Learning to Love Learning
Those of you who have been around this practice for a while have heard me go on about “learning to love learning.” I’ve threatened to write a book on the subject, asked that others write the book, extolled the virtues and benefits of the process of learning to love learning to anyone who will listen, and continued to explore the subject for myself. And, I’ve seen a lot.
However, I had no idea how much more there was to the issue before spending the last seven months on my own in a new area with a new climate. After close to 40 years in a couple of closely associated locations a great deal becomes “known,” and, I’ve discovered, even more becomes assumed.
Yes, change is grand—from this perspective anyway. Much easier to be present when everything is different on a daily basis. Not knowing where things are, who people are, how things are done, what others with more experience know and assume requires some serious heads-up-ready-to-pivot thisherenow attention. Which, without further scrutiny, can seem like plenty to bring to the party. Except that our old awareness practice growth partner, egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, is right with us, a beat or two behind, bag of tricks in hand.
Yes, absolutely I’m getting to see new things, learn new things, but what can take a bit to catch on to is that the “filing system” doesn’t change! Another way of saying that is the content changes but the process does not.
Talking earlier with an old-time practitioner about the “internal reflection” technique that was discussed on Open Air last evening, hearing the practitioner be inspired because it seemed like a possibility for getting past the I’ve-heard-all-this-a-hundred-thousand-times-and-I-can’t-stand-to-listen-to-it-again place that happens in practice. “Yes, I know the Suzuki Roshi quote about the spirit of repetition and how difficult practice becomes if we lose that spirit. YES, I’ve heard that a hundred thousand times too! I hear it and hear it and hear it and nothing changes! I still get identified with ego, still get stuck, am still the same, still not how I want to be, still getting the beatings.”
Which brings us to the wonderful clarity that comes with learning to love the process of learning to love learning: There’s nothing to learn and learning is not something we want to do.
A quick look at the definition of learn will tell us why. To learn is “to gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught.”
In other words, learning increases our ability to, our rationalization for, our belief in the efficacy of, our feeling of justification in not being present. (No, of course, it’s never presented that way, but that’s what it comes down to.)
“I know,” “I’ve done that,” “I’ve experienced that,” “I’ve studied that,” “I’m something of an expert in,” ”I’ve seen that,” “I’ve heard that (about a hundred thousand times!),” summed up in the “been there, done that” cliché, all contribute to a firm foundation for tuning out and turning to a conversation in conditioned mind about this or that or something completely extraneous.
The “about” is our big clue. “Conversation” is quite simple when we’re present. “Hmm… oh… uh huh” and such. When we’re not present, not here for what is now, the conversation is complex, detailed, repetitive, and long. The ego voices always have plenty to say, all aimed at keeping attention from sliding into thisherenow.
This brings us to another familiar saying in practice: No reason to be bored. People have asked me often over the years how I can stand to say the same things over and over and over. It always surprises me. In my world, that never happens. They’re all brand new insights. (It seems I had been talking about recording and listening for a good ten years before someone broke the news to me that it was not new information.) When we’re HERE life is always fresh, vibrant, bright, new. As soon as we “know something,” we’re in the dualistic ego world of comparison.
Now, in case anyone has suspicions that this different flavor of blog, following a missing blog last week, is hinting at something new, possibly some big change, you can call that suspicion intuition and trust it. Big new, big change on the horizon, so please stay tuned.
In gasshō,
ch