- Prajna
Last night, before going to bed, my younger son Jah-bi told me something he had been thinking about lately. I said to him, affirming his words, “The truth is relative.” I was not sure if he understood the word, “relative”, but I trusted that he would remember my words in the future. Then, I also went to bed, and had a dream just before waking up the next morning. In the dream, I saw different forms of gods just like I was watching a slide show, while the dream vividly communicated the word “prajna” to me through visualized intuition. Prajna means the highest and purest form of knowledge, intelligence, understanding or wisdom in Buddhism and Hinduism. I wondered why I had come across this word, ‘prajna’ in my dream. The last time I read or studied about prajna would have been when I was researching for my Master’s degree in religion nearly 16 years ago. Have I been seeking some form of the “highest” or the purest form of wisdom these days? Have I dreamed it because I am seeking it internally and also need it? What can be the prajna in my life and in my ministry, as something I can share with people? God visits us as Wisdom, the purest and highest form of understanding. We should look for prajna, in our life’s journey, our walk as a pilgrim to find the place of wisdom.
2. There’s no Absolute Prajna
I pondered why I dreamed about prajna. I enjoy dream work and often get insightful benefits from it. Prajna means the supreme wisdom, knowledge and understanding about how we truly find ourselves, our happiness, the purpose and the meaning of life. The key is, I interpreted after my dream, that even if it is prajna, the highest truth, there’s no single perpetual truth that is the same to everything, to every person, in every place, in every culture. Truth changes over time, and what is considered ‘truth’ is different and unique dependent on who has reached it, in which era, in which culture, in which part of the earth. This diversity is beautiful. No absolute claim of a single universal truth should exercise dominion; that rigidity has functioned as a vehicle to displace through colonization the truth that other societies possess. Some teachings are land-based, and they belong to the people who have passed them from generation to generation on their ancestral land.
3. God’s Wisdom … in Our Life
We have so much grief and sorrow going on in our Immanuel community right now. Grief, loss, death and deep sadness, so often a part of our life, seem more prevalent today. Someone has lost their best friend. Someone just let go of her youngest sister whom she cared for like her own child. Someone’s dying and the family’s gathering to help her go, bringing their love, watching her with loving eyes. Someone was grappling with questions about his own life’s meaning, before he chose medically assisted dying and slipped away. We all try to accept death, to understand it with our hearts and carry on with love, yet it is not easy. We rely on our hope and faith in God, or the Holy Mystery, for answers and guidance.
When I ministered at Chemainus United Church, one church member really struggled with the blows of losses that kept coming one after another; she got very tired of wrestling with the deaths of her beloved friends and relatives. She came to prayer meetings with her husband, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and had difficulty walking; they never missed a session. One day she said, “I used to go square dancing with this group of lovely people and came home with the flowers of laugher. And none of them is any more. I counted. I let go of 21 people only within the last year. Grieving is very hard.” Her name is Marian. I met her 6 years ago. And she’s still as active as she used to be, and is on Facebook! She has grieved, but her reliance on God has stayed strong.
4. Griefwalker
Seeing Marian’s grief, I suggested a film for her to watch. The film is Griefwalker, a National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film. It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people. “Filmed over a twelve-year period, Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director while paddling a birchbark canoe about the origins and consequences of his ideas for how we live and die.” (from Orphan Wisdom’s website) A few of the themes appearing in the film: Where does our culture’s death phobia come from? Is there such a thing as good dying? Who are the dead to us? How can seeing your life’s end be the beginning of your deep love of being alive? You can watch this film free (and safely), if you go to: https://www.nfb.ca/film/griefwalker/ (1 hour and 10 mins.) Jenkinson says,
“Grief is not a feeling, it is a capacity. It is not something that disables you, we are not on the receiving end of grief - we are on the practising end of grief.”
“Grief is the midwife of your capacity to be immensely grateful for being born.”
“Grief is not a feeling. Grief is a skill and the twin of grief as a skill of life is the skill of being able to praise or love life, which means wherever you find one, authentically done, the other is very close at hand. Grief and the praise of life, side by side.”
5. Prajna
Of course, some of the wisdom in Griefwalker is prajna; supremely wise, but not an absolute, prescriptive truth for everyone. Yet, I hope if you are interested, you can watch the one-hour film, Griefwalker, and see if someone else’s prajna can accompany your grief walk … and help you find your own wisdom and truth.
Ha Na Park
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