Introduction

The One River Foundation is rooted in one simple idea: “When you know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The truth we are talking about is Perennial Wisdom: perennial because it reoccurs in every civilization throughout recorded human history, and wisdom because it reveals the true nature of life and how best to live it. What Perennial Wisdom frees you from is the illusion of otherness fueling the fear and alienation that drives so much of our ego-centered lives.

The truth of Perennial Wisdom leads us beyond alienation to integration, beyond isolation to unity, beyond fear to love, beyond exploitation of the other to justice for all, beyond violence and war to cooperation and peace, and beyond the zero-sum, winner-takes-all worldview of “us against them” to the nonzero, win-win worldview of “all of us together.” Perennial Wisdom collapses the divisions between chosen and not chosen, believer and infidel, saved and damned, sacred and profane, heaven and earth, Creator and creation, to reveal the truth that every mundane, finite, nameable “this” as a manifestation of the infinite, ineffable, and divine That of which we are all a part.

While bearing the stamp of the religion and culture in which it arises, Perennial Wisdom can be summarized in four points:

1. All life is a manifesting of a dynamic non-dual Aliveness called by many names: Chiut, Ultimate Reality, God, Tao, Mother, Allah, YHVH, Dharmakaya, Brahman, and Great Spirit, among others.
2. You have the innate capacity to awaken in, with, and as this aliveness.
3. Awakening as Aliveness calls you to live by the Golden Rule in service to being a blessing to all the families of the earth, human and otherwise.
4. Awakening as Aliveness and being a blessing comprise your highest calling as a human being.

Through our Wisdom School and publications such as Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent and The World Wisdom Bible One River Foundation honors the many expressions of Perennial Wisdom to create a new testament for a global spirituality. By “new testament” we mean a contemporary anthology of ancient texts bearing witness to the universality of Perennial Wisdom. By “global spirituality” we mean Perennial Wisdom itself, a wisdom discovered by every human community across time and tradition.

To be clear, we are not advocating a global religion, a single religion to replace the many religions of humankind. We are students of comparative religion and have deep respect for both human religiosity in general and the specific religions that this innate religiosity creates. Yet we see in each specific religion a common thread that if highlighted in each faith tradition and held as a central core belief of all humans, religious and otherwise, can provide the foundation for a new civility, if not a new civilization.

Religions Are Like Languages

Students of One River Wisdom School come from every religious tradition and none. We are wisdom seekers who refuse to have our search for Truth limited to the parochial truth claims of any one religion. Instead, we see themselves as heirs to the entirety of human wisdom: religious, spiritual, scientific, literary, artistic, and more.

Some may find it odd that while we claim to respect all religions, we reject the absolutist truth claims of every religion. If a religion is not true, why bother with it at all? The answer to this question rests with one’s understanding of religion. While scholars have debated—and continue to debate—just what religion is, we take a softer approach and root our understanding of religion in the metaphor of language.

Like language, religion is a way we humans make meaning out of the raw facts of our existence. It is a human creation reflecting and shaping the civilization from which it comes. Religion, like language, is neither true nor false. It evolves over time and adapts words and concepts from other religions and languages. Religion, like language, is the way we humans archive and share experience, but it is not synonymous with experience: d-o-g does not bark, and g-o-d does not save.

Some religions, like some languages, may be better at expressing some things rather than others, and there may be some things you simply cannot say in a given religion or language but can say in a different religion or language. Just as being born into a mother tongue does not preclude you from speaking other languages, so being born into a specific religion or no religion at all does not preclude you from learning the wisdom of any and all religions. And just as the more languages you know the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes, so the more religions you know the more nuanced your understanding of Truth becomes.

Each Religion Speaks to a Facet of Your Experience

Taking our religion–language analogy one step further, just as each language offers its own sense of reality, so each religion offers its own sense of the human condition. And just as your sense of reality is broadened by learning multiple languages, your understanding of the human condition— your condition—is broadened by learning from the world’s religions.

Borrowing from the work of Boston University professor of religion Stephen Prothero and his introduction to the world’s religions, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, we see each religion speaking to various aspects of the human condition. Here are some examples:

Reality versus Illusion: Hinduism

According to Hinduism, the existential problem at the heart of the human condition is ignorance of the true nature of reality (avidya), which leaves us living in a world of illusion (maya). This is not to say the world itself is illusory, only that our understanding of it is.

A Hindu parable puts it this way: Imagine you awake in the middle of the night to find a poisonous snake curled at the foot of your bed. Frozen with fear, you spend the night in terror, praying that nothing will cause the snake to strike you and, in so doing, kill you. As dawn rises and sunlight floods your bedroom you realize that the “snake” is, in fact, the belt you neglected to hang up as you prepared for bed the night before. Immediately fear and terror vanish and you achieve moksha, liberation from the illusion of the snake and the fear and terror that the illusion elicited.

The way to liberation is through one or more of the four yogas: service to others (Karma), devotion to God (Bhakti); the study of wisdom ( Jnana); and contemplative practice (Raja).

Alienation from God: Judaism

The existential problem that is Judaism’s focus is exile (galut) and the alienation from God that exile entails. Humanity is meant to live in Paradise, the Garden of Eden, as tillers of the soil and midwives to nature’s bounty (Genesis 2:15–16), but we were exiled from the Garden because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and fell into the trap of duality. By eating the fruit, we consumed the notion that the world is a collection of opposing binaries—good versus bad, us versus them—rather than realizing the world is an integrated network of complementarities—front and back, good and bad, us and them, and all of us together.

The solution to this exile is returning to God (teshuvah) by repairing the world with godliness (tikkun). The means for return and repair are the 613 spiritual disciplines (mitzvot) of Jewish practice.

Dissatisfaction by Way of Desire: Buddhism

Buddhism sees the existential problem of humanity as a sense of deep and abiding dissatisfaction with life (dukkha) caused by addictive desire (trishna). Simply put, we want what we cannot have: permanence, immortality, surety, and security. The more we struggle to attain the unattainable, the more miserable we become and the more needless suffering we endure.

The solution to this dissatisfaction is nirvana, the cessation of addictive desire and the suffering it creates. The way to accomplish this is the Eightfold Path of Buddhist practice—right understanding of the nature of reality, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration—which leads to the three essentials of Buddhist life: morality (sila), awakening (samadhi), and wisdom ( prajna).

Stained by Sin: Christianity

According to many denominations of Christianity, the existential problem at the heart of the human condition is sin, or more specifically original sin. The Christian insight is that there is something ontologically wrong with us, something we cannot fix on our own.

There is no discipline that will set us right. Only God can fix what is wrong, and indeed God has done so by incarnating as Jesus and dying on the cross as ransom for our sin. Within the context of Christianity—or better, the many Christianities that grow up around this idea—belief in Jesus as Christ and belief in the salvific power of his death and resurrection is the only way to get ourselves right with God.

Falling Prey to Pride: Islam

Islam identifies pride as the existential problem that most threatens human flourishing. This is because pride—following the desires of our will rather than submitting to the demands of God’s will (the true meaning of Islam)— keeps us from living the holy life God wishes us to live.

The way of Islam is to submit to the discipline of the Five Pillars of Islam: To worship Allah alone, to pray five times daily, to offer charity, to fast during the month of Ramadan, and to make pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during your lifetime.

Losing Touch with Our Heart: Confucianism

For Confucianism the existential problem we humans face is loss of jen and li. Jen (pronounced ren) translates as human heartedness: our capacity for goodness, generosity, love of neighbor, and care for society. Humans are intrinsically capable of jen because we are born good, but without training in the cultivation of jen we tend to fall into its opposite, selfishness. Li, ritual or propriety, is the way to live our lives and order our society to promote jen. Jen and li together create junzi, the superior person, whose actions are always proper and whose overriding concern is the welfare of others. The way to cultivate jen and li is the Confucian system of education that focuses on the classics of Chinese literature and building moral character.

Prisoners of Formality: Taoism

The existential problem highlighted in Taoism is the loss of our intrinsic naturalness. Unlike the Confucian, who believes that our innate goodness needs to be cultivated through formal moral training and literary education, the Taoist holds that we are born free, that goodness arises naturally from living that freedom, and the constraints of formal training and education ensnare us in systems of convention that rob us of our freedom. The solution is to return to the Tao, the way of nature, and to live in harmony with it.

While the Confucian upholds the ideal of the junzi, the superior person, the Taoist celebrates the zhenren, the genuine person. To cultivate our innate authenticity, we practice “sitting and forgetting” (ego-erasing meditation, dropping the self, and resting as the Self), “fasting of the mind” (freeing oneself of -isms and ideologies), and “free and easy wandering” (ecstatic journeying in the mountains), all of which foster an alignment with Tao, the way of nature.

Mi Problemo, Su Problemo

Ignorance, illusion, exile, alienation, dissatisfaction, sin, pride, loss of goodness, loss of naturalness and authenticity—are any of these existential problems foreign to you? While it is true that given your personal history you may see one or more of these problems as being uppermost in your life. Still, if you examine your life carefully enough, chances are you will notice they are all at play, and therefore you can learn from all these religions.

Perennial Wisdom is not a textbook for the study of the world’s religions but rather a compendium of wisdom drawn from the world’s religions. By juxtaposing various articulations of Perennial Wisdom, we invite them to dialogue with one another and with you. The Truth is not in the texts but in your encounter with the texts. The more you wrestle with them, the more insight you will glean from them. Our concern is not what these texts mean in the context of their respective religions, but they mean in the context of your life. We want you to ask how Perennial Wisdom can liberate you from the parochial for the universal, from the zero-sum worldview you may have been taught for the nonzero worldview these wisdom teachings promote. In this way One River Wisdom School invites you to join in an ancient and ongoing conversation with Truth, a discussion in which we hope you will choose to engage with an open mind, an open heart, and open arms.