elders

Further to previous posts, these lines from Ram Dass:

“Unless we see ourselves as part of life’s continuity, whether we’re currently young or old, we will continue to view aging as something apart from the mainstream of culture, and the old as somehow other. In a non-traditional culture such as ours, dominated by technology, we value information far more than we do wisdom. But there is a difference between the two. Information involves the acquisition, organization, and dissemination of facts …. But wisdom involves another equally crucial function: the emptying and quieting of the mind, the application of the heart, and the alchemy of reason and feeling.”

♥

“This is our predicament, then: to regain our role as wise elders in a culture that has traditionally denied the need for wisdom, or the ability of old people to provide it … But it is futile to try to change the outside world without beginning with ourselves. … It is futile as well to look for our “selves” without understanding how the self is defined by our culture, and by what we consider reality to be.”

Ram Dass (2000). Still here: embracing aging, changing, and dying. New York: Riverhead Books, ch. 1.