Monday 22 March 2010

The target is not the point

Litlove is a blog I'm fast coming to adore: the thoughtful and ever interesting insights of a great academic and writer.

Today s/he draws on a book about Zen and archery to posit the key to learning.

What Zen instructs is that learning is not about the outward manifestation of a skill, but the inward journey through the self. On several occasions the Master leaves Herrigel to struggle hopelessly and heroically with the fiendish difficulties of drawing a bow correctly, only giving him helpful hints when he has reached the point of desperation. Why won’t he tell him these things earlier? Herrigel asks. Because he has to exhaust all the possibilities for himself before he would be ready to take in what the Master has to say. And isn’t this the truth? How many times have I told students what they need to do, only to be met with blank stares or the insincere gestures of over-anxious acceptance. The truth only makes sense when we are ready to hear it, and not a moment before. We have to work things out for ourselves. It takes Herrigel a further two or three years to figure out the ‘right’ moment to loose his arrow, the moment when his hand will fall easily away from the bowstring, without jerking backwards. The long process to reach this point not only teaches him much that is wordless about feeling the task in hand, but it prepares him for the understanding that mastering an art like this is a spiritual activity, not one governed by tricks and predicated on the easy joy of achievement.
I know this is right because I spend all my time now with students who are so obsessed with the target, with what they are supposed to be achieving, and with how their lack of success reflects back on their sense of self, that they are completely crippled for doing anything at all. If this isn’t spiritual poverty, then I don’t know what is. Such students need to get out of their own way, and they find it almost impossible.  

If this isn't balm to the soul of a student body raised on certificates, module grades and targets, I don't know what is.

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