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A master class from four renowned Harvard professors—an anthropologist, a physician, a theologian, and a historian—on discovering wisdom in challenging times. - Harvard University Press

The Practice of Wisdom brings together Davíd Carrasco, Arthur Kleinman, Stephanie Paulsell, and Michael J. Puett—an anthropologist, a physician, a theologian, and a historian—drawing on their teaching, scholarship, and personal experiences to explore wisdom not as an abstract ideal or fixed destination, but as an ongoing practice cultivated through care for others, solitude, ritual, art, and reflection.

Across five interconnected quests, the authors draw upon religious traditions, philosophy, literature, visual art, music, ritual, and personal experience to consider how individuals and communities confront illness, loss, upheaval, moral difficulty, and moments of revelation. Their reflections move from Aztec philosophy, Confucian ritual, Christian art, Islamic pilgrimage, and Hindu traditions to poetry, painting, music, film, and the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, engaging figures including William James, Howard Thurman, Toni Morrison, John Phillip Santos, and Paul Farmer.

Threaded throughout the book is the image of the labyrinth—a metaphor for lives shaped by unexpected turns, adversity, loss, discovery, and renewal. The volume concludes with a conversation with distinguished scholar of religion Wendy Doniger, whose reflections illuminate wisdom as an enduring—and necessarily unfinished—practice of seeking meaning, balance, and purpose.