Photo Credit: Ben White

Deep Gratitude for My Many Wisdom Teachers

I feel completely blessed to have the good fortune to encounter so many wise beings during my journey. Truthfully, everyone we meet has wisdom to share with us. We can learn from people, other beings, and other life forms. For examples, our dogs, cats, and other animal companions can show us unconditional love. Trees can teach us patience. Clouds show us the changing nature of all forms. All of nature offers us her bounty, unconditionally, for our benefit. Although all life has wisdom to teach us, and I have learned much from nature and animals, in this list I only thank my human teachers.

We can also learn from both the unwise and the wise behaviors of human beings. For example, many of my relatives were addicted to alcohol and seeing how alcohol negatively impacted their lives, I was inspired to never consume more than an occasional sip of it. Not that alcohol is inherently unskillful. Many people can drink it in moderation without it ever causing harm to themselves or others. Still, I knew that people can be genetically predisposed to alcoholism, and it seems like my family was, and I figured, “If I don’t drink, I can never become an alcoholic.” I have never regretted that decision.

Despite our ability to learn wisdom from all people, here I would like to focus on thanking those who excel, or at least tend to lean towards the skillful side of things. Of course, unless we are fully awakened, all of us are a mixed bags of skillful and unskillful behavior. This reality is important to remember so we don’t fall into the ego’s trap of judging people as either “good” or “bad.” The truth is more complicated than that, and at everyone’s core is their true self of unconditional love, so we must to our best to treat both the “skillful” and “unskillful” with kindness, compassion, respect, and dignity.

Historically, and in many communities today, women have largely been prevented from serving as wisdom teachers. Therefore, as a celebration of the wisdom of women, and an aspirational gesture of equality for all genders, I acknowledge my female teachers first. It is also my loving wish that more wisdom traditions welcome and embrace openly transgender, lesbian, bisexual, and gay people into their ranks, as they also have historically and presently have been prevented from serving as wisdom teachers. Those on my list who I know of from the LGBTQ+ community, I have denoted with an L, G, B, T, Q, or + respectively.

My primary teachers are bolded, capitalized, and larger than the rest. They represent those who have had the most influence on me.

If a teacher has transitioned to the great beyond, the year of their birth and death are included.

Once again, I extend deep gratitude to all of my teachers: