Renunciation and Wisdom

A certain type of renunciation is actually the expression of great wisdom.
The recognition that the fight against certain forces in opposition to certain hoped-for developments is more harmful to body and soul than the abandonment of the current stages of realization.

It is interesting to note that in traditions from India, a wise man is also called a renounce.
He can be perceived as a being who understood that the movements at work when he tried to access a certain recognition with regard to society or himself, as well as the consequences of these movements are more harmful than pure and simple renunciation of what causes and maintains their expression.

Renunciation, apart from a few experienced practitioners or those surrounded by grace, is never really “pure and simple”. It is itself the result of negotiation with society, compromise with the restricted social group and accommodation with oneself. It is the culmination of a search for balance between what is possible and what is desirable.

So much for the purity of renunciation.
As for simplicity, dis-attachment to this or that outcome (renunciation) even if it is a true path of simplicity is not in the strict, practical sense, a simple decision. It requires a certain degree of familiarity with oneself, a plasticity in the relationship with oneself.

Here is the surface of overlap between renunciation and wisdom: renunciation is the manifestation of a knowledge according to which it is possible to exist outside of the mechanisms of identification: for some people, renunciation is a goal to which they were strongly identified (with regard to their value system or the structures of their personal scaffolding).

(These are often the ones who cause the greatest surprise among those around them when the monolithic blocks of their identifications shatter. Renunciation, the path of renunciation can be the emergence of an endogenous process as the result of the collision between an exogenous manifestation and our personality block (what we call “la vie” in “c’est la vie ”.)

Franck – September 2023
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