Prajna* (wisdom)

 I say this December so far is way more like winter than it usually is this time of year, but my recollection is faulty.  True, we've had some mild winters these last 10 years but I'm not hinking of the years before that.  My life here is kind of separated by my time in the Army, I left and came back more of a man than the kid that I was.  It's all rather interesting the way things transpire, and I watch as the snow falls flurrying, inundated with thoughts as individual as the flakes falling before me.  I talk about the things that I find moving, and I'm not always sure that it makes sense to anyone but me.  I can only imagine that one day this, all of my writing here, will get buried within the depths of the internet, discarded in a wasteland of words and broken links that lead to nowhere.  That's kind of true to life though, we build ourselves up only to wither away back to nothing.  Like the earth spinning on its axis, we can't see it but we know it's happening.  Sometimes it's like we're standing too close to the mirror to catch a good overall glimpse of ourselves, and it isn't at all easy to separate mind from body in order to step away far enough to see the whole.

Buddhists have a word for emptiness, sunyata, but there in lies an idea, not just a definition.  Emptiness, by English definition, expresses a negative connotation or lacking.  The idea behind sunyata is that only when empty can one begin to add.  I share a lot of ideas, ideas I don't want to take credit for because they are not my own.  I simply apply them in life, share my experience and express them in the way I understand, and on a one on one basis I adapt the way I talk to the person I am talking to.  I'm learning about people that you can't always deal with everyone the same.  Over time you see about an individual what they need in order for them to hear what you're saying, to speak in a way that their perception can receive.  Wisdom is not in how much knowledge you retain, it's how much knowledge can you let alone.  Knowledge serves a practical purpose in life, yes, but I'll never know so much to not see the difference between ideas and definitions.  "Knowledge is power...," as the saying goes but they left out the rest of it.  A glass half full has room for more.

Haha, so I started with the weather in the Midwest and ended with a lesson in Buddhism...it is ALL connected.

*Pranja-In Buddhism, it is especially the wisdom that is based on the direct realization of such things as the four noble truths; impermanence, dependent origination, non-self, and emptiness.

ps.  My original "ps"  was fucking lame so I deleted it,  haha.