Knowing Isn’t Wisdom
Knowing is information sitting in your subconscious that your intellect can repeat at a party, while wisdom is the timely application of knowledge, taking what you know and using it at the moment it can change something.
Dandapani draws the line between knowledge and wisdom using his guru's definition, wisdom as the timely application of knowledge, and shows it with someone yelling at him and his choice to bring his awareness back rather than let it go to the angry area of the mind. He explains why that ability only comes from repetition, and why he has practised the same single meditation for almost thirty years while people keep asking him for a different one.
What this talk covers
- Using a pathway in the brain strengthens it and neglecting it lets it dissipate, which is why monastic life is built entirely of rituals, so much so that you can tell the time of day from what a monk is doing.
- Knowing is information absorbed by listening or reading and stored in the subconscious, which he calls your hard drive, and then processed by the intellect and repeated to whoever you are trying to entertain.
- His guru defined wisdom as the timely application of knowledge: taking what you learned and applying it at the right moment so that it actually creates a change in your life.
- Repeating what you heard about awareness and the mind at a party is useless knowledge; catching yourself when someone yells at you, noticing your awareness being pulled to the angry area of the mind, and bringing it back is wisdom.
- That does not happen automatically, so it takes repetition, which is why he has done the one meditation his guru taught him almost three decades ago without changing it, while people ask for a faster one, a stress one, a Zen one, the way a piano student would ask for Beethoven before the scales.
My guru defined wisdom as the timely application of knowledge.Dandapani
Questions
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Knowledge is information absorbed and stored in the subconscious, which your intellect can then repeat back. Wisdom, in his guru's definition, is the timely application of knowledge, using what you know at the right moment so it changes something in your life.
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He has practised one meditation, taught by his guru almost thirty years ago, without changing it. He notes that meditation apps offer a buffet to pick from, whereas the older relationship between student and teacher had the teacher decide, starting with the fundamentals.
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Because applying knowledge in the moment does not happen automatically unless you are good at it, and you cannot become good at it by practising once. It takes repeating the same thing over and over, which most people dislike.
Transcript
817 words · 4:32
in studies will show that you will create new pathways in the brain and the more you use them the stronger they become. And when you stop using them they start to dissipate. So I mean this has all been proven now and these are old teachings but these have all been proven now through physiology.
Right, and that's why in monk school it's all about rituals. It's all about rituals. From the day we, moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep it's ritual and you can tell in a very traditional monastery like the one I went to, from what the monk is doing, what time of the day it is.
You had mentioned earlier, just because someone learns something doesn't mean they're wise to it. What is the difference between knowing like knowledge, knowing information and wisdom?
I would say knowing is taking information, absorbing information either through listening to it or reading about it, having it registered in the subconscious. And then when it sits in the subconscious, it's sitting there with other information.
The subconscious is basically a storehouse of information. It's your hard drive. And then your intellect then processes all that knowing that information and then spits it out in different ways depending on who you're trying to entertain at the party.
That's knowing. Wisdom is knowledge coming in and then that knowledge being applied in a timely way. And my guru defined wisdom as the timely application of knowledge. Right?
So how do I take that knowledge, apply it at the right time so that it actually creates a change in my life? It's very different than learning about awareness in the mind, going to a party and go, by the way, we had an interesting guest today on our show.
He's a Hindu priest and he talked about awareness in the mind. Very fascinating. That's useless. knowledge, right? Wisdom is going like, I got to get my car, somebody yells at me,
my awareness gets pulled to the angrier of the mind and I go, oh, I learned this earlier today, I can bring my awareness back, I am not going to go to the angrier of the mind and take that knowledge and apply it right now. That person is taking my awareness to an angrier of the mind, I'm bringing it back here and say, you know, he's trying to make
me angry, I'm not going to go there. That's the timely application of knowledge and that what wisdom is. And that's why you need to practice it because it won't happen automatically unless you are good at it. Yes, and you can't practice it once, right? Can I go do what you guys are teaching just once? No, it's mindless repetition over and over and over again and people don't like
repeating the same things. One of the things I do teach is meditation. You know what is the most common question I get asked? So do you have a different meditation? Do you have a different one? Yeah, so like a faster one, right? Like a faster one.
Do you have one for stress? Do you have one for like, you know, I can meditate with my cat? Do you have like a Zen meditation?
I have one, I've been doing one meditation. My guru taught me one meditation almost three decades ago. I've been doing the same meditation. Haven't changed it one tiny bit.
The same thing for almost 30 years. And people come up to me and go like, you got a different one? I'm like, yeah, sure.
Because that's what people teach, right? I mean, like you go on Headspace, you have like a buffet of meditation to pick from. And I think the old traditional way of learning and training
between like a student and teacher is completely lost. You know, nowadays we cater for what the student wants. The student goes, wakes up one morning, go like, I'm kind of stressed,
got a lot of things going on at work. I think I should learn meditation. Go online, look at a couple of apps. Headspace has got so much, Calms got so much, I'll just download it, start meditating.
In the old way, no, you go see the teacher. The teacher goes, I'll tell you what to do. Like if I want to learn the piano, do I go up to a piano teacher and say, teach me Beethoven? No, you're going to learn the scales, you're going to learn how to sit down, maybe stretch
your fingers, your body posture, the piano, how you hold your hands, your arms. The fundamentals. The fundamentals, right? And that could go on for weeks, for months, for years before you start learning something.
And nowadays, no, you can stop meditating as quickly as you can download the app.