Some excerpts from the book Learning how to learn:
Q: Can you give me an essential prerequisite for a student of Sufism? I think that it is to be misunderstood.
A: One essential is that the student should not attempt to impose his own conditions of study or criteria of progress. On understanding, a student should not think that he can under- stand just because he wants to. On being understood, it was the great Junaid of Baghdad who said:
'Nobody attains to the degree of Truth until a thousand sincere people have pronounced him an unbeliever.* But -the sincerity he is talking about here is not real sincerity, absolute objectivity. It is the sincerity of people who imagine themselves to be sincere because they believe certain things, whether they know these things or not. The sincere act, reflecting the real sincerity, is defined by Abu- Yaqub al-Susi, in Kalabadhi's Taaruf : The really sincere act is the one which is known by no recording angel, by no demon to affict it, nor by the self, to become prideful of it. This means that human beings have to become aware of their essence, the real part of themselves, which speaks when the other elements are silent.
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Reading does not change people unless they are ready to change. Rumi said: You have seen the mountain, you have not seen the mine inside the mountain.
Just because a book is available, even one of the very greatest books, does not mean that one can, or perhaps should, try to leam correctly from it at any given moment. The Sufi Sadruddin said, in his Testament 'Hereafter let not every man seek to leam from the writings of the Sheikh Ibn Arabi or from mine, for that gate is barred to the majority of mankind.'
This is because teachers may not need what is in books, but can use them for students, while students may not know, but might well not profit from studying them as arbitrarily as they ordinarily do.
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If you seek illumination or understanding when what you really need is information or rest from pressures, you will get none of these things. If you know what you want, you should go and get it.
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Systematic study or behaviour is valuable when it is of use. When it is not, it can be poisonous.
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If you carry the habit of judging things into an area where it does not apply, you will judge in a manner which will not correspond with your needs.
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The ultimate absurdity, incapacitating from real learning beyond the stage you have reached, is to imagine that one thing is another. If you think that a book is a sandwich, you may try to eat it, and will not be able to learn what a book can teach. If, too, you imagine that you are being open' or 'working or eager to learn when you are only playing a social game, you will learn nothing. The people who refuse to play that game with you will also, of course, sooner or later annoy you.
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Register the fact that : Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because what they say or do appeals to your greed. This is concealed only by their appear- ance. If you stop listening to their words and look at the effect, you will soon see it.
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Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy. So, if someone says: Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for generosity. This, however, remains greed.
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There are some things which you have to do for yourself.
These include familiarising yourself with study-materials given to you. You can only really do this -and thus acquire real qualities- if you suspend the indulgence of desire for immediate satisfactions.
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Q: What you have said about the same person, or the same group of people, being able to employ entirely different techniques to achieve the same object interests me. But how can one method be as good as another?
A: If a house is on fire, two ladders may be propped against one window. Both lead to the ground. The different colours of the paint on them may obscure the fact that they are ladders.
Q: But how do we know that either is a ladder?
A: You know by learning to recognise a ladder when you see one.
Q: How is that done?
A: By familiarising yourself with ladders.
Q: And climbing ladders?
A:While you are learning recognition, climb them as a part of it.
Q: But some people insist that there is only one ladder, their own.
A : They are right, if they are only saying that to focus attention on a specific escape-ladder as an instrument. If it works, it is equivalent to being the only true one. For practical purposes, it is.
Q: Are they right under any other circumstances?
A: Seldom, because if they really were right they would teach not 'There is only this ladder', but 'Look at all these ladders; they can -or could -work. Ours, however, is applicable to you and to me.' Failure to do this reveals ignorance.
Remark: But they are short of time.
Comment: So is everybody.
Q: Are some ladders too short?
A: Ladders are in ail conditions: new, old, rotten, short, long, blue, green, weak, strong, available, in use elsewhere, and all the rest of the possibilities.
Q : What should one do about all this?
A: Try to conceive that the house is on fire. If you can do so without becoming obsessed or irrational about it, particularly without becoming suggestible through dwelling on this idea, you may get out. But while you are full of hope or fear, of sentiment or desire for social activity or personal prominence or even recognition, you will not be able to use a ladder, you may not be able to recognise one, certainly you should be spending your energies in circles wriich abound for the purpose of welcoming such ten- dencies.
People learn by methods which correspond with the kind and extent of their aspiration : this is the constant Sufi dictum. In the Anwar-i-Suhaili it is said:Nobody found the way to ascend
Until he found the step of aspiration.
Seek the stage, to mount to the Moon :
None drinks rain from a well.
Equally, of course, there are many people who camiot learn something at a given time, because they have some other expecta- tion, some preoccupation, probably an emotional one. Reflect on this news item : 'More than 3000 worshippers fled in near-panic from the famous Church of the Blessed Mary of the Rosary at Pompeii on Saturday night, when a bottle of Coca Cola exploded.'
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When Hatim al-Asamm, of Balkh (now in Afghanistan) went to Baghdad, people surrounded him, saying :'You are a non-Arab of halting speech, yet you silence everyone.'
He answered: Three things enable me to overcome my opponent. I am happy when he is right, and I am sad when he is wrong, and I try not to behave foolishly towards him.'
Ibn Hanbal asked Hatim what things would save humanity from the world. He said :'There are four things. Accept the ignorance of others and spare them yours; spare for them from your substance, and do not expect any of theirs.'
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Q: Can you give me an essential prerequisite for a student of Sufism? I think that it is to be misunderstood.
A: One essential is that the student should not attempt to impose his own conditions of study or criteria of progress. On understanding, a student should not think that he can understand just because he wants to. On being understood, it was the great Junaid of Baghdad who said: 'Nobody attains to the degree of Truth until a thousand sincere people have pronounced him an unbeliever.' But the sincerity he is talking about here is not real sincerity, absolute objectivity. It is the sincerity of people who imagine themselves to be sincere because they believe certain things, whether they know these things or not. The sincere act, reflecting the real sincerity, is defined by AbuYaqub al-Susi, in Kalabadhi's Taaruf The really sincere act is the one which is known by no recording angel, by no demon to affict it, nor by the self, to become prideful of it. This means that human beings have to become aware of their essence, the real part of themselves, which speaks when the other elements are silent.
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Q : Why is it that so many people read so much and yet are not changed by it? Can people not absorb Sufi information through the written word?
A: To learn something, you may have often to be exposed to it many times, perhaps from different perspectives; and you also have to give it the kind of attention which will enable you to learn. In our experience, people fail to learn from Sufi materials for the same reason that they do not leam other things -they read selectively. The things that touch them emotionally, or which they like or are thrilled by they will remember or seek in greater quantity and depth. Since these are often the last materials which they will probably need, and since such an unbalanced attitude towards anything makes the person in need of balance in his approach, we have the situation to which you refer.
We may at once admit that cultures which seek to highlight crudities, things which immediately appeal, and to project them in attractive forms and endorse and sustain them are unlikely to produce, on the whole, people with appetites for other than more of the same thing. But this behaviour will merely perpetuate the same kind of personality and attitude which created it in the first place. If you have a chocolate cake decorated with sixteen cherries, and you gobble up the cherries because you like them, and then want to know why you have not eaten the cake -what does that make you? And if I tell you, would you like me? This is the barrier to surmount. It is crossed by observing it in action, deciding to surmount it, and taking action to study comprehensively and not to pretend to be a student and then wonder why one has not learned.
Reading does not change people unless they are ready to change.
Rumi said: You have seen the mountain, you have not seen the mine inside the mountain.
Just because a book is available, even one of the very greatest books, does not mean that one can, or perhaps should, try to leam correctly from it at any given moment. The Sufi Sadruddin said, in his Testament: 'Hereafter let not every man seek to leam from the writings of the Sheikh Ibn Arabi or from mine, for that gate is barred to the majority of mankind.'
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Only a small number of people can immediately learn what is being taught. The others have to go through exposure to experience and teaching until their inward perceptions are able to connect with the transmission. Many people believe that their interest in a subject is preparation enough. Further, they cannot credit that others may have the perceptive capacity while they themselves must wait.
Junaid illustrated this on the overt level one day when some of his twenty students were jealous of his attachment to one of their number. The parable-in-action which he devised is worth thinking about. He called all the disciples and ordered them to bring twenty fowls. Each pupil was instructed to take one bird to a place where he could not be seen, and to kill it. When they all returned, the birds were dead : all except the one taken by the controversial student. Junaid asked him, in the presence of the others, why he had not killed his bird. 'Because you told me to go to a place where I could not be seen, and there is no such place : God sees all, answered the man. The difficulty of transmission of knowledge is bound up with the orientation of the student. Wanting knowledge is not enough. As we see in the case of Junaid's students, only one in twenty acted in accordance with his own beliefs.
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Supposing we were discussing the art of weaving which might be developed. Supposing people were at a stage where they could only tie knots in string, which gave them pleasure and might be regarded as a foretaste of weaving. If the people only imitated the knotting phase, and in addition regarded the knotting as the entire art -when would weaving itself come into being, no matter how much pleasure there was attached to it? Certainly, knotting would have a value as such : but it would also constitute a barrier to going further if the idea of anything further were 'abolished' by people thinking that knots were as far as anyone could go in textile work. There are two points worth noting here. The first is that 'pleasure' certainly is not to be opposed, but there are many sources of pleasure, and to seek pleasure as a part of something more specific leads to confusion and more. The second is that if you get obsessed by the early stages of something, imagining it to be the whole, you will not go further.
Im just starting to go trough this book, and i find it amazing, its an awesome companion to all the zen teachings. The pdf version can be found online, if you cant shoot me a pm.
Submitted October 19, 2019 at 06:02PM by atomicmustardseed https://ift.tt/2P25pYo
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