II: 54

Chapter 2, Verse 54

Arjuna says,

“How can one identify those
Whose wisdom is steadfast, Krishna?”

Eckhart Tolle:

“Wisdom is not a product of thought. Wisdom dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought and brings the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. Wisdom is the healer of separateness. One’s sense of self shifts from identifying with a mental activity to the space in which the mental activity arises and subsides.”

Ram Dass:

“In a non-traditional culture such as ours, dominated by technology, we value information far more than we do wisdom. Information involves the acquisition, organization, and dissemination of facts; a storing-up of physical data. But wisdom involves another equally crucial function: the quieting of the mind and the application of the heart. In the wisdom mode, we’re not processing information analytically or sequentially. We’re standing back and viewing the whole, discerning what matters and what does not, weighing the meaning and depth of things. This quality of wisdom is rare in our culture. More often we have knowledgeable people who pretend to be wise, but who, unfortunately, have not cultivated the quality of mind from which wisdom truly arises.

To be here for fifty or eighty years only to be annihilated at the end just doesn’t make sense. Nothing else in the universe is that inefficient. We have to be here to gain wisdom; otherwise our difficulties are truly meaningless. For the ego, the roles we grow into and the positions we hold are the culmination of life. For the soul, wisdom is the culmination.”