Table of Contents
Truth and Wisdom go hand in hand
The trajectory of our life is dependent on these two fundamental concepts. One relates to what we need to adopt while the other decides the destination to which we shall ascend. We have a material body but within that body, is our essence, and that Essence only knows one language and that is Truth.
Our material bodies create needs that decay into wants and takes us down on the path of Untruth. In reality, we have to follow the language of Truth, which is the universal choice of the soul and through that consonance, we shall attain Wisdom, which shall establish ourselves in the Absolute or what we call as Liberation or Absolute Truth.
The journey begins with ordinary Truth and then when we mature on the platform of Truth, it further takes us to wisdom. First let us analyze, what we have at hand right now.
Truth is a Rare Commodity
If we were truthful we would never have friends whom we can exploit for worldly benefits. Thus an entire life is spent in juggling facades. The Truth that lies buried under these facades, we are unaware of.
There are so many layers of personalities within us that we are incapable of pointing to our original individual selves. Our facades are created fundamentally out of the myriads of fear that haunt us continually during our entire stay on this planet.
Disadvantages of speaking lies
What we forget here is that we lose our center in the whole process, thereby introducing disturbance in our character because a spotless character is fundamentally a construct of Truth, which we might have lost trying to comply with the exaggerated societal standards. With the waning of Truth, we eventually lose our sleep and peace of mind. This has become the new normal of the current society irrespective of nation, caste, creed, race, or gender.
It is left to us whether we decide to break all these facades with the hammer of Truth and reclaim our sleep and peace or wander in the wilderness of worldly compliance by juggling relentlessly with the decks of facades that we continue to manufacture by every passing day.
Fear lies beneath the debris of Lies
Our world is a lie and we lie to ourselves all the time. We do not have one face. If we had just one face we would have known God. The world is an illusion created out of the facades that we carry on our faces. The facade is where we maintain our hollow insecurities. We have a facade for our families and we have a facade for the world so that we can manipulate and get our selfishness serviced. Our fears govern and dictate our lives, thereby each type of fear gives rise to a new face.
Hollow needs but Big Lies
Our entire life has become an exaggeration where we relentlessly juggle to comply with the ever-changing world, just driven by our instinct to remain relevant and in the news, in some way or the other.
We flaunt our emptiness through empty words and showing off petty nothings so that someone out there appreciates us. We end up creating envy because the other one hearing us out is as empty as we are and is scared lest we score a point over him. Every passing day becomes a challenge and this creates unneeded stress It is high time, we become wise and get our acts together so that we buy in some peace.
What is Wisdom?
It is important to understand the true meaning of wisdom so that it will be easy to pursue it, as an important and indispensable goal of life. This is the only worthwhile thing to do so that we are rid of our pettiness of thought, word, and action. Wise people are those who have understood how the world works and how they work within the system of life.
In this context, Wisdom cannot be separated from enlightenment or illumination. People often try to conclude about someone else’s wisdom by observing their outer conduct. We shall try to debunk the two main misconceptions about wisdom so that one is able to fully appreciate its value.
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Misconceptions About Wisdom
Vocal people are wise
We may find many people fighting for their rights and for the rights of others. They fight against organizations, corporations, governments, with other groups of people or they fight against certain concepts.
Such fights for rights may be useful to some degree, but it is important to understand the motives or narratives behind such voices otherwise one may falsely conclude such peoples’ voices as the voice of wisdom.
People with such type of wisdom may be well-informed but not necessarily well-intentioned. It is important to understand the true motives of people before we instill trust in such elements.
Wisdom never requires the support of the world and wisdom never takes unnecessary responsibility of the world for a so-called higher cause. Wisdom may guide people truly wise people are never interested in creating a following for themselves.
A man who surrounds himself with people from all walks of life driven by selfish motives cannot be thought of as a wise man. People driven by motives or narratives are trying to feed some aspect of their ego, to feel important and to be recognized by others, towards some selfish end.
Wise people, instead, try to nurture themselves in aloofness and want to be free from the heaviness of ego and self-aggrandizing motives. There may be very few exceptions to this but majorly wise people are mostly non-vocal and non-expressive. Above all people who are enriched by wisdom do not care for any recognition.
Silent people are wise
This is another great misconception. When people see that someone is silent in a group or remains silent as if dumb-struck then they may conclude that this person is very watchful and observant and hence he is a wise man. This sort of conclusion is usually a figment of un-curtailed imagination. A wise man is usually silent out of choice and not because he is incapable of being vocal. Hence it is not advisable to judge the book by its cover.
It is very difficult to judge who is wise and who is not. We may know something about the wisdom of a person only if we have interacted with this person for many years and yet wisdom may hide or reveal itself based on the need of the situation. Wisdom is the natural state of the spirit that reflects intelligence in all walks of life and hence concluding about somebody’s wisdom in the course of a couple of interactions is a foolish exercise.
How can we understand Wisdom?
Wisdom is understanding Nature
A wise man does not learn from his experiences. Instead, he is a person who has analyzed his experiences and realized the uselessness of all worldly experiences. A wise man has realized that the inner instrument of the mind is incapable of intelligence. A wise man is a man who has learned the value of humility and has realized that at no time can he claim that he has understood everything. He has realized that change is the only constant in life and that he is being manipulated by nature all the time, towards attaining one of nature’s own goals.
Wisdom is sharing knowledge
A wise man does not hold back knowledge. Whatever he has gained he shares with the ones that deserve it. For example, if a wise man learns a skill, he shall not hesitate to teach it to people who are interested in the skill. A wise man knows that sharing knowledge or skills only reinforces the skill or knowledge that he has received. A wise man also has realized that life is cyclic in nature. He has understood that what he has given shall only come back to him, to enrich him in the future.
This enrichment is the value that the wise man seeks all his life without trying to engage or expect any enjoyment for his own personal satisfaction. A wise man finds himself as an important unit of a wide integrated world and does not claim anything to be his.
Wisdom does not expect anything in return
The most striking feature of wise people is that they continuously strive to add value to whatever they are doing or to whatever they have gained. Wise people are contributors and seekers. They do not expect anything material in return.
They do not try to manipulate things, situations, or people to their advantage. They believe in transparency and the power of Truth. Wisdom and Truth require no struts to stand and hence wise people never depend on anything. Whatever they require comes to them at a time they require it most even without their asking.
Wisdom is to know that everything comes to an end
Wise people have understood the philosophy of life. They have understood the way the spirit moves as it connects them to the rest of the world. They also know the movement of Nature. If it is sunny in one part of the world, it is midnight on the other side of the world. In twelve hours’ time, the situation of the world receiving sunlight is reversed. Whatever comes will grow or decay and then disappear.
Wise people have learned from their own life experiences and from the experiences of other people, that life events and people are transient. They have observed the impermanence of worldly processes. They know that what has started shall come to an end. They also know that even the most unexpected thing in the world can start at any time. They have even understood the science behind what causes change.
Wisdom is to understand the value of others
Wise people are known to be the humblest of all beings. They have understood the immensity of creation and have seen the value of things, people and time during the span of their lives. Whatever happens in the world is a teaching. This teaching can come to us from situations and people.
We cannot put down or be condescending towards people. It is a wise thing to understand that pure consciousness flows and that it can manifest its power and intensity through any being, however lowly that being may be placed in the social order. For the wise man, the world is one single unit.
Wisdom is accessible only through Self-Knowledge
One needs to be humble to be wise as the starting step. He needs to understand the signals that nature is giving. Every indication that nature gives us is a teaching. Every event in the world is a teaching. One has to learn from the events that surround us. This is the mark of wisdom. Wise people are those who know peace and tranquillity, people who have found themselves as an expression of the Self.
The wise are the people who have known the world in its true essence, and who have realized it. Unless one has self-knowledge, one can never know the true nature of the world. A truly wise being does not worry about the world or worldly affairs. He is constantly in touch with himself and ever prepared to leave the world if providence wills so, in the wink of an eye. This is true wisdom.
The Wise man is reserved
The man of wisdom never speaks unless consulted and never cares to share his wisdom with the illusory world because the world does not care for his golden words. A wise man only shares his thoughts with people who care to know the Truth, the Self. The rest of the world is not ready to understand the words of the truly wise.
How can we develop True Wisdom?
Happiness in our life shall only become a reality if we work beyond our mind, under the supervision of an enlightened being. Working beyond our mind necessarily means studying the mind with an unbiased view through attention and awareness. We need to first accept ourselves as we are, without trying to defend ourselves from the world, from what the world calls us or what it thinks about us. This is a necessary step towards developing true wisdom.
Follow a Vedic System
Undertaking a Vedic lifestyle is a vital step. Although it does not necessarily mean that we should adopt a lifestyle of the first century, it really means that we need to be able to understand and analyze our shortcomings in the brilliant light of Vedic knowledge. We need to associate with the wise men, who radiate light and who are renunciants by their very nature irrespective of what they possess and what they don’t.
We have to become lovers of Truth and continuously sharpen our intelligence by the practice of Dharma, the eternal Vedic law mentioned in great scriptures like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. All the solutions of our life are essentially embedded in these great scriptures. The more we practice Vedic law, wisdom shall eventually dawn upon us with all its pristine glory. There is no doubt about this.
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