How to learn things?

An old and in a certain way very influential tale talks about two monks, and I make a few updates to the story here.

The younger one, the pupil, asks the older and wiser man, the master, how he can learn to be like him, in a fast way. Younger and eager to learn… A very good combination.

The wiser man did not respond, instead he put a cup in front of his young disciple and start to fill it with tea. After a while, the cup was full, but the older man did not stop; concerned that maybe his master has lost his marbles, the younger disciple warned him about the fact that the cup was already full. The master however did not stop until the jar was empty.

After an awkward silence, the master smiled and observed three things, which he expressed in a voice that was like a whisper:

1. Those who want to learn need to first of all increase their own capacity; otherwise they won’t be able to absorb all the teachings.
2. The teacher won’t stop teaching just because the learner can’t imbibe it, which may cause some exhaustion in both sides.
3. After learning, the learner has to use the lessons. My dear young man, why aren’t you drinking your tea?

Follow these three points and you will be able to learn things very well. I would like to describe them, by using examples of my own.

The first thing you need to learn something is to increase your capacity. To learn a new language, I try to listen to it first, even though I don’t understand it. That will help my ears to get accustomed to strange and even weird sounds, it will soften my perception of the language and it will help in the long run. That is how I learned English…

But it may be a very tiring process. I remember that as I did not have resources, I was bound to use very cheap methodologies and not so effective, which means my efforts were double: first, to learn it as well as possible, and second to discern whether whatever was being taught was right. Eventually, I just got used to commit mistakes and being corrected, an interesting method…

By the way, I am not talking about the teaching side here, so wait for the post on that.

The last thing was of course the use of the language I was learning. I started by type-writing texts in English that were translated into Portuguese in a tape; by using the text itself and the audio, I started to associate meanings and gradually I could create a good vocabulary.

Later, I went travelling where I could practice the language.

Nowadays, I speak three different languages, and I can understand a bit of a few others, including Hindi. I do hope this method also works for you.

So, prepare your cup, the tea of knowledge is ready!