Mastering Wisdom: Your Path to a Fulfilling Life

By I J Nayak

Embark on the transformative journey of "Mastering Wisdom" by I. J. Nayak, a profound exploration of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and the convergence of ancient wisdom with modern spirituality. This book is your guide to a fulfilling life, drawing inspiration from d

• Language: English
• Publisher: I J Nayak
• Release date: Nov 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798868993374

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Mastering Wisdom – Your Path to a Fulfilling Life

This text was originally published in India on the year of 2023.

The edits and layout of this version are Copyright © 2023

by I J Nayak

This publication has no affiliation with the original Author or publication company.

Mastering Wisdom

Your Path to a Fulfilling Life

I J Nayak

India

2023

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: The Age of Us

Chapter 2: WORDS: The Poetry of Creatures

Chapter 3: Body's Grace

Chapter 4: Love Lessons Learned

Chapter 5- The History and Development of FAITH

Chapter 6 - Reimagining Hope

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: The Age of Us

I'm a listener for the sake of living. I seek wisdom, and beauty, as well as for voices that aren't screaming in order to hear. The book recounts certain aspects of what

I've learned from what's turned into a conversation that spans generations, time, disciplines and religious denominations.

The adventure began when the century shifted and has grown and changed as it has. My focus in these pages is in the aspects inherent to living which took me by surprise, tearing apart my beliefs. I've attempted, in the paragraphs that is to follow, to demonstrate how my ideas came to be by way of conversation, a back and forth between graceful mind and life. I've come across the interconnectedness in my writing as form of a map of wisdom regarding our changing world. It's a road map written in words to the vast territory that we are all on together. It's a set of pointers that take the edges as seriously as the crowded center. Because change has always been in the margins of the history of humanity, and it's taking place right today. Changes in the seismic environment of everyday life, and they occur in the world of geophysical science, start in cracks and spaces.

This fascinating and dazzling century is revealing fundamental questions that the twentieth century thought it had addressed. The questions we ask are profound and civilizational at the same time, defining definitions of the time when life begins and the time it begins.

Death happens, of the significance of family and marriage as well as the meaning of identity; of our relation to nature; of our connection to technology as well as our connections via technology. The Internet in its early days has changed the way we think about creating and leading, as well as being a part of. It's bringing us into an era of Reformation however this time, it's all of our institutions simultaneouslyincluding educational, political economic, religious, and so on. The most interesting and difficult thing in this moment is that we're aware that the old structures don't work. We're not yet able to determine how the future forms are going to look like. We're making them up using real time; we're even reimagining the concept of time.

Humanity first began to look at the inside of itself with a global view in what's sometimes referred to as the Axial age, which was a few centuries before the midmillennium mark of it was the Common Era. In totally dissociated cultures of an alternate world of change, Confucius was born in China and the Buddha searched for enlightenment. Plato and Aristotle looked at the soul and mind while the Hebrew prophets started to write the idea of a people of God to be born. The pursuit of inner peace began in the context of the shocking idea that the wellbeing of those outside of the tribe and kin--the orphan, the stranger as well as the disadvantaged-- was tied to the individual's. Humanity has given voice to questions that have shaped the world of religion and philosophy since What does it mean being human? What is the most important thing in life? What are the most important things to consider in a death? What can we do to serve our fellow human beings and the world?

The questions are being reborn and reframed in the time of ever-growing interdependence with distant strangers. It is a matter of what is to be human becoming inextricably linked to the issue of how we define ourselves to each our fellow human beings. We have a wealth of understanding and wisdom of instruments that are both physical and spiritual for stepping up to this challenge. We observe our technology becoming more advanced, and think in awe about their ability to be conscious. In all the time we possess the potential within our minds to grow intelligent. Wisdom enriches our intelligence, enhances consciousness and speeds up the process of evolution itself.

The spiritual and religious traditions have brought wisdom through time, even in tense environments, they may be distorted into parodies. When I talk about these things, I'm talking of the places that give our humanity a utmost attention that is unmatched by other disciplines: our capacity to be loved and feel pleasure, our capacity to sabotage and deceive our enemies, the immutability of failing and failure, the desire to serve. I am awed by the profound shrewdness about hope that religion engenders to, its adoration for beauty's undervalued value and its seriousness regarding the universal human experience of the mystery.

The spiritual life of us is the places where we face the mystery of us and our fellow human beings.

We fought to end the mystery from the West in the past few hundred years, but we reaffirmed reality's sharp edges instead - solutions, ideas and plans as well as fascism, communism, and the imperialism of capitalism, changing between the three. In our bleak and sour time, we're returning to the reality that has been there for a long time that is the human condition in all its chaos and splendor, is the foundation upon which our hopes and ambitions can be realized or fail. The old adage he who does not know history is doomed to repeat it isn't far enough. The cycle of history repeats itself until we really and deeply are aware of our own history. Today, the chaotic global economy suggests that human intervention is at play. This is also the case with the shambles of weather. Terrorism, the sole ism left swaggering in the post-cold war world is the result of human despair everywhere.

I am convinced about the moral equation Einstein created that is just as radical as his mathematical equations though far less well-known. Einstein began his life with a deep conviction in the social benefit of science--a collective of cosmic endeavour which should transcend tribal conflicts and national lines. Then, he witnessed German science surrender to fascism. He saw physicists and chemical engineers create devices with mass destruction. He argued scientists in his time was becoming a sharp blade that was in the hands of an infant of three years old. He began to recognize people like Gandhi or Moses, Jesus and Buddha and Saint. Francis of Assisi, as geniuses in the art of living. He argued that their talents that were a result of spiritual genius were more important to ensure human dignity, security and happiness than the objective knowledge.

My work has taught me that spiritual geniuses from everyday life are all around us. They're in the margins and don't have a publicist. They are not on the radar, and are broken. The way we talk about our everyday life is increasingly depressing. In my profession of journalism, where we are attempting to create our first version of the history, we use our most analytical capacities to investigate the insufficiency, corruption, disastrous, and failing. In the field of journalism news is defined as the most extraordinary events of the day, yet the majority of times, it's interpreted as the incredibly terrible things that happen in the world. In a 24/7 information cycle, it is easy to take in the flurry of bad information as the normal reality of who we have become and the challenges we're fighting against as a species.

However, our world is filled with beauty, courage and grace. I'm aware that there is a growing desire to contribute, using every tool we have at our disposal to the transformation of human beings that can bring about social change. The digital age, while an entirely modern Wild West in many ways but is at a fundamental level merely a screen upon which we display the luxuries and possibilities of living in the flesh and blood. Spirituality is evolving and the sources of nutrition are becoming more widely accessible. Science is revealing knowledge about our brains and bodies that is a daily form of power that can bridge the gap between what we are and who we wish to become, as individuals as well as humans. Through medical and social disciplines we are developing an entirely new understanding of the human condition. vitality and completeness.

We can create transformative, durable new realities through becoming resilient, transformed people. It's about the lover and the loved one and the citizen and the politician the social entrepreneur and the person who is in need. It is me, and it also means you.

* * *

Being present is about listening It's not about being still. I interact with others who share my experiences and not only with my queries. I've learned to be thankful for the unpredictability of the path the course my own life took and the perspective I've been granted. It has given me a deep knowledge of the marginal spaces that are actually the foundation of society and has given me access to areas that exercise power--the potential of ideas and the power of the action. I've had an understanding of the lengthy arcs of the past that are a source of inspiration for what we consider to be the crises that we are experiencing today. I have learned where we came from and how we came to where we are from there.

My birthplace was in early late hours of the night when the results of the 1960 elections arrived which was the year that John F. Kennedy was elected president. I was raised within Shawnee, Oklahoma, a small town in the middle of a young state that was in between America and where people had a tendency to forget their history of their past and leave their ancestral scourges to the past. My maternal grandparents drove their wagons covered into the old Indian Territory to create their lives by scratch in the savage Oklahoma dust. My father was adopted by the family I referred to as my grandparents when I was of three. It was just a thin, fragile layerfor him and us.

I grew up with a lot of desire, but not sure of what it was for and had no idea about the universe outside of Oklahoma or Texas. The main source of social interaction consisted of that of the Southern Baptist church, in which my grandfather was a pastor. The only book I was required to study was the Bible which was why I often found myself late at evening wrestling with the huge questions that it brought up as well as the ones it did not seem to settle. After that, I spent the entire season of summer my senior year at high school in a debate camps in Chicago and met people who helped me understand the possibilities of the secular. One of them would do anything to attend Brown University, about which I had never heard about, which is why I was able to apply too. Going to Brown for me was similar to going to Mars. I arrived and found one of my parents, the long-dead president living in my dorm room. The world of parallel universes, other planets and the kinds of stories I adored in science fiction, and that scientists now consider serious--so much about the jump from Shawnee and Providence seemed like a perfect match to me.

Exhilarating leaps, however thrilling they are, for the most part, hard on creatures. The bottom of a pit I can now see as the first time I experienced depression during my second year at university I felt overwhelmed by all the books I'd never read, the destinations I'd never been to. I thought I'd never catch up to my classmates in this secluded world. However, I decided to throw myself into the possibilities which were now in my direction. I took a course in German and travelled back across Europe and then went to Mars for the second time: I was able to spend the duration of a semester participating in an unreal swap program within Rostock, the Communist East German city of Rostock located on the Baltic Sea.

In Rostock, I was captured--intellectually and emotionally--by the division of Germany in particular and the world in general into communism and capitalism, geopolitical Good and geopolitical Evil. I was enthralled by the message from the mid-20th century that the political arena was where all the crucial questions were and that there were all the legitimate solutions were also available. I put aside my thoughts about God and began protecting the world with respect through the media and political system.

After college, I studied in the quiet West German capital of Bonn and later moved on to a divided Berlin as an New York Times stringer. I was not guaranteed an income that was sustainable or any kind of byline. But it was a busy time throughout Central Europe and I logged stories via teletype in East Germany and through the innovative new modem technology that came that came from West. After 18 months I got a position at the State Department, which was basically a government arm in the postwar four-power arrangement that was in place to the

Wall was toppled. I was on the development of relationships throughout that Berlin Wall, and I was commissioned to keep it up. There was a proliferation of human bonds all across those who strayed across the inner-German border throughout the eighties, with environmentalists awakened in the wake of human interactions and the environment that they shared with their church, art and politics colliding in fascinating subversive ways; young individuals coming of age the world of Communist propaganda in the day, and Western television at night. being schizophrenic, culturally confused and agitated beyond comprehension.

I was fortunate to have exciting jobs in the West and eventually became the chief of staff to the newly appointed American ambassador, who was a nuclear weapons expert. The career I was creating was my identity card. I learned a lot in Berlin that translates into the totally different career path I am in currently. There were no discussions in those days regarding religion, spirit, or any other meaning that was not political. Geopolitical drama, however, in the moment and in that place was an existential issue. As a child I was fascinated by this fervor. German history was a maze of layers and so intense for people of all ages, with a mighty, unshakeable weight. Its demons were present in every room, identified and fought with incessantly.

What was more compelling to me at the conclusion than the politics that dominated Berlin was the massive social experiment it had turned into. The city, which was one people and shared language, and the history and culture were divided into two starkly opposite worldviews and perspectives that were firmly rooted when I first came to Berlin. I was awed by the people from each side of the Wall that ran through the middle and soul of this city. However, I was attracted in a desperate attempt to keep my sanity towards the East and the East where could be at risk and my life and mind were more vital and energized. The realization shook my perception of my personal development and education and made me realize that it was possible to enjoy freedom and a lot within the West and live a solitary life. It was also it was possible for me to have nothing in the East and lead an environment of intimacy, beauty and dignity.

When the Wall began to open November 9, 1989, my twenty-nineth birthday--nobody could have imagined the possibility of it falling or that the Iron Curtain fall. We are limiting our narrative of these incidents to the realm of missiles and diplomacy and the enthralling charisma that was Reagan and Gorbachev. Each played an important part in the drama, for sure and so did the strategists and diplomats who were around them. However, they only got the situation to a certain point. The Wall was finally shattered in a whisper, not with a bang, and terror was lifted at once from the entire country. I had walked or drove through Checkpoint Charlie

many times while recognizing its absurdity as a source of authority. In the evening, the Wall was toppled, following the bureaucrat's blunder during a press conference, the entire city was jolly through the wall. Border guards joined them. It really was that easy. There are areas in our life that we cannot think about or even address and offer more potential for change than we could ever imagine.

My experience in Berlin started to lead me to the types of questions I've posed since. How do we speak to the raw, vital life-giving, heartbreaking places within us, so we can better understand them mindfully, practice the lessons they impart to us, and use their wisdom for our lives together?

It was theology that I started to consider in my thirties it offered a variety of theological vocabulary and tools to ask the kinds of questions. While theology's public appearance has been associated throughout time with abstract notions of God and battles over God I am grateful for its rich tradition of grappling with the overwhelming complicated nature of humans, their actions and human being. It has emphasized the development of traits that could have sounded suspicious and pious, but also idealistic to my younger self who was awed theology: wholeness that transcends advancement; hope that transcends pragmaticity; love beyond the limits of realpolitik.

In the pages that are following by people and voices that are able to see this possibility in the current transformation we're experiencing right now. There's a ton of poetry in this book as it's beautiful and essential, and also because of deeper motives which I'll explore. There's a lot of science as well. My conversational life is filled with the wisdom of neuroscientists and physicists biologists, and neuroscientists who are asking questions and making discoveries which shed light on issues of morality that were once reserved to philosophers and theology.

The mainstay on these pages is the language used to describe virtue, an old-fashioned term, perhaps, but one I have found to be a magnet for young people who instantly recognize the necessity of concrete disciplines that transform the desire into actions. Our religious traditions have embodied virtues through the ages. They're not the work of saints or heroes, but instruments for living the life of a professional. They are a piece of wisdom about human behavior that neuroscience is studying with new images and words that we can practice. What we do and learn, we transform into. What's the case with performing on the piano, or kicking a football is true of our ability to explore the world in a way that is destructive and mindless or gracefully and generously. I've been able to see positive qualities and

rituals as spiritual techniques to help us be our best in blood and flesh in space and time.

There are certain virtues that spring immediately to mind and could be the result of a single day or for a lifetime--love forgiveness, compassion. It is the subtle changes of thought and behavior that allow for these by letting go of the raw materials that comprise our lives.

I've structured my thoughts in five categories of basic elements, the fundamental aspects of daily life that I've come believe are the basis for wisdom. My understanding and experience of these matters have been completely transformed.

The first one is words. We've lost belief in the truth of facts to provide us with the full story, or even to reveal to our readers the whole truth of ourselves and the world. We are often marginalized and astonished by what is considered to be discourse in our everyday lives. The words we hold for virtue are also sabotaged through excessive use and cliche. I investigate the real-world significance that lies in words that shimmer, in the words poetry of writer Elizabeth Alexander. I am convinced that it is possible to express our most profound convictions and passions in a way that expands imagination rather than shuts them down. I'm sharing my experiences about the importance of asking more questions. Today's world needs the most vibrant, transforming language that you and I could create. We can start immediately to have the conversations we would like to hear and telling the tale of our times in a new way.

The third refers to the physical. The body is the place where every virtue exists or dies however, this is of a different significance in my life than for the world of religion in my youth. The latest research in science is revealing a picture to heal and regeneration that's as feasible as before. Our physical bodies as we're learning are more than just physical. They carry pain and joy and memories, as well as our ability for opening and closing the world and each other. There are profound connections between beauty, joy and wisdom. And we are learning these again in a practical way, starting with food choices. I've come to believe that our capacity to reach beyond ourselves--experiencing mystery or being present to others--is dependent on how fully we are planted in our bodies in all their flaws and their grace.

The third one is love. It is the only goal that is large enough to handle the vastness of human interaction and challenges in the 21st century. Love is a different word that's a bit (or more) destroyed. We often forget that it is there.

We refer to it as something that we can be a part of and out of. As a bit of wisdom about the human condition and what we are capable of, it's an attribute and method of living that we have barely begun to discover. People who have shifted the world around its axis throughout history have urged humanity to embrace love. We must now take this challenge more fervently in our own lives and learn what it means to love a practical,