3 Levels of Wisdom in Buddhism
“Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.” -Inazo Nitobé
The Buddhist tradition recognizes three different levels of wisdom:
Received wisdom, intellectual wisdom, and experiential wisdom.
Received wisdom is acquired through reading texts or listening to a teacher and understanding the knowledge that you’ve received well enough to remember it.
Intellectual wisdom requires us to be more active and to engage in the intellectual process so that we may come to a clear understanding of why an idea that we read or heard makes sense. It also involves critically evaluating the idea and even challenging it.
In the best-case scenario, most of our formal education stops at intellectual wisdom. However, I would say that this best-case scenario has become extremely rare in most educational systems around the world. Encouraging, or even just allowing, students to think critically and challenge ideas that they are being taught is today the mark of a rebellious teacher, while it was once a prerequisite for being a teacher.
However, the purpose of this text is not to lament the failings of our school systems.
Even when we receive intellectual wisdom from an institution or a single teacher, we should not stop there.
If we are to continue developing as humans, we must get out of the classroom or our study room and into the real world. We must, through real-life experiences, put our intellectual wisdom into practice and turn it into experiential wisdom that will have a real effect on our life and the lives of people around us.
I don’t consider myself a teacher, but it is a fact that quite a large number of people are reading my online writing on a daily basis. A fact that, whenever I remember it, which is daily, leaves me in a state of confusion followed by immense gratitude. Because of this, I feel it’s worth looking at my writing through the lens of these three levels of wisdom. A lens that I suggest you apply to everything that you are consuming for something more than entertainment.
If I can impart some received wisdom that you will find interesting and valuable enough to remember, I am already honored. But I encourage you to go a step further and critically evaluate what I am saying and challenge it if your perspective is different.
However, I hope we don’t stop at those healthy and intellectually stimulating online discussions. There would be no greater honor for me than if you took what I’ve shared with you and used it in a way in which it relates to your own life.
It is by putting our knowledge to real-world use, by embodying our philosophy rather than just talking about it, that we honor our teachers, change our own lives for the better, and prepare a better future for those that will come after us. To avoid confusion, in this context I am not a teacher that you should honor. I am rather a fellow student who is inviting you to join him.
I am inviting you to go out and engage in the real world, to use and test your knowledge. I am inviting you not to become the type of modern individual that Nietzsche criticized, with a mind full of things "he has learned but which have no outward effect," full of "instruction which does not become life."
Will you join me?
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