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The teaching of ethical conduct or integrity is the second of the three limbs of the Eightfold Path. Sila (ethics) includes wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood that do no harm. The practice is twofold: to resolve to do no harm and to do only that which is wholesome and skillful. The Buddha said that skillful actions have freedom from remorse as their purpose. They are a conscious choice to refrain from behavior that causes fear, confusion and suffering. There are increasing levels of subtlety in them.

Wise Understanding is the first aspect of the Wisdom limb of the Noble Eightfold Path. Albert Einstein said “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is really a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature and its beauty.”

Wise Intention is one of two limbs of Wisdom in the Eightfold Path. Every mind moment involves an intention. Each decision and every action is born of intention. Each movement, word and thought is preceded by a volitional impulse, frequently unnoticed. Yet just as drops of water will eventually fill a bucket, so the accumulation of all our choices shapes our life.

From a young age, Jan Willis was driven by a visceral interest to understand how people survive trauma with their humanity intact. This interest was perhaps spawned by growing up in the Jim Crow South in proximity to and in fear of the Ku Klux Klan; marching daily with Martin Luther King Jr. in the spring of 1963, when she was in 10th grade and he brought the civil rights campaign to Birmingham (and where she learned to practice non-violence as a pre-requisite to marching); and witnessing a cross-burning on her front lawn two years later in response to her receiving scholarships to northern colleges.