Which one should be valued more: a person’s initiative instincts, or his tendency to control his emotions and his way of consoling those around him? Which one do people scrutinize? And which is more constructive? Both of them are attributes of our mind. They are equally crucial. They establish our identity in nature, thereby procuring an implication. For one who understands, they are the hallmark of the wise. For one who yearns for just one of them, there are restrictions. The intelligent ones cannot be wise. The kind too are not always wise. As a matter of fact, wise are the ones who are both intelligent and kind. They contain both the attributes and hence elucidate divinity. Only the knowing can sense them, regardless of the truth that they are formless. These formless features facilitate the insightful to conduct inner or mental journey besides outer or social journey.
Comparing intellectual skills with empathizing nature may not be within the realms of possibility. They are distinct and equivocal. Yet they can be held by one personality. Such personality is declared as a man of wisdom, he who perceives to make sense of the structure that constitutes the world, can concede both tangible and intangible, and is in due course liberated. The cognitive and sympathetic traits equally dominate the expanded mind of a wise individual. There is neither without either, because they simultaneously accommodate him to disengage in fulfilling his pointless desires. They help him find the divinity within as well as see the same divine in every being. Thus, is wisdom found by that person.
What is wisdom exactly? Wisdom is the property which when received makes one understand the forces that are present and are concurrently acting in nature. As such, the enlightened do not discriminate success and failure, happiness and sadness, and good and evil. They seek no materialistic fulfillment, so are always content. They do not consider anyone their adversary because they can detect the inability to grasp and the agitation of the another. To know their propensity, we find some verses in the Bhagavad Gita, the God’s counsel —
“Arjuna, fearlessness, purity of heart, steadfastness in Yoga and knowledge, alms-giving, control of the senses, sacrifice, study of scriptures, austerity and straightforwardness, harmlessness, truth, absence of anger, renunciation, peacefulness, absence of crookedness, compassion towards beings, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness, vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, absence of hatred, absence of pride — these belong to one born in a divine state.” - The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 16 — Verse 1,2,3 (reworded)
The attributes of a wise mind — knowledge and kindness are for that great role players. The hurdle that prevails is that very rare know how to develop the required perception for building up these two psychological features. They are not as if something that can be achieved just like any objective in the physical reality, which is obtained rather strategically. What we are talking about is something which is indeterminate; it is the characteristic of the mind. The path to wisdom is not discernible; we can only be aware it. So is the path to develop the characteristics. In actuality, the two paths are not at all different; they are one.
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Note: The verse used in the article was extracted from Sri Swami Sivananda’s transliteration of the Gita. Furthermore, I have paraphrased the same.