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We acquire deeper wisdom through world lessons than we do through word lessons. Word lessons teach through concepts; World lessons teach through experience. Concepts may provide a map; Experience involves the journey. No experience is ever wasted because every experience contains a lesson. The lessons of experience are always positive, even if the experience is not.

Q: Your views on meditation are somewhat unorthodox—some might say irreverent. Could you explain those views and how you came to them?

A: Sitting meditation, as practiced in numerous venerable traditions, has benefits on many levels. I have practiced meditation during periods of my life, and honor this tradition. Such practice may enhance wellness and creativity, as well as provide insight into the nature of mind. But life isn’t lived in a sitting position—we still have to stand up and get on with the practice of everyday life.

Anybody who has survived their childhood has enough information about life to last them the rest of their days. —Flannery O’Connor

My seeming irreverence toward meditation serves to balance impressionable seekers’ adulation of the practice as the One Way to Enlightenment. I do not regard meditation as a path to enlightenment, but as the practice of enlightenment. By sitting calmly, balanced, centered, and erect—not leaning forward into the future or backward into the past—we maintain an enlightened disposition, assuming the perspective of pure awareness, observing all that arises from a place of divine detachment.

Still, the lives of meditators are likely to demonstrate the same kinds of difficulties encountered by non-meditators—relationship troubles, financial stresses, and other challenges. So meditation is not a panacea. Once we open our eyes, the direct experience of life awaits us. The true measure of any practice is the daily life of the practitioner. So eventually, meditation must become an every-moment practice—not just something we do while sitting. I now practice open-eyed meditation, insight into each moment, seeing each experience as it is, rather than what I think it should be. By paying attention to breath, relaxation, and movement, we put meditation practice into its proper context and perspective; we treat it not as an occasional visitor, but as a family member—not set apart, but as part of the whole. Such a meditative approach brings the light of awareness to each moment and every experience.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it. —James Baldwin

Believe one who has tried it. —Virgil

Q: Suppose you were twenty-five years old and had not yet done any in-depth personal growth work. Then you came upon books like those you have written. Do you think that these books, by themselves, would have provided sufficient insight to get you to where you are now? Won’t most people still find it necessary to wander on the chaotic path of teachers, practices, and communities?

A: There is a story of a young scholar from a privileged family who spends most of his time reading and studying the great teachings. One day, while traveling, he comes to a wide river and finds a boatman to take him across. During the crossing, to pass the time, the scholar describes his lifetime of studies. As he does, the boatman listens attentively. Then, after a time, he says to the young man, “You have learned much, sir—but have you learned how to swim?”

Skilled labor teaches something not found in books or colleges. —Harriet Robinson

“Why, no,” he replies. “I have not.”

“Then I’m afraid your knowledge is of little use,” says the boatman, “for this boat is sinking.”

Direct experience remains the most powerful teacher, but a book can provide a map of the territory, a preparation that enables us to learn more from our experience. A book can point the way, but we must still make the journey. So we don’t really have to choose between books and direct experience. Rather, the wisest course means choosing both. Our life experience may remain challenging, but we learn more from it.

Experience is not what happens, but what we do with what happens. —Aldous Huxley

It may take years of experience to integrate into one’s life the principles and practices learned from books. Our receptiveness and interests change over time as life teaches us, and humbles us. No matter what we may have learned in books, it is the nature of life that we lose face before we find wisdom, fall to our knees before we look up to the heavens, and face our darkness before we see the light. Each of us wanders through the wilderness of experience to gather worldly wisdom. Everything we encounter serves in its own way. We succeed by failing, learn by our mistakes, and rise to great heights by a winding staircase.

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand. —Zen proverb

Personal Applications

A humorist once said, “The only people who profit from the experience of others are biographers.” If this were true—if we could learn only from our own experience—then each of us would have to start from scratch, reinvent the wheel, make all the mistakes of our predecessors, and learn nothing from history. But because we are connected at the level of our common humanity, we can benefit from the experience of others. But we can only do so when we understand it and make it our own.

When a friend of mine was struck by a car while crossing a busy intersection, I reminded him, when he recovered, to look both ways in the future. At the same time, I also reminded myself to look more carefully as well. We can gain lifetimes of street-smarts and higher wisdom by paying attention to the direct experience of others, as we learn from our own experience.

 List three lessons or insights that you found in books.

 List three lessons that you learned from your own experience.

 Which are most vivid and stand out for you most deeply?