Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), We all spend some time reading a book either suggested by someone or maybe something that appeals to our thought process and there can be many other reasons as well for reading. This week let me bring to your attention an interesting excerpt from this thought provoking work, ‘Learning How to Learn’. This work was an outcome of many questions posted to the author by some people in pursuit of Truth (Universal Truth) and mostly about one of the traditions (Sufi tradition) & pursuit of truth therein.
Excerpt:
Learning and Non-Learning
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 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 learn 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.
You can buy your copy from any of the bookstores near you or via any on-line portal selling books or also by clicking the following link:
Concluding today’s session.
Let us remember:
Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
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