Teacher struck with insights at the annual Teachers’ Conference

Wisdom, prajna, was one of the key terms mentioned by Justin & Ed this weekend. Ed explained it as the underlying current with which the spiritual practicioner can seek to align him or herself, and gave some compelling examples of how it had recently guided him in his life. From these, it became clear that wisdom shows up as a subtle force of right connection, a serendipitous linking of often unlikely causes & effects. As the weekend progressed, short as it was, I began to feel wisdom putting in a tentative appearance as a kind of heightened sense of analogy. The quieter & more at ease in TCC I became, the more the things & people around me began to link up & transmit a heightened sense of poignant meaning, often providing concrete examples of the principles embodied in TCC practice – first & foremost, emptiness. For me, a particularly striking instance of this occurred during the photo session late Saturday in the outdoor ampitheatre. I was sitting in one of the upper tiers. On either side of me & all around were all the other teachers, vibrant & here together in this exact configuration for one time only, in fact for a matter of minutes, with Justin, the source of the teaching that had called them together, seated in the first row. No sooner did the sense of that strong but fleeting whole register in me than my eyes lifted all by themselves and settled on the larger landscape of which we were a part, bordered to the west by row upon row of white crosses in the convent cemetary, some (I know from an afternoon walk) dating back a century, some as recent as this year. Each cross with its precise shadow in the setting sun. And I absorbed this powerful wisdom teaching not in my head but in my chest.

– Bill Mishler