My Master always told that the way in which Buddhism differs from the other religions in the world is because of its emphasis on wisdom — the prajna transcendental wisdom of seeing the Tao, and the wisdom of understanding regular worldly and universal phenomena. The wisdom that   is able to understand Tao, realize Tao, cultivate the self, release one from the bondage of birth and death and leap over the mundane.  This is not common intelligence.  It is the wisdom which is the root and origin of the body of Tao.  Hence, Buddhism discusses not just the cultivation path in all its various aspects, but goes into all sorts of worldly and supernormal phenomena that are not commented upon by other religions. If you want a great framework for things, you must turn to Buddhism.

In Buddhism we have chakras, skandhas, levels of consciousness, superpowers, the various heavens and the beings within them, kung-fu (gong-fu), how to cultivate, stages of cultivation, reincarnation and karma, different types of emptiness, how to change your fortune and behavior, the makeup of galaxies, the microscopic world, hygiene, ethical behavior and merit making, … all sorts of things are discussed in Buddhism that appear nowhere else. Shakyamuni Buddha, unlike other religious teachers, always said: Don't believe me or books of old or ancient stories but TEST and PROVE everything I say. So it's a cultivation school of proof.

Other schools, especially invented by intellectuals, want you to just BELIEVE without cultivating anything. So off you go, wasting your human life, following the thought patterns that some unenlightened individual simply preferred for whatever psychological reasons. "You don't have to cultivate," "All you have to do is believe," "Only we are saved," "__is supreme" are all sorts of useless notions that waste your precious opportunity to cultivate as a human being.

Now if you want to discuss physical transformations of the human body, while Buddhism discusses these through the avenue of the "five elements", Taoism discusses them via the mechanism of jing, chi and shen transformations, as well as chi channels and elixir fields. Taoism, because its emphasis was on prolonging the life of the human body, has categorized these changes and transformations quite nicely so if you're interested in THAT sort of thing, you should look at Taoism. If you use Esoteric Buddhism or the yoga schools, you only end up discussing chi channels and chakras and that's about it.

If we're talking about human behavior, the best schools to turn to are Christianity, with its emphasis on charity, and Confucianism. Yes, Confucianism. On and on I could go — just pick from the best for whatever purpose you need — but the whole purpose of this blog post was to talk about wsidom. Wisdom and understanding.

Where do you get wisdom and understanding today? In schools? On TV? Hardly likely. What is promoted to the public is usually boiled down, politically correct messages that don't teach you HOW TO THINK, or how to understand what's really  going on in the world. It used to be that I would have to buy all sorts of special books and magazines and newsletters to really know what's going on in the world, but today the internet has made that easier.

And there's one place to go to obtain a higher degree of WISDOM and UNDERSTANDING about what's really going on inthe world. WHere? Google video. In particular, the last section ont he page of google video that let's you see educational videos.

Go to google right now and above the search box you'll see the selections Web, Images, Video, News, … Hit the VIDEO button. Ont his page, you'll see lots of vdeos available for watching. Later I'm sure google will charge but right now it's free, so make use of it. WHere to go? The last section called EDUCATION.

Just spend some time watching the various videos on 911, UFOs, and other documentaries that you'll never see on TV. This will exercise your wisdom muscles. As I always say, beopen but skeptical, skeptical but open and exercsie your wisdom muscles as you watch the "forbidden topics" that the mainstream never wants you to know about.

That's wisdom!