al-Raghib al-Isfahani #64 – For Those In Pursuit of Wisdom

So when it comes to knowledge, we know that knowledge is is one thing and wisdom is another. And there's lots of definitions of what's the difference between those two things? What exactly wisdom is that is for Hani, he says that wisdom is good knowledge plus righteous action, because there's good knowledge and there's bad knowledge, right? There's certain things that are actually harmful for you to know, believe it or not. And then obviously, all action is not good. There's good action and bad action. So wisdom is good knowledge plus righteous action. This is what wisdom is. And he says that there's two main ways to gain wisdom. You want to be a wise guy, you want to be a wise

person, how do you how do you do it? One way, is that it's given a given by Allah subhanaw taala. And that's obviously in the hands of Allah azza wa jal, and there's nothing we can really do about it. Sometimes Allah was found to Allah, he just naturally makes some people wise, we say wise beyond your years. But there are other ways to obtain wisdom that are more immediately in our control, even though obviously, everything comes from a loss of data. So it was for HANA. He details a few one of them, he says, is to develop your understanding, okay, it's certainly true that not everybody who develops their understanding becomes wise. But on the other hand, it is certainly true that

everybody who is wise has developed their understanding, and that comes to their understanding of how the world works, who Allah is found to audit is and how this creation works, when we're able to go through the Koran, and we see these sort of paradigms and examples that he gives parables, and then you walk around and you're able to apply it to things around you. That's That's wisdom. Right? So being able to develop your understanding of that and how things work. The second one that he says, The second way to obtain wisdom is to succeed in your action. And he's not talking about, you know, just monetary goals, like you hit your quota for the term or for the year, whatever, you know,

he's talking about success in action when it comes to the success of having your basic righteous action as a Muslim, okay, if you have knowledge, and you have understanding, but you don't put it to use, right, and we see this with Islamic Studies, right? In Western academia, we see people who know Arabic, they trouble themselves to learn Arabic, they even trouble themselves to learn some Koran and they're not a Muslim. They don't pray, right. They don't worship Allah Subhana. Allah, they haven't seen the singled him out for worship and devotion. So what is their knowledge benefit them? Okay, this is enormous. So to be given that success, that tail fee is the word that he's using to be

given that trophy, the success of action, that action is something that's flowing from your knowledge, this is something that's essential to obtaining wisdom. The third thing, and it's a super practical one is find teachers, you have to find the teachers, you can't go it alone. And books are a start. And books are just simply dead teachers. But living teachers are perhaps more important, because you have an added back and forth element to it, you have accountability, okay, your books can't tell you and you're wrong. Your books can't tell you when you've read something incorrectly, or understood something incorrectly, or you're a hypocrite because you're not applying it in your

life. But if you have a living teacher, then they can hold you accountable and give you something to aspire to. The fourth way is to be independent. That's very counterintuitive, but what also he is trying to draw our attention to is if people have a conflict of interest, then they can become blind to things because of their conflict of interest. So if I'm getting paid by somebody, you know, I depend on that person for my income, or I depend upon a certain thing, then I will probably be less likely to see the defects are the things that need to be criticized or improved about that thing, or that person. And it's not all super intentional. This is the tricky thing with human beings is that

we delude ourselves. Right. And that detracts from our wisdom. Look at all of the other men that have supported oppression, right? Is every single one of them just fully 100% consciously doing that sell out in the pure sense of the word? No, some people are deluded. Some people actually think that that's the right thing. And if you're in the pay of somebody, right, it can be easy to kind of overlook those things and put yourself in a situation where you're going to do something very, very unwise. And the last thing that are all of us funny says take care of your health. So if you want to obtain wisdom, you should take care of your health because having health and good health when it's

possible, is something that contributes to all of the things that we've talked about already. So being able to go out and learn and develop your understanding, you know, being quick to act on what you know, going out and finding teachers being independent. These things are much more possible when you are in good health. When you're in bad health, you have bills to pay, you've got medical expenses, you can become desperate or you can become preoccupied with something else and it can be a barrier to obtaining wisdom