M6:3902 — ای خرد کو پند شکرخای تو / دور تست این دم چه شد هیهای تو

Translation: O Intellect, where is your sugar-sweet counsel? Now is your turn, what has become of your clamor (of wisdom)? Meaning: Maulana addresses the intellect, questioning why it doesn't apply its own sweet wisdom to itself. He asserts that an intellect which guides others must first guide its own bearer.

This verse is one of those pointed, admonishing pronouncements that Maulana addresses to scholars without practice, and, in his own words, to “unaffected preachers.” Yet, beyond this surface, the true address is to khirad (intellect); not an external intellect that advises others, but the intellect within us that ought to be our own guide. I believe Maulana is here turning to his very self, just as he addresses himself in the preceding and succeeding verses of this section, saying, “Our turn has come, why have we become so reckless?”

He calls out to “intellect” and asks, “O Intellect, where is your sugar-sweet counsel?” Pand-e shakar-khāy (sugar-sweet counsel) means advice that is palatable and delightful, a counsel that sweetens the soul like sugar. Is it not the intellect’s duty to devise solutions and offer sweet remedies for life’s bitterness? This intellect provides countless pleasing solutions and remedies for others.

But then he continues: “Now is your turn, what has become of your clamor (of wisdom)?” Now it is the turn of the intellect and its possessor. īn dam (this moment) means precisely this instant, this present state. When it becomes your turn, what has become of “your hayhā”? Hayhā is a cry, a shout to call and warn, a cry of invitation to action, a shout of intellectual fervor and wisdom. For others, the intellect shows the way with clamor and fervor, it cries out for solutions, but when it comes to itself, it seems to fall silent, as if that fervor and clamor subside.

This rebuke is directed at one who is a physician to others but does not heal their own ailment. One who guides all others but has lost their own way. Maulana clearly echoes the Quranic theme, “Great is hatred in the sight of God that you say what you do not do.” This is not merely a moral transgression, but an existential flaw. This inaction upon knowledge darkens the heart and leads to hypocrisy. An intellect that does not admonish itself loses its sugar-sweet counsel and its hayhā, becoming, in Sa'di's words, “a barren branch if you do not act upon knowledge.” It is here that Maulana asks the intellect to bring itself to joy, to seize its own turn, and to “don a great cloak” from the fabric it has woven with intelligence over fifty years; that is, to tailor and wear a garment of action from its intellectual constructs so that its fruit may become manifest. This address is to all of us, that we may put our intellect in service of our own selves, not merely in admonishing others.

Key takeaways

• An intellect that counsels others must first be its own guide.
• Inaction upon knowledge is an existential flaw that darkens the heart and leads to hypocrisy.
• Maulana rebukes ineffective preachers, urging the intellect to devise solutions for itself.
• Intellect's counsel should be 'sugar-sweet' and palatable, its call to action filled with fervent 'clamor'.
• The true benefit of knowledge is revealed when its fruit is seen in the individual's own practice and conduct.