Commonsense: The Pursuit of Wisdom

Status update on Facebook account of Imam Al-Ghazali on January 02, 2014

We are humble enough to change as we read and learn where truth lies, and what truth is. We are not the people who delegate their thinking to those before them by just saying so we inherited from our fathers. While we recognize and cherish the value of our inheritance, we equally recognize and assess the fallibility of our inheritance. That is why we read. That is why we keep an open heart, open mind, open eyes, and open ears. We know until our heart is open to change, open to truth, open to know the uncomfortable truth, the inconvenient truth, we cannot claim to pursue truth. We are the pursuers of wisdom, wherever it is and from whoever possesses it.

We know from deep down that there is only one source of all truth. We know this from the similarity of all things we see and all those we do not see. However, we also know such a source of all truth is too vast for our regular comprehension. For a truth to remain truth, it must stay true in dark and in light. Since darkness, a complete darkness, and the bright lights are polar opposites of the light spectrum, a regular comprehension would dictate nothing can stay the same. On the contrary we know, for example, that they are both important for the physical development of human beings – from zygote and foetus (under the dark cloud of womb) to newborn and adult human being (under the daylight sun). We know light is a manifestation of both a source of life as well as a destruction of life. We know we depend on light not only for sight both also for our physical health. We also know that the same light we need to assist our vision destroys our vision through time.

Take the example of day and night, another spectrum in the temporal facade of the universe which also relate to the issue of light. As we enjoy the beauty of the flowers under the daylight sun, we are awed with the majestic celestial display of stars under the dark shroud of the night. Their common denominator is beauty. There is a truth in that beauty. While the day affords us the ability to navigate the land with its torch, the night affords us to navigate the same land with its pointing stars. The sun that shines its rays on the land for us to see and the stars that point us directions are both in the sky – another beauty, another truth. To walk down the earth, you always depend on a higher truth – shining down its glory and grace on you and I, feeble creatures that we are.

Another example of these spectrums is the issue of virtue and vice. How can truth remain the same under virtuous and vicious conditions? Being one, each should have a room for superimposition. In other words, there is a virtue in vice; there is a vice in virtue. Lets take one at a time. In the former, there is a virtue you cannot achieve without the presence of vice. Take the example of tolerance and patience. Unless there is a situation influenced by somebody or the natural order that causes harm to you, you cannot achieve such a virtue. It is a virtue you can only achieve in the presence of evil or vicious circumstances. Hence, you can call it a higher order virtue. In the latter, there is a vice you can only commit in the presence of a virtuous relationship. Ostentation is one of them. You can’t commit ostentation without first committing acts of virtue, however small in number or value. Hence, you can see how it erases virtuous situation you have painstakingly built. The two are weaved to the thread of truth in a way that allows those who strive to achieve virtue in all circumstances to realize their aspiration while those who fix their mentality on vice always find their crooked pathways. In essence, while we are able to commit vice, we are naturally virtuous. That’s why love is more powerful than hate all the time. That’s why the surest way to defeat your enemy is not to kill or indoctrinate them, but to earn their respect and love (after all, you were not meant to be enemies).

The other illustrious example of presence of truth is the distance of relationships of human beings in social settings. Family, as many believe, is a social setting which is not natural. Unlike the laws of gravity, we tend to mold our familial settings to our understanding of how humanity should fare in the turbulent life of this universe. Such dichotomy affords it a potential for incongruity. Nevertheless, the opposite holds true. Family members are the closest to each other, unless tormented by abuses. In the human society, strangers are the the furthest to each other, unless tethered to each other by acts of compassion. However, the spouses that build a family once were strangers, call them familiar strangers or familial strangers, who tied a knot of love, compassion, respect and solidarity together. It is so powerful a knot that it brings them from the furthest to the closest of strangers. Your parents are nothing more than strangers in love with each other. You are, or will someday be, another pair of strangers in love. Yet, in that strange setting, offsprings come off that wear the body of two strangers and a lineage of other strangers before them – thus, giving a form to the strange love which came so close. It is another manifestation of truth of our closeness and distance to one another: strangers in the families and families of strangers.

This leads us to the conclusion that truth is immutable. In both dark and light, in days and nights, in far and close, and in familiarity and strangeness. It is one. It is endless. It is abundant. It is everywhere. No mortal has the full control over it. The best of them shows the way and points at the bumps along the way. They know the essence of the pursuit is not to capture or conquer the truth; rather, it is to understand and live by. It is the surrender that frees you. A surrender to the One God, Allah. Like Prophet Ibrahim, PBUH, lets surrender to that truth that won’t let you down even as you are unchained from each shackle that blinds you from the glory and grace of the source of all truth. Like Prophet Musa, PBUH, lets surrender to that truth that can transform your aide, like his stick, to a serpent; and we know snakes could be deadly to those in their vicinity unawares. As much as it could frighten him, it at the same time remained an aide to his mission, like his stick, in reaching out to the magicians – the same truth that allowed the humble stick opening a way through the vast Red Sea as he, PBUH, and his followers were encroached. And like Muhammed, PBUH, urged us, lets pursue our lost treasure of wisdom.