Wisdom sounds like a big word. Like libraries, like decades of practice. In the Buddhist tradition I teach in, wisdom begins much smaller: with a question. Wisdom is curiosity.

It means the ability to question your own experience instead of believing everything it tells you. A large part of what occupies us grows out of stories we tell ourselves, out of concepts and exaggerations. The tradition compares this to a rope at dusk that we mistake for a snake. The fear is real. The snake is not. Wisdom means looking more closely.

You can practice this in the middle of everyday life. When a strong emotion shows up, you can examine it kindly: How does it feel in the body? Which images belong to it, which inner sentences, which beliefs? If you look this way, something surprising often happens: the emotion becomes more transparent, softer, it dissolves like shaving foam. What remains is space.

And one more thing belongs to this understanding of wisdom, perhaps the most beautiful: the certainty that your nature is whole and complete. On this path there is nothing to acquire. There is something to recognize. Like a precious watch you have owned all along and simply never noticed.

If you’d like to explore wisdom in meditation: Here you’ll find my guided Meditation on Wisdom. It comes from my course Anytime, Anywhere Meditation, where awareness, love and compassion, and wisdom come together.