to expand our wisdom, and focus on what is truly important for us.
This definition of wisdom is important. Modern society is very focused on the acquisition of knowledge. We are very concerned with gaining skills. But we spend little time questioning how important the skills we are learning are.
Adopting a "more of anything is better" approach is not good for us. We only have limited time and effort with which to learn skills in the world, so we should focus on what is most important.
The time spent on increasing awareness of what is important for us is an investment worth spending.
Our minds gravitate towards recognizing patterns. It is something we are all masters of, whether educated or not. And it has been the envy of the computing world since the technology was first created.
As mentioned in an earlier post, Vipassana alters our filtering and weighting. In short, it expands how much sensory input we are aware of, and changes our priorities for this information. We become aware of more patterns in life as we encounter new information and processes, and we link up similarities.
As a result of all this, we start to become aware of what moves ourselves and other people most deeply. We start to realize what is most important by what creates the most positive, deepest and long lasting effects.
If we come in touch with something that sounds wise to us, we describe it as profound, or moving. But we usually don't understand where it comes from.
It is not the result of a special mind, and every person is capable of achieving deep levels of wisdom. What is required is a willingness to confront our own assumptions, and the persistence to do so for many years.
