Learning

241. SUCKED DOWN

“Vanity is the quicksand of reason.”

GEORGE SAND (1804–1878), FRANCE

242. DON’T STOP

“He who adds not to his learning, diminishes it.”

THE TALMUD

243. VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

GALILEO GALILEI (1564–1642), ITALY

244. TOTAL IMMERSION

A master once described the journey to enlightenment as “like filling a sieve with water”. When a woman questioned this master on his meaning, he gave her a sieve and a cup, and they went to the sea, where he asked her to fill the sieve with water. She poured a cupful of water into the sieve. It was instantly gone. “Spiritual practice is the same,” the master explained, “if we stand on the rock of ‘I’, and try to ladle the divine realization in. That’s not the way to fill the sieve with water, nor the self with divine life.” He took the sieve and threw it into the sea, where it sank. “Now it’s full of water, and will remain so. That’s spiritual practice. It is not ladling little cupfuls into the individuality, but becoming totally immersed in the sea of divine life.”

245. YOUNG AND OLD

“Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.”

AESCHYLUS (C.525– 456BCE), GREECE

246. THE FOUR RELIANCE SUTRA

“Rely on the message of the teacher, not his personality; rely on the meaning, not just the words; rely on the real meaning, not the provisional one; rely on your wisdom mind, not just your ordinary, judgmental mind.”

THE BUDDHA (THE FOUR RELIANCE SUTRA)

247. THE OLDEST UNIVERSITY

Buddhism was introduced into Tibet some 1,200 years ago. The first lamas were Indians and Tibetans who had studied at northern India’s great Nalanda University, probably the oldest university in the world. The system of instruction devised at Nalanda in the early centuries CE was preserved in Tibet. Until the Chinese occupation in 1950, the courses given at Lhasa’s monastic universities in such subjects as metaphysics, astrology, grammar, logic and medicine, as well as the manner of student debating, had remained much the same as they had been at Nalanda, 12 centuries earlier.