The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
25 December 2023
“Intelligence vs wisdom.”
- - -
Question (M): Some people have a very good intelligence. They are clever in their study but they might not have wisdom. What are the kamma that causes people to have good intelligence but not the wisdom?
Than Ajahn: It depends on what they learn. If they study about worldly things, then they will become intelligent. But if they want to have the wisdom, then they have to study the teachings of the Buddha. These two kinds of knowledge are different.
The knowledge that most people study will make them intelligent. They know how to make money but they don’t know how to make themselves not to be sad.
They don’t know how to prevent sadness or suffering.
When you study the teachings of the Buddha, you’ll learn about how to make yourself happy. You’ll learn on how to get rid of your sadness. These are the two different distinct types of knowledge.
Most people are intelligent but not wise because they don’t study the teachings of the Buddha. But if they study the teachings of the Buddha, even when they don’t study the worldly knowledge, they will become wise. We have teachers who are wise, but not intelligent, and so they cannot teach Dhamma because they cannot bring the Dhamma which is inside them, outside.
A person needs intelligence to bring the Dhamma that he has inside him to express it out to others. He needs to give examples and comparisons in telling the Dhamma and he needs intelligence to do this. If a person is wise but he is not intelligent, he then is not capable of bringing out the wisdom he has.
Hence, that’s why there are teachers who are well-known, and there are teachers who are not well-known.
Those who are not well-known usually don’t say or teach much. They may only say Dhamma in general like ‘Do dāna; keep the sīla; and practice bhāvanā.’
They don’t know how to explain those in details.
Therefore, people cannot learn much from them.
People usually will go to teachers who can expound or explain all the different points of the Dhamma. Teachers who can do that are usually well-known. Like Luangta Mahā Boowa, he was very fluent in giving Dhamma talks. People who listen to his Dhamma talks can apply the Dhamma in their practice, and can achieve the results from the practice.
This is the difference between having wisdom and having intelligence.
In order to be able to propagate the Dhamma, one has to have both. If he only has wisdom but doesn’t have the intelligence, he will not know how to bring those wisdom out for others to understand them because he has to give a lot of examples to expound the teachings.
The Buddha, every time he taught the Dhamma, would gave examples so that people could see the pictures. Dhamma is like a theory. In order to make the teachings practical, one has to explain the theory using examples.
Youtube: “Dhamma in English, Dec 9, 2018.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube:
No comments:
Post a Comment