U is for unlearn
“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” –Gloria Steinem
In 2008, I will focus on unlearning rather than learning.
This story illustrates how beginner’s mind opens us to new information: “I had an airplane pilot in one of my workshops who was learning to fly a glider. He told me, as a pilot it was much more difficult for him to learn to fly a glider, than for his wife to learn, who was not a pilot. He kept looking for controls that were not there. He spent much of his early lessons trying to relate and compare the two types of aircraft. Meanwhile, his wife, the complete novice made significant progress from day one.”
A blogger about education provides some examples from his world as teacher:
We need to unlearn the premise that we know more than our kids, because in many cases, they can now be our teachers as well.
We need to unlearn the idea that learning itself is an event. In this day and age, it is a continual process.
We need to unlearn the idea that every student needs to learn the same content when really what they need to learn is how to self-direct their own learning.
We need to unlearn the notion that our students don’t need to see and understand how we ourselves learn.
We need to unlearn the practice that teaches all students at the same pace. Is it any wonder why so many of our students love to play online games where they move forward at their own pace?
We need to unlearn the idea that we can teach our students to be literate in this world by continually blocking and filtering access to the sites and experiences they need our help to navigate.
We need to unlearn the premise that real change can happen just by rethinking what happens inside the school walls and understand that education is now a community undertaking on many different levels.
My list? I haven’t finished it—here is its beginning:
I want to unlearn racism.
I want to learn how to nurture myself by unlearning self-destructive messages about my body that I am bombarded with in the media.
I want to unlearn all my negative, limiting beliefs about money: "I can’t be authentic and weaIthy,” “Money is the root of all evil,” “Money corrupts.”
I need to unlearn my fear of success—“play small to be humble.”
I need to unlearn the rules I learned about gender roles: “Girls can’t… Boys must… and Boys and Girls are the only choices there are." Not true, but thoroughly ingrained in a world in which we perform gender every day.
I need to unlearn my beliefs about being an artist and writer: “You must suffer for your art.”
This lecture on beginner’s mind has provided me with much food for thought:
“I don’t know about you, but when I started to sit I really began to see how many fixed ideas and fixed views I had. How much judgment was ready right on the tip of my tongue. How much expectation, how much preconception I was carrying around with me all the time, and how much it got in the way of actually noticing what was happening. I don’t want to tell you that after thirty years I’m free of all that, but at least I notice it sooner and I sometimes don’t get caught in believing it.
“First, before you can let go of preconceptions and expectations and prejudices, you have to notice them; otherwise, they’re just carrying on unconsciously and affecting everything you do. But as you sit, you begin to recognize the really persistent ones: ‘Oh my gosh…You again! Didn’t I just deal with you yesterday?’ And again. And again. Pretty soon, you can’t take them seriously. They just keep popping up, and popping up, and popping up, and after a while you become really familiar with them. And you can’t get so buried under something once you realize that it’s just a habitual state of mind and doesn’t have much to do with what’s right in front of you. It’s just something that you haul around with you all the time and bring out for every occasion. It hasn’t much to do with the present situation.
“One day about twenty years ago, when I was Secretary of Zen Center, Head of the front office, ordained as a priest, on the Board of Directors, and a practice leader here, I opened the door to let someone in. The thought occurred to me: ‘I bet this person thinks I’m on the inside.’ I had carried around with me all my life the feeling of being on the outside, wanting in. But at that moment, it somehow occurred to me: ‘That person thinks I’m on the inside.’ I realized that any way you might look at it, it looked like I was on the inside of Zen Center. And I was still feeling like I was on the outside, like I wasn’t where the real juice was. It was very interesting. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a feeling I’ve been carrying around with me all my life.’ My husband, Lou, noticed it when he met me, when I was in college up at Davis–wanting to be in the in-group.
"I decided that that notion had probably been with me since I was born. I had an older sister. There were my mother and father and older sister, and I thought there must have been something juicy going on over there that I was outside of. I didn’t know how to get it, but I carried that feeling with me—being outside, left out, or not included—with great pain for a long time. It was just the way I thought of myself, just a habitual thought. And suddenly it popped. Suddenly it became apparent to me that it really had nothing to do with my life, it had to do with a fixed idea that I had acquired some time in the past and hauled around with me.
“You must approach everything with beginner’s mind, with an open mind, the mind that is questioning and looking and listening and hearing and seeing and feeling and smelling without prejudgment, without preconception, without fixed views. Open. Ready to see what is right here. Open. Ready to see ‘What is this?’ and ready to let it flower, ready to let it bloom in the world.
In her poem ‘When Death Comes,’ Mary Oliver has a few lines that say, ‘When it’s over, I want to say I have been a bride married to amazement, I’ve been a bridegroom taking the world into my arms.’ This is beginner’s mind: ‘I’ve been a bride married to amazement.’ Just how amazing the world is, how amazing our life is. How amazing that the sun comes up in the morning, or that the wisteria blooms in the spring. Can you live your life with that kind of wholeheartedness, with that kind of thoroughness? This is the beginner’s mind that Suzuki Roshi is pointing to, is encouraging us to cultivate. He is encouraging us to see where we are stuck with fixed views, and see if we can, as Uchiyama Roshi says, ‘open the hand of thought’ and let the fixed view go. This is our effort. This is our work. Just to be here, ready to meet whatever is next without expectation or prejudice or preconceptions. Just ‘What is it?’ ‘What is this, I wonder?’
"Dizang said, ‘What is the purpose of pilgrimage?’ Fayan said: ‘I don’t know.’ Dizang said, ‘Not knowing is most intimate.’"
To a three-year-old child, a chair is a castle, a fire engine, a tree house. To us, it is merely a chair. In such a way language and “knowing” reduce our possibilities. Not knowing is most intimate.
Intentions: Seek beginner’s mind, a mind innocent of preconceptions and expectations, one that is present to explore and observe and see things are they are, not as I’ve been taught they are. Ask “what is it?” and not “I know what it is.” Pay attention to the habits of mind; stop wanting to be the one who knows. Give up my attachment to rightness and embrace amazement, instead. Suzuki Roshi once said, "The essence of Zen is ‘Not Always So.’" "Not always so," a good little phrase to carry around when you’re sure. It gives you an opportunity to look again more carefully and see what other possibilities there might be in the situation. Not knowing is nearest. Just bringing yourself back here, back here, back here, so you can actually experience your life.
As Sri Sathya Sai Baba said, “Practice the vocabulary of love—unlearn the language of hate and contempt.”
Reading: Ellen Langer, Mindfulness; Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
From last alphabet challenge: T is for Them, U is for Us
Image from here
