Wisdom Library

As outlined in our approach, Uplift integrates the best of modern science and ancient wisdom to help you nurture your children’s natural spirituality. Whether it’s leading research about child rearing or timeless insights from the world’s wisdom traditions (including Buddhism, Stoicism, Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Sufism, and many others), we embrace it.

As the scholar Philip Novak writes, “These great wisdom traditions remain our most resourceful guides to the Infinite.”

Lisa Miller, professor of psychology at Columbia University, builds on this concept. “Symbolism connects mind and heart,” she writes. “The symbolism of ritual and story allows the child to hold and understand her intuitive knowing, her heart knowing. Whether in nature-based myths like those from Native American or original Hawaiian cultures, biblical stories, or superhero characters, symbolism develops through a cognitive process in which we invest an image or an idea with meaning.”

Religious historian Karen Armstrong echoes these same ideas, writing, “The stories of gods or heroes descending into the underworld, threading through labyrinths and fight with monsters, brought to light the mysterious workings of the psyche, showing people how to cope with their own interior crises.”

Put simply, reading ancient wisdom can help us connect to the deepest parts of ourselves and, as Philip Novak puts it, the Infinite. The kingdom of God within, the still small voice, the Atman, the Tao: Different metaphors, each with their distinct flavor and perspective, for a mystery that can’t be fully captured in words. “Darkness within darkness,” one translation of the Tao Te Ching reads. “The gate to all mystery.”

These texts still matter —  or at least the most generous and compassionate passages do. 

Click a specific tradition below to view our growing library of wisdom texts, ordered roughly by number of adherents per tradition. Note that we’ll eventually make specific sections for teens, kids, and littles. (Currently, much of what’s here is for older kids and teens.)

• Christianity
• Islam
• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• Taoism
• Judaism
• Greek and Roman wisdom
• Indigenous wisdom
• American wisdom
• European wisdom (forthcoming)