"The Best Kind of Student Goes and Practices It Assiduously"

Lao Tzu said that when the best kind of student hears about the Way, he goes and practices is assiduously; when the worst kind of student hears about the Way, he laughs in contempt. This is a good statement about learning in general, and what it means to effectively apply one's self to a study -- any study, and every study.

In order to really learn something, you have to really truly make it a part of your self. This is a fine sentiment, except that 'self' itself is such a vague and illusive concept, and so talk of adding parts and pieces to such a thing quickly descends into confusion. Is something a part of yourself because you wish for it? Because you think about it? Because you attribute it to yourself? Because someone else attributes it to you? How much is enough, and how little is not? Can you know it when you see it? The boundaries of the self are so hazy that the metaphor of taking things from the outside and putting them inside simply does not work. Learning isn't an acquisition.

This is what makes Lao Tzu's attributed utterance profound: the best kind of student is the best for the simple reason that he goes and practices, in all the senses of that word. Learning means putting into practice, and what you choose to put into practice becomes a seamless part of the activity that is your life. Learning is doing.

There is a subtlety here, though. When you value you something, you keep it in mind; you don't set aside or casually forget about people you love, ideals you treasure, nor your own certainly your own goals and survival. When any of these things come up, you remember them, and you act in a way that accords with them. Learning is no different.

Hence the importance of the latter part of the saying; the worst kind of student hears about the Way and laughs in contempt. I say this having done things in just this way, many times in the past, and having utterly failed in such cases. This is the acquisitive approach to learning, the one that suppose that the facts are set in place and it is only a matter of taking them and putting them inside of one's brain. When you come out and say it this way, such an attitude sounds utterly false; everybody knows that you have to practice something to get good at it. But if you don't know what it is that you're actually doing, then your actions aren't practice. They're wasted effort. It's easy to go out and engage in a flurry of activity and to call it "practice", but what makes for real practice is a sensitivity to the interplay between what you do and what the rest of the world does in reply. If your practice is just the stubborn application of your self-conceived ideas to the situation your happen to be in, you're not learning. You're insisting. Practice acts, but carefully studies the consequence. Learning begins with questioning, and questioning is empty if no attention is paid to the answers.

When something is stated, it seems obvious. When something is done, it seems hard.

In a short comment appearing somewhere in the middle of "The Society of Mind", Marvin Minsky gives an interesting counter to the question of whether machines have souls. "I ask back", he says, "whether souls can learn. It does not seem a fair exchange -- if souls can live for endless time and yet not use that time to learn -- to trade all change for changelessness. And that's exactly what we get with inborn souls that cannot grow: a destiny the same as death, an ending in a permanence incapable of any change and, hence, devoid of intellect." Mr. Minsky's insight is quietly brilliant: learning is growth, and growth is inseparable from life.

Time passes. Situations differ. Nothing produces harmony by itself, and nothing acts by itself.

Assiduous practice is assiduous living. Our lives are nothing other than the lessons learned from a long dialogue between ourselves and our circumstances.