Wisdom for a Better World: Finding Your Way

By Agape

Wisdom for a Better World is not just another book about wisdom, but one that invites you to live wisely. In this book, the author serves as your companion for wisdom seeking, helping you find your way to a more fulfilling life. Built upon the author's own lifelong journey of wisdom seeking and wisdom keeping, the book inspires readers to explore how to better heal the world's pain; honor our kinship with each other and our planet; bring more compassion into the world; wonder at the mystery that gave us birth; and be inspired to live wisely for the betterment of ourselves and the world.
This treasure trove of wisdom, both ancient and contemporary, was gleaned from hundreds of the world's great philosophers, theologians, mystics, storytellers, poets, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and ordinary folks as well. Explore universal wisdom through over 70 themes including: joy and grief, fate and destiny, freedom and responsibility, loneliness and solitude, humor, desire, beauty, suffering, fear and courage, religion and moral behavior, reason and emotion, the power of story, money, politics and citizenship, work and play, right relations, family, celebration, fulfillment, and many more.
Throughout the book, a compelling blend of quotes, stories, and blessings offer insight and encouragement for your one precious journey through life. If you love quotes, stories, and blessings, you will love this book.
With so much upheaval in the world, we often feel lost and disconnected. Through wisdom seeking, this book offers support for finding a sense of belonging and direction in our life journeys. Wisdom for a Better World awakens you to timeless truths that empower you to meet life's challenges and create a better world for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667878263

Book preview

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This Book is a Gift

Embracing the ideal that wisdom should not be owned or sold for profit, I am offering both the electronic and paperback versions of this book at the lowest price permitted by my self-publishing company and retailers. All proceeds from this book not going towards its production and distribution will be donated to charity.

© 2022 Agape

Print ISBN: 978-1-66787-825-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66787-826-3

All rights reserved.

Acknowledgements

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the hundreds of wisdom keepers spanning many centuries whose words of wisdom I have collected throughout my adult life. The foundation of this book is based upon their good words. I have cited many of them by name at the end of the book to honor their contributions. I also want to thank those who generously gave their time and expertise to critique my manuscript in ways that helped me enhance the quality and clarity of this work. And last but not least, I greatly appreciate all the support and encouragement I have received from my family, friends, and teachers over the years.

Contents

Introduction

WELCOME

Putting Truth Over Being Right

Embracing Change

Wisdom Keeping

Who Are You?

Common Moral Ground for Uniting Humanity

Living Wisdom

Embracing Your Wisdom

Selecting Themes for Meditation and Practice

Wisdom Themes

On Heaven and Hell

Relevance For Today’s World

On Faith and Certainty

On Organized Religions

On Believing and Behaving

The Road to Truth

On Religion and Moral Behavior

On the Perversion of Religious Teachings

On the Existence of God

On God as the Source of Morality

On God as the Source of Creation

On Religion and Science

On Technology

On Teaching and Learning

On Freedom, Discipline, and Spontaneity

On Ritual

On Prayer and Meditation

On Cultural Change and the Moral Landscape

On Money

On Politics and Citizenship

On Power

On Leadership

On Freedom and Responsibility

On Work

Celebrate!

On Humor

On Play and Sports

Words, Words, Words

On Silence and Stillness

On Reverence

The Power of Story

On Community and Belonging

Honoring Our Animal Nature

On Good Manners

On Role Models

The Golden Rule

On Empathy

On Thinking and Reason

On Feelings and Equanimity

On Anger and Resentment

On Forgiveness and Reconciliation

On Fear and Courage

On Loneliness and Solitude

On Desire

On Happiness

On Suffering

On Joy

On Fate and Destiny

On Fulfillment

On Prudence

On Moderation

On Hubris and Humility

On Gratitude

Understanding Materialism

On Greed and Generosity

On Chronos and Kairos Time

On Patience and Perseverance

On Sin and Wrongdoing

Running Amok

On Enemies

On War and Peace

In Praise of Darkness

On Beauty

On Right Relations

On Friendship

On Marriage and Family

On Parenting

From Loving Our Children to Loving All

On Good and Bad People

On Love

The Good Journey

Postscript

Citations of Wisdom Contributors

Introduction

WELCOME

I’m glad you’ve discovered my book. May you find meeting with me through the written word worthwhile. I share these words of wisdom with you hoping that you will find them helpful as you pursue your own unique way to seek the truth, grow in love, and celebrate life’s beauty. In our quiet moments together, may you gain insights into how we can better heal the world’s pain; honor our kinship with each other and our planet; bring more compassion into the world; wonder at the mystery that gave us birth; find courage to meet life’s challenges; and be inspired to live wisely for the betterment of yourself and the world.

Let’s begin with a story:

Once upon a time, there was a good king who sought wisdom for his people rather than power and wealth for himself. Early in his reign, when still young, this good king formed a special commission of his top scribes and senior advisors. He gave them the task of going through all the great books ever written to collect the world’s most valuable wisdom, practical wisdom that would help make a better world for his people.

After decades of work they presented their now middle-aged king with the land’s first wisdom encyclopedia, a magnificent set of 100 beautifully bound volumes. While grateful for this momentous achievement, the king, who was very busy overseeing his kingdom, decided he didn’t have time to read that many volumes. So, he sent his commission back to reduce the encyclopedia to ten volumes.

Many years passed before his commission completed the project. The king was now very old and no longer in good health. Fearing he wouldn’t live long enough to read all ten volumes, the good king asked for a single volume version. More years passed as the commission struggled mightily to complete the project. The king was dying when they finally presented him with a book of the world’s most valuable wisdom. This most magnificent book was bound with the finest leather, embossed in gold, and inscribed by the kingdom’s best calligraphers.

But the good king would never read it. With his final breath, he asked the head of the commission and the wisest in the land, to boil it down to just one word. His most trusted advisor and beloved sage knelt down by his dear king’s bedside, leaned over and whispered in the old king’s ear, Maybe.

The challenge to compile a compendium of the world’s most valuable wisdom is not getting any easier than it was for that good king. At the start of this millennium, humanity had published over 130 million books about everything real and imagined and the world’s largest library contained over 170 million items. While most are not pertinent to this work, it would take many lifetimes to read the thousands upon thousands of wisdom texts. Like the good king in the story, we are so busy that we are more likely to reach for quick reads rather than thick volumes of ponderous philosophy.

How are we to find our way to the best wisdom humanity has to offer? What texts would our greatest scholars and sages recommend for the general public to read that would provide us with the best practical wisdom for making our world a better place? I don’t know whether or not you’ve tried to tackle this problem. What I can tell you is that I began when I was a teenager. Here’s the story of how I got started.

One summer, a friend invited me to go to the mountains to pan for gold. Prospecting for this precious metal required patience and perseverance. To get to the gold, I had to dig deep down to the very bottom of the riverbed’s potholes and scoop out handfuls of riverbed material. Next, I would sift each batch to cull out the rocks and gravel. Then I carefully swirled what remained round and around in my pan until all that was left was black sand. I sifted pan after pan hoping to find gold mixed in with the sand.

After sifting many panfuls, I cried out, Eureka! when the first sparkling specks of gold appeared. My best find was a small nugget shaped like the point of an arrow. This little treasure came as an unexpected gift at a time when I wasn’t even prospecting. I was gazing into the shallows of the river, mesmerized by the beauty around me, when its sparkle caught my eye.

At that time in my life, I began collecting quotes. I copied them onto 3x5 cards and stored them in a little green file box. When I returned from my prospecting expedition, I taped my favorite nugget, the one that nature shaped into a point, onto a 3x5 card, and inserted it in the front of my box of quotes. From then on, I would call them my little pieces of gold.

I’ve collected proverbs, maxims, and wisdom quotes all of my adult life. To me, they are more precious than gold. Most of the wisdom in this book comes from my ongoing collection of quotes, from the prospecting and sifting that I began almost sixty years ago.

In writing this book, I strove to get to heart of the matter and give you the best of my best in a single volume. I focused my efforts on presenting you the harvest of what I consider to be at the core of quintessential wisdom teachings. In a single phrase or paragraph, I touch on ideas that have been the focus of many good books worth reading. In the pages that follow, you will be presented with the wisdom I’ve collected from some of the world’s great philosophers, theologians, mystics, storytellers, poets, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and ordinary folks as well. They are my contributing authors. I served as their editor and transcriber, collecting, updating and arranging their wisdom into this single volume.

To avoid compiling a compendium of disparate voices, I decided to share this wisdom in my own words. Some of the key ideas and quotes may be familiar to you. If you are curious about my sources, you will find many of their names cited at the end of the book.

As a lover of wisdom, I frequently meditate upon my quotes and readings to gain deeper understanding. My meditations bring about modifications of my current quotes and new quotes that help guide me in my wisdom seeking.

I take complete responsibility for what I‘ve chosen to share with you. I make no claim that my perspective on wisdom is any more valid than yours. Let us celebrate our disagreements because they can form grist for the mill, the dialectical tension that helps us go deeper to reach greater understanding as we try to resolve them. I hope that I have prevented my passion for wisdom from becoming preachy. My wish is that your perspective will benefit from having considered mine.

I offer you this book as a testament that I’ve been called to share. In the pages that follow, I hope you will find some gold worth keeping. May my little pieces of gold meld together in a kind of alchemy of wisdom, as they did for me, to take the form of a gold nugget that helps point the way.

After much thought, I’ve chosen to write this book anonymously. You, my friend, are one of my anonymous readers. I don’t know you, and you will only know me through this text. We will live only in each other’s imaginations.

What if I were to tell you more about myself? Would you be more or less likely to read this book if I was a Jew? a Muslim? a Christian? a Buddhist? or an atheist? Would you read it with different eyes because of my religious upbringing and affiliations? Would you read it differently if you knew I was a born-again prisoner who had lived a life of violent crime, or a saint whose manuscript was published posthumously? a world-renowned religious scholar? Would your perspective change if you knew I was a billionaire? or a pauper who relied on the generosity of others for food, clothing and shelter? if I was a man or woman? I believe it’s difficult if not impossible for us to keep from creating preconceptions and biases about a message based on our beliefs about the messenger. Let this book stand or fall based solely on its content, not on judgments about the credibility of this author or those whose wisdom contributed to it. For the same reason, you will find no blurbs from recognized authorities that you may or may not have admired touting the wisdom contained in this book.

I invite you to use my wisdom sharing as a way to explore your self and your place in the world. For example, you might choose to explore how your own upbringing, ethnicity, gender, education, politics, religion, or economic status give you a perspective that influences your response to what I present to you.

I bring you these words not in my name, but in the name of love. So, my friend, just call me Agape. I will be honored if you include me among your companions in wisdom seeking.

Putting Truth Over Being Right

I didn’t write this book to strengthen your convictions or convince you of mine, but to spark your enthusiasm for deepening and broadening the wisdom you have gained through your own reflections, practices, and devotions. Wisdom teachers throughout the ages have maintained that life is more about seeking than finding, and that shallow knowing is transformed into deeper wisdom through questioning. Good questions work us over in ways that challenge us to live better lives. I invite you to question all that I’ve written.

To be open to change in ways that will truly transform us requires that we let go of our need to be right. It requires that we be willing to struggle with wisdom that contradicts what we’ve been taught. We humans have a strong tendency to confirm our biases, to look for or accept information that’s in line with our existing beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Religious beliefs and moral standards are understandably very resistant to change because they reside at the core of our sense of self. I suspect most of you know first hand how attached we can get to our own opinions and beliefs, not to mention our convictions. You have your dearly held convictions. I have mine. They often die only after a difficult and sometimes painful struggle. To succeed in changing our longstanding prejudices of belief is a true test of our humanity.¹

Seeking truth on a deeper level requires that we let go of certainty, not cling to our assumptions and beliefs about what is true. It is when we know little rather than much that we are more likely to grasp for for the comfort of certainty. For those who don’t know about a problem, don’t have to worry about it.

On the other hand, we best avoid falling into the pit of extreme skepticism, an iconoclasm that would attack and reject the cherished beliefs and institutions, established values and practices that serve us well. Instead, let us embrace a constructive approach that deepens and clarifies rather than destroys our understanding of ourselves and the world.

As you ponder my harvest of perennial wisdom, I encourage you to probe it, chew it up, and spit out the parts that don’t work for you. How does what I share match up with your own personal experience and understanding of the world? Consider what you might incorporate into your own unique philosophy of life and way of being in the world. I wrote this book not simply for you to learn about wisdom, but more importantly to serve you in living wisely.

Embracing Change

Giving up old and familiar ways can be difficult. Change, including positive change, can be stressful. We find comfort and security in our predictable routines. We like it when things go smoothly according to plan. Major changes can be disorienting and create upheaval in our usual way of doing things. When circumstances change, our tried and true ways of doing things may no longer work for us. We’d like our lives to get better, but oftentimes we’d like that to happen without having to change our ways. More times than we’d like to admit, we endure the pain and struggle of the familiar rather than face the unknown.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of an unbidden crisis that disrupts our ability to continue on as usual. Then we may realize that we’ve taken the comforts of the status quo for granted only after they’ve been stripped away. Being shaken by a crisis creates an opportunity for waking up and mobilizing to meet the threat it poses. Our survival may require that we change our behavior without delay. While the upheaval of a crisis may be dangerous, its challenges also present new opportunities for making our world better than before.

We live in a dynamic world of inevitable change, most often gradual, periodically cataclysmic; a world of transformation, of birth and death. Sometimes destructing precedes creative restructuring. Like the mulching of leaves, the decay of the old world can serve us in the creation of a new one. This is the way of our changing world.

A static world without change would be a monotonous dead world. Being fully alive means opening oneself to life’s amazing journey. Thus, it is wise to understand the importance of embracing change. The wise do not put their energy into trying to preserve that which is no longer viable. They don’t try to prevent fruit from falling from the tree, but cultivate the seeds of new life that are contained within. We are challenged to know when the time is right to let go of the old so we can move on to give birth to the new.

I don’t know whether or not embracing change is easy for you. Whether difficult or easy, my wish is that the wisdom that you find in these pages will lead you to view the world in new and different ways that inspire you change for the better. Renewal can be refreshing and good.

Wisdom Keeping

Much of the age-old wisdom presented in this book may be all too familiar. You may have heard some of these ideas hundreds if not thousands of times. However, common knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into common practice, so we best guard against taking it for granted. Beware: When something is familiar we can falsely believe that we fully understand it. Familiarity can cause us to reduce wisdom to platitudes that have no impact. Then one day, when the conditions are right, these same familiar words will penetrate us on such a deep level that we will never be the same.

Many of the ideas I present may be easy for you to understand intellectually. Yet, I chose to include them so we can ask ourselves: How is it that we’re not making more progress in implementing this wisdom? What are the barriers that prevent us from making the needed changes in our lives? And, How can these restraints be lessened or removed?

Progress is made when we tackle these questions by examining the details of our day-to-day living. Progress is made when we look for opportunities to change in the short term, What can I do today to implement this wisdom? And in the long term, What can I do today to make this change a habit so that it becomes a part of my lifestyle? And in the even longer term, What can I do that will make life better for future generations?

Wisdom is worth reviewing and renewing because it presents us with challenges that will easily outlast our lifetimes. The way we act today will influence whether those who come after us will live freely or in slavery, in peace or in war, in a beautiful or polluted planet. Wisdom keeping can be a gift for our children and future generations to help them with their challenges. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to become a wisdom keeper by sharing what you’ve learned with others, especially our youth who often struggle to find their way amidst the profusion of delights and sufferings swirling in this amazing universe.

We all are born into a zeitgeist, a worldview embedded in the culture in which we were raised. In this way, we all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. Much of what passes as creative thought is oftentimes the result of lost sources, ideas from long ago that have been altered for better or for worse by contemporary authors. Our understanding and implementation of wisdom and morality change as the cultures that transmit them change.

The articulation of wisdom has emerged throughout human history in a great variety of forms, most likely starting with stories told by elders to their small bands of hunters and gatherers. Many great wisdom texts were written centuries ago for peoples who lived in cultures long since gone. They have passed the test of time. My challenge was to make my translations more accessible and applicable to our modern times. While some texts needed minor modifications, I found some formulations of wisdom to lack relevance for our times. Creation is not a past event. It is ongoing and so are the revelations of our emerging universe story. Thus, wisdom keepers will always be needed to keep wisdom alive and vital for the times.

Wisdom is not meant to be limited to a select few. It is ubiquitous and available to all who open themselves to it. We don’t need to become a scholar and shut ourselves away in a library or monastery in order to be students of wisdom. Wisdom is not a possession of sages to be doled out to their followers. Wisdom, like the finding of my gold nugget, can come from unexpected places and in unlikely moments. Consider the words of this three-year-old to her mother: Mommy, my heart is snuggling inside me. The words of this child are so much deeper than cute. Wisdom can arrive in pure unadulterated forms for those who are attuned to it. Sadly, much wisdom goes unrecognized and unappreciated.

Taking the time to explore wisdom can help us come to a deeper knowing that will help shield us from the massive flood of information inundating us daily. Unless you’ve withdrawn from modern culture, it is very easy to become distracted by the trivial, immersed in the glitter of our pop culture, and inundated by commercial advertising designed to capture our attention. How easy it is to become caught up in it all, anxiously leading frenetic lives, allowing little or no time for wisdom contemplation. In times of tumultuous change, we can ground ourselves by diving deep beneath the waves to the still waters, by identifying not with the ephemeral but with the perennial.

Wisdom is enhanced not when we get caught up in the frenzy, running around like chickens with our heads cut off, but rather when we take the time to fully digest our experience. The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. . . . An education that improves this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical instruction for bringing it about.²

The problem is not that we don’t have time for wisdom contemplation and wisdom keeping. We can make the time if we dedicate ourselves to it. The challenge, amidst unrelenting distractions, interruptions, and invitations to do other things, is to make wisdom contemplation a priority so that it gets the time it deserves. So many choices. Unless we know what is not worth doing and graciously say no again and again, we will become exhausted trying to keep up with all that doesn’t really matter. May we learn the difficult art of saying no without closing our hearts. Then we will have the time to do what matters most.

How do we live wisely? A disciple of a great sage was asked, What is most important to your teacher? The devotee answered, Whatever he is doing at the moment. If you don’t set priorities in your life, someone else will. So, what are your highest priorities? Are they related to what you are doing at this moment? May we make it our habit to ask ourselves these vital questions. Rather than hastily form opinions, we can examine how our life experiences can help us respond to them. How we respond to them will create the stories that give meaning to our lives.

To live wisely, when setting priorities, it is helpful to keep in mind that it is not necessarily what we do that matters most rather how we carry