On Learning
After having studied Chinese philosophy for nearly 40 years, I’m intrigued by how different their system
of learning is. Unlike the Western paradigm, it is non-linear and indirect. Just giving someone an answer
to a question does not necessarily ensure that the person is going to really learn the answer. The best
way to learn is to figure out the answer for oneself. The teacher should be a guide to help facilitate this
process. When one figures out something for oneself, they really know it. They’ve eliminated all the
unnecessary data, like a sculptor carving away all the pieces of the stone that are not necessary, and
leaving the essence that was there all along -- the figure. But there is an even greater benefit from this
process: a great martial artist and philosopher used to say we should "invest in loss." When
we make a mistake, we should say, "thank-you, now I can learn." You can’t learn if you never know where
you have room to improve. Your ego is the biggest impediment to your learning. Of course the process
is never complete, because things are always changing in life, and so must your learning. It must adapt,
adjust, and never worry about arriving at any finite "truth." What was right for you 10 or 20 years ago may
not be right for you today. James Joyce considered errors to be "the portals of discovery." My teacher
used to urge us to keep tenaciously working on exploring problems; to keep trying all kinds of imaginative,
different approaches. Learn by trial and error.
Understanding who, what, when, where, and why tells you how.
The four stages of learning are: Believe, Analyze, Do and Prove.
If you cannot do and prove something with action, you do not know it.
He informed us that honest, relentlessly hard work and self-examination will reap rewards. "You might not
find the answer you are first looking for, but you will find a thousand other things." I believe that this is the
best way to learn. To paraphrase Elie Wiesel, "Every question possesses a power that does not lie in the
answer."
While the basketball world - at least everyone outside of Miami, kvetches about Lebron leaving
Cleveland, (or not gracing their own town with his considerable skills and considerably greater ego),
energy would be better spent looking at another basketball icon who recently passed away - coach John
Wooden from UCLA. He allegedly always carried around a piece of paper with a message from his father
that stated: "Be true to yourself. Make each day a masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good
books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day." Or you can choose to get sucked
into Lebron’s media circus, or for that matter, the idiotic world of commercials, reality TV, awards shows,
the latest electronic gadgets, and the petty interchangeable revolving door of Hollywood and Washington
gossip... I know which I prefer.
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