andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2002-03-03 10:57 am
andrewducker) wrote2002-03-03 10:57 am
There is no try.....
Once again, Joe has made me think.
He asks why I'd want to shortcut through the 30 years of meditation, and isn't that a bit lazy.
To which, having thought about it this morning, my answer is "Yes. It's lazy." But it's not something I'm particularly interested in doing.
It's an answered question to me as to whether I can train my brain to do things with a little effort and a fair amount of time. I've done it unconsciously ever since I was born, and consciously on a few occasions, to see how it works. since then, learning has pretty much lost its attraction to me.
Not that I don't like learning, because it means that I know new things, and understand better, but learning isn't an end in itself to me any more; knowing and understanding are the ends (and in some ways, just understanding - since the internet came along and made knowing pretty much irrelevant when I've got access to large chunks of human knowledge, memory tricks have become about as interesting as sleight of hand tricks - fun to see, but more fun than useful and not really important. The only time I'm really interested in knowing stuff is when I don't have access to the net, or it's an item of knowledge I use on a regular basis).
Anyway, having become unenamoured with learning, I'm not terribly interested in spending 30 years getting somewhere that I want to be.
I think of it like playing the piano - I'm not terribly interested in the years of practice spent training in how to place the fingers just right, learning to read music (again), etc. I want to make the music in my head appear outside of my head. Everything else is just stuff I have to wade through to get to that point.
If I could have a plug-in marked "Know how to play piano" I'd be downloading that sucker right now.
And then I'd get to say "I know Cho-Pin" and all my friends would hit me with sticks.
He asks why I'd want to shortcut through the 30 years of meditation, and isn't that a bit lazy.
To which, having thought about it this morning, my answer is "Yes. It's lazy." But it's not something I'm particularly interested in doing.
It's an answered question to me as to whether I can train my brain to do things with a little effort and a fair amount of time. I've done it unconsciously ever since I was born, and consciously on a few occasions, to see how it works. since then, learning has pretty much lost its attraction to me.
Not that I don't like learning, because it means that I know new things, and understand better, but learning isn't an end in itself to me any more; knowing and understanding are the ends (and in some ways, just understanding - since the internet came along and made knowing pretty much irrelevant when I've got access to large chunks of human knowledge, memory tricks have become about as interesting as sleight of hand tricks - fun to see, but more fun than useful and not really important. The only time I'm really interested in knowing stuff is when I don't have access to the net, or it's an item of knowledge I use on a regular basis).
Anyway, having become unenamoured with learning, I'm not terribly interested in spending 30 years getting somewhere that I want to be.
I think of it like playing the piano - I'm not terribly interested in the years of practice spent training in how to place the fingers just right, learning to read music (again), etc. I want to make the music in my head appear outside of my head. Everything else is just stuff I have to wade through to get to that point.
If I could have a plug-in marked "Know how to play piano" I'd be downloading that sucker right now.
And then I'd get to say "I know Cho-Pin" and all my friends would hit me with sticks.
Re: piano
Nope, not even slightly.
I don't care what people think. I want to be able to make cool noises on the piano for my own amusement. I don't care what the mechanics of the piano are for its own sake. I don't care, particularly, about the history of the piano. I want to make cool sounds that I enjoy. That's pretty much the be all and end all of it.
Re: piano
Gordon