Author: JC Heisler

“If you understand the cause of conflict as some fixed or one-sided idea, you can find meaning in various practices without being caught by any of them.

If you do not realize this point you will be easily caught by some particular way, and you will say, “This is excellence! This is perfect practice. This is our way. The rest of the ways are not perfect. This is the best way.” This is a big mistake.

There is no particular way in true practice. You should find your own way, and you should know what kind of practice you have right now. Knowing both the advantages and disadvantages of some special practice, you can practice that special way without danger.

But, if you have a one-sided attitude, you will ignore the disadvantage of the practice, emphasizing only its good part. Eventually you will discover the worst side of the practice, and become discouraged when it is too late.

This is silly.

So as long as you continue your practice, you are quite safe, but as it is very difficult to continue, you must find some way to encourage yourself. As it is hard to encourage yourself without becoming involved in some poor kind of practice, to continue our pure practice by yourself may be rather difficult. This is why we have a teacher.

With your teacher you will correct your practice. Of course you will have a very hard time with him, but even so, you will always be safe from wrong practice.

Most Musicians have had a difficult time with their teachers. When they talk about the difficulties, you may think that without this kind of hardship you cannot practice music. But this is not true.

Whether you have difficulties in your practice or not, as long as you continue it, you have pure practice in its true sense. Even when you are not aware of it, you have it.

So, do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own development. Whether or not you are aware of it, you have your own true development within your practice.”

– Shunryu Suzuki

“(Practice) does not have to be hard labor. Just allow your body and mind to rest…Don’t struggle.

Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

“Let me put it in this way, “I don’t have it, if you don’t have it”.  Because, I have it, only to the extent that I can give it away; “that I can give it up, and to all others.”

But, in order that people may master these disciplines, (and this is the responsibility of the older generations) it must be understood that working on the disciplines, is fun! And this is the task of all good teachers. 

All good, really gifted and great teachers are people who never have to resort in their classes to artificial methods of imposing discipline.  They need no proctors, they need no punishments, they need no bribes, because the good teacher is the person who makes the work of learning the discipline so completely fascinating, that the student is embroiled.  The reason being, that learning a discipline is not a matter of forcing yourself.  

And here the English language leaves a little bit to be desired.  We have a paucity of words for effort, for application, for concentration… that we can talk about when we’re talking with children, “You must apply yourself!”

Now, it’s perfectly true, nothing in the way of a skill will be achieved without practice.  But, if practice is strained, still nothing will be achieved by it, except resentment.  Many a child learns to hate the violin or the piano because it was drummed into him, “This is what you got to do! You got to apply yourself to it!”, …driving it home. 

But, on the other hand, if there is a way of fascinating a child with the discipline of any musical instrument or what have you, then they can apply themselves day after day, after day, after day, and be fascinated with the discipline. 

So, this is the skill of the teacher…through skillful means to get the student to love the art because, (remember this principle), if your student does not learn to love the discipline, he will never be any good at what you’re teaching him.

Now, you may know that certain kinds of scholars do work that most of us would think very tedious.  Let’s suppose I take a field about which I know a few smatterings, which is the study of Chinese.  Chinese scholarship is very difficult.  You have an enormous amount of characters to study and you have to look up things in dictionaries and consult volumes of this, and volumes of that.  But the true scholar is a person who just loves doing that!  He’ll spend a whole afternoon going after one character through all sorts of things, sifting this reference and that reference, and he will be having more fun than someone at a bowling alley, doing just that! 

And from the standpoint of an external observer, who has no particular interest in this, they’ll say, “Oh how hard he’s working!”  

You know, in my private life, I must confess to you, I’ve had a terrible time with this because I love my work and people who had absolutely no comprehension or interest in what I’m doing would wonder, “how do I keep up the pace?”  “how can I possibly do this, that and the other?”  I love it! 

But then there are other people who say, “You never do a lick of work in your life!  You’re playing all the time! Just goofing off!  It’s too easy for you because you love it!”  But that’s the only way to get it done, and done well!  

Because if you have something that is, say a good marriage; a good marriage is not the result of forcing yourself into that marriage.  Are you seriously supposing that if you say to your husband or wife, “Darling do you really love me?” And the partner answers, “I’m trying my best to do so.”…?  This is simply not a satisfactory marriage. We are not going to get beautiful work by mere effort, “against the grain.”

When you could tell, a cook instantly, by tasting one mouthful of a dish whether it was cooked “out of a sense of duty” or cooked “out of love”.

Now, a person who cooks out of true love will of course encounter days on which it is difficult.  But somehow, the overall love of the art will manage to get him through those days when it’s difficult.  And so with marriage, and so with the Mastery of any other art.  

But, it is on the end of the older people.  It is up to the teachers and the parents to present the disciplines of life as something that; not just that, “you ought to know”, but as something that it is beautiful to understand!”

– Alan Watts

THE ORGANIZATION OF THOUGHT

Educational and Scientific

BY A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S.

There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.

The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot ‘postpone its life until you have sharpened it’.

Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter, must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalizations.

We now return to my previous point, that theoretical ideas should always find important applications within the pupil’s curriculum. This is not an easy doctrine to apply, but a very hard one. It contains within itself the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert, which is the central problem of all education.

The best procedure will depend on several factors, none of which can be neglected, namely, the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type of the pupils, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the immediate surroundings of the school, and allied factors of this sort. It is for this reason that the uniform external examination is so deadly.

Choose some important applications of your theoretical subject; and study them concurrently with the systematic theoretical exposition. Keep the theoretical exposition short and simple, but let it be strict and rigid; so far as it goes. It should not be too long for it easily to be known with thoroughness and accuracy. The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. Also the theory should not be muddled up with the practice. The child should have no doubt when it is proving and when it is utilizing.  My point is that what is proved should be utilized, and that what is utilized should—so far as is practicable—be proved. I am far from asserting that proof and utilization are the same thing.

I would only remark that the understanding which we want is an understanding of an insistent present. The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The present contains all that there is.  It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future. At the same time it must be observed that an age is no less past if it existed two hundred years ago than if it existed two thousand; years ago.