Through courses in World Wisdom Studies, you will investigate the relationship between your direct experience and ancient teachings, exploring first-hand their relevance to contemporary life. Faculty who teach courses in World Wisdom Studies are practitioners of the traditions they teach. The common aim of courses in this area is to explore the unity and diversity of human experience and to evoke the intersection between intellect and intuition. The wisdom traditions of the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms are an integral part of the canon of the Western Bible religions. The Tao Te Ching and the Upanishads are an integral part of the Eastern religions.
Indigenous peoples value their elder wisdom traditions and their oral transmissions.
The reality maps that weave our cosmologies are constantly updated by world events and the shifting spirit of an age, the shared mind-field, the Zeitgeist. Through becoming acquainted with the texts and the myths of the wisdom traditions, our students prepare their minds for the love of wisdom, philo-sophia. If we pass a strainer through the world's religions to lift out their conclusions about reality and how life should be lived, those conclusions begin to look like the winnowed wisdom of the human race. Some courses address questions of power, disempowerment, and the human longing for liberation. Others focus on the relationship between individual literary or historical texts and cultural patterns that affect us both directly and indirectly.