New Learning, Old Learning

There are some major differences in self-learning and learning from a teacher. I’ve realized that this connects to the bigger picture of Sikhi as well. I do a lot of self-learning, for example watching a video to learn how to crochet a dress, do yoga, or study Sikh history online. When you learn something yourself, you kind of just experiment around and figure out what works and what doesn’t. You generally work at your own pace and don’t really have the pressure of someone else evaluating you. It’s a self-checking mechanism, it’s up to you how much you want to improve and how much you are doing yourself towards your own learning. Because there isn’t guidance sometimes you may end up going off track with this type of learning. 

When you have a teacher there is a different process that happens. I realized this a few days ago when I started santhiya for Nitnem. I had thought that we would start from Japji Sahib, but the first thing we started with was the Gurmukhi/Punjabi alphabet. Then we reviewed the muharni which is basically just adding vowels (in our case kana, hoda, etc.) to the alphabet and reading it aloud. When you are learning something from someone else you have to let go of ego to actually learn properly, otherwise your ego will inhibit the learning. You have to drop the idea that you know things and be open to correction and improvement. Having spent years being evaluated in school, I thought that I was used to this process. Yet actually I realized that I wasn’t because for the large part what I was learning was something completely new I didn’t take constructive feedback personally. The same happened during learning cooking- if my mom told me to do something differently or I was doing it wrong, I simply changed course because it was all new to me. To give a more common example, when you learned how to drive, you didn’t know anything about driving. Whatever feedback you got, you implemented it because you didn’t have an ego on the topic that was pre-existing since it was a new area of learning. You didn't fight the constructive feedback. Yet in learning santhiya, rabab, or singing in raags, I did have a background in those things. I’ve been doing kirtan, singing, reading Gurbani in Gurmukhi, and writing Punjabi since I was little. There was some ego there because it wasn’t like I was learning something foreign to me, I was expanding on a background that I already had. It was new learning upon an old layer of learning that was quite engrained. On top of going back to the basics, in many classes you aren’t alone. There may be small children who are far ahead of you in saanthiya, and the group hears everything everyone else is saying so they hear your mistakes as well. This is why you have to let go of your ego, but also why it is never too late to learn. Let’s say I was 50 and I didn’t know how to read the ooda aada- there’s nothing to be ashamed about in learning it now. It’s never to late to be learning how to do kirtan, simran, or how to read Japji Sahib for example. The problem is just that egos get in the way and we feel like we should have known it by now. The ego tells us not to even bother, that we “know enough” and that we don’t need ot be learning more. In all facets of life whether its sports and exercise, personal skills, language, music, or other areas, it is beneficial for us to learning rather than just giving up into the mindset that it’s too late. Looking back to five years ago I was embarrassed that my communication skills weren’t the best. This was an area of building on new learning onto old learning; I obviously had some good communication skills like listening but there were other areas where I was lacking. I had a hard time taking everything I was feeling and thinking inside, and logically explaining it to anyone. I also struggled to be able to even label or identify sometimes what it was that I was wanting to communicate because it felt so abstract at times. It really has become so routine now it is hard to picture what that felt like at the time. Moving forward to my situation now, I could have said I don’t want to repeat the basics and just given into my ego, but actually it has been really beneficial. There has been some sounds and letter combos that I have learned to pronounce better already. 

The advantages of learning with a teacher explains why it is so important to have a Guru. Even looking back the bhagats all had a Guru who guided them and why Guru Amardas Ji went searching for years to try to find a Guru. We have Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji to guide us and correct us when we are off course in our lives. A teacher is sometimes hard on us and teaches us discipline, which our Guru Ji teaches us as well. Lastly, the biggest realization out of all of this is that to be a Sikh is a lifelong learner and by the nature of us learning from our Guru, we are destroying our ego just like we are in our other student teacher relationships. We know that this is the goal of Sikhi in a more theoretical concept, but very practically this also makes sense that being a learner means we have to let go of our ego to learn. In the case of Sikhi, we need to let go of our definition of I, me, and my thoughts, and what we know about our own lives and how they should be lived.