Thoughts on the learning

I am not a perfect student.  I sometimes choose to watch a movie or screw around on the computer instead of doing something to advance my medical knowledge or my personal cultivation.  I want to say that first so I can’t be accused of having unreasonably high standards.  I do understand that folks have things other than school-related activity to do.  I understand that a full life requires one to make time for family, friends, exercise, relaxation, work, personal development, etc…  I understand, further, that American culture has peculiarities that make the focused and utterly determined mode of scholarship common in other cultures basically impossible to achieve. 

But I am seriously concerned about the lack of rigor I see among students at my institution.  I want to hasten to say that I don’t think this is specific to my institution.  I think it’s just more noticeable because it clashes so severely with the material we are learning and, especially, the teachers who are providing us with the awesome opportunity to learn.

The Neijing, which we like to quote so much, is basically a transcript of an interaction between master and disciple.  Whether the master and disciple were flesh and blood beings or not is irrelevant.  They represent a form of the master/disciple relationship that should serve as a template for all students who hope to be Classical in their approach to Chinese Medicine.  What happens in the Neijing?  The disciple starts with some amount of information.  After some undetermined amount of time (likely an extended period) the student comes back with deep insightful questions that are usually preceded with an extended exposition of what he understands.  This mode shows the master – “Hey, I care enough about this material that I spent plenty of time trying to understand what you have already explained to me and this is what I still don’t quite get.”  The disciple doesn’t ask questions he could easily have figured out, one imagines.  The disciple doesn’t complain that he’s learning too little, too slowly, or too much, too fast.  He certainly doesn’t complain that he doesn’t like the master’s personality.

This is the model of learning that is needed today.  Nothing fancy.  Just devote every part of yourself you have left after taking care of your basic needs to obtaining and digesting (and, eventually comprehending) the material that is available to you.  When you can’t go any farther with what you’ve got – ask a question based on what you do know and see where it takes you.

I know “devoting every part (that’s left) of yourself” to the material is a bit of a daunting task.  Some of it is bloody boring, it’s true.  Some of it seems irrelevant.  I’m sure sometimes HuangDi wanted to say, “I don’t want to know about THAT – tell me more about X.”  I’m sure sometimes he didn’t want to do the extremely difficult intellectual work necessary to understand the most complex and viable medical system ever known anywhere.  We don’t hear about it because that’s not the stuff that used to be put in biographies.  Nowadays, it’s the only kind of stuff that makes it in to biographies.  Go figure.

Anyway – you have a responsibility.  You are here to pay back the fine professors you have access to for their hard work.  Yes, their hard work.  They worked hard (some of them VERY HARD, under HARD conditions) to learn what they know.  They work hard now – building their classes, doing their own scholarly work, running their clinics, raising their families, often sitting on multiple committees, often dealing with various personal difficulties.  They work hard sitting in front of you, struggling to answer your sometimes totally inane questions.   All they ask in return is that you be a good student.  That more often than not you turn away from the 10,000 distractions of the modern world and turn toward your work.  That you struggle with the hard stuff, and quickly assimilate the easy stuff.  That you don’t complain when the work is too hard, or when it’s too easy.  That you treat them with respect – respect beyond what you’ve probably been accustomed to giving your teachers.  The culture of respect in this country, particularly in education, is dead or dying.  So it’s time to revive that – starting with the masters we are lucky enough to work with.  It’s not much to ask.

You don’t have to be here.  No one has tied you down.  You had to apply.  You were chosen.  Now you’re here, and it won’t last long.  Once you leave, these wells of incredible information aren’t going to be there for you to dip into any time you get thirsty. 

If you’re not ready to commit yourself to this massive task, if you’re not sure this is really what you want to do with your life – go do something else.  Leave for a while and think about it.  Come back when you’re ready.  No judgement, no worries.  But as long as you stay here, frustrating the hell out of your teachers and wasting their time and yours – not to mention your money… you’re serving nothing.  Or at least nothing good.

Eric