Living a good life is harder than it sounds in a world that is loud and fixated on outer rewards. Religions, philosophers, poets and writers have searched for answers for centuries, and the wisdom that lasts tends to be surprisingly simple.
Lately I have been returning to Pirkei Avot, an ancient Jewish text usually translated as Ethics of the Fathers. It belongs to the Mishnah, a collection of rabbinic teachings compiled almost two thousand years ago.
What draws me to it is less its religious context than its view of what it means to grow into a human being and live one’s full potential. It sidesteps doctrine about what to believe and asks instead:
What kind of person are you becoming?
Much of this wisdom can be reduced to five movements:
- Never stop learning.
- Keep examining yourself.
- Master your impulses.
- Serve others.
- Take action.
Taken together, these five steps describe a way of living.
Learn
One of the most beautiful teachings in Pirkei Avot says:
“Who is wise? One who learns from every person.”
I love that sentence because it comes from humility and from the realization that every relationship and encounter shapes us. Wisdom begins with admitting that we don’t know everything.
We can learn from people younger and older than us, from those who agree with us and those who challenge us. From our successes, and even more from our failures. From nature, from suffering, from relationships that didn’t work out, and especially from the moments when life didn’t go as planned.
But learning is only the first step. It leads to the second movement.
Examine yourself
Knowledge becomes wisdom only when it turns inward. You may be very good at analyzing the world around you, whether political institutions, people’s behaviour, mistakes or beliefs, but ancient wisdom asks us to turn the same attention inward.
Why did I react like that?
What is driving me?
Where am I still acting from fear?
What am I trying to prove?
Where has my ego taken over?
Self-examination is awareness, not self-criticism. There is a difference between saying “I am a bad person because I reacted badly” and asking “What happened inside me that produced that reaction?”
As you begin to see yourself more clearly, you meet the third movement.
Master your impulses
Perhaps the most striking idea in Pirkei Avot is its redefinition of strength. We usually associate strength with power: the person who controls circumstances, controls others, wins arguments, gets what they want.
The rabbis offer a very different definition:
“Who is strong? One who conquers their impulse.”
It is the ability to pause before speaking, to resist hitting back, to notice anger without acting on it, to recognise desire without obeying it. You can say: I feel this, but I don’t have to become this.
Here the ancient teaching about silence becomes relevant. Silence creates a space between impulse and action.
And in that space you discover something precious:
choice.
Serve others
Yet making spirituality entirely about ourselves is dangerous. Self-awareness can turn into another form of self-absorption. You might spend years examining your thoughts, emotions, wounds and spiritual development and still be concerned only with yourself.
Pirkei Avot keeps bringing us back to other people.
How do we treat them? Do we honour them? Do we listen? Do we bring peace or conflict? Do our words heal or wound?
Do we keep whatever wisdom we have for ourselves, or does it become a gift to others?
A teaching attributed to the school of Hillel says:
“Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer.”
Peace is something we practise, not just admire. Compassion becomes real only when it enters our relationships and shapes how we treat other people.
Act now
Then comes the final movement.
Act.
A famous teaching asks:
“If not now, when?”
It is a simple question, and an unsettling one. So often we say: I can do that later. I will forgive later. I will make that journey sometime soon. I will tell them later how much they mean to me.
Or: I will start living the life I really want when circumstances improve.
But later is not guaranteed. There is only this moment, in which life is actually happening.
Another teaching balances the urge to control outcomes:
“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it.”
That is liberating. You don’t have to complete everything. You can’t solve all the world’s problems, but you can take the next step and do what is yours to do now.
From belief to becoming
Pirkei Avot emerged from a very particular religious and historical world, yet its deepest questions reach beyond it. They are human questions.
How do I become wiser? How do I keep my ego in check? How do I become more compassionate? How do I take responsibility? How can I live more mindfully?
They bring me back to something I have explored for a long time: the difference between believing something and living it. You can believe in compassion without being compassionate. You can believe in forgiveness while clinging to resentment. You can believe in peace while constantly engaging in conflict. You can believe in love while letting fear govern your relationships. You can accumulate spiritual knowledge without changing at all.
That is one of the greatest challenges of any spiritual path.
Knowledge has to become experience, and practice over time becomes character.
This is how I would sum up the essence of Pirkei Avot:
Wisdom is not what you know.
Wisdom is what you become through what you know.
We will never be perfect; we are imperfect human beings. But if we stay open to learning, keep looking within, and carry what we have learned into other people’s lives through concrete action, we come close to what it means in Living to BE
Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast
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