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Writer's pictureRohit CHAWLA

Art of Learning

A Legendary Man, yet unknown, of our modern contemporary time, in my eyes, MAHESH SHARMA, is one among many such Remarkable Men living among us today.

He is my Music Teacher. Oh no! Rather, I must say, I am his student. I started learning vocal singing and piano from him. He is a living musician (He is to ‘Music’, like ‘Patanjali’ is to ‘Yoga’) but more than that he is a real teacher who is interested to teach the secret of ‘learning’. He teaches the process of ‘learning’ and I feel that’s the real teaching, which is missing in every walk of life today, be it schools, institutions, society.

I met him way back in 2015. He worked upon me like an artist and chiseled notes on my stone heart. I was like rejected stone piece from my early childhood days when my school music teacher put me in category as one with bad voice. Those impressions were so vivid, till he came to my life and erased them and with his hard work and perseverance made impossible possible. With his grace, I began touching notes and dancing on them! He revived the life in stone. For me he is none lesser than ‘Lord Ram’ whose touch freed Ahalya from her stone body! 

I wonder!

What is crux of his teaching?

What’s his style…

What’s his expression,,,

He has all the time in the world. He is never in hurry. He never waits. For him every moment is on going engagement with himself and his work. His way is unique. I would say, I learnt best from him the ‘Art of learning’ itself, and still learning…

I realized the following:  

“Fastest learning is only possible by learning slowest with awareness.”

“Learning is a process which happens at the level of the learner. Only thing is if we see ‘WHO’ and ‘WHAT’ in me is learning.”

To realize this, we need to see ‘WHO’ and ‘WHAT’ in us learns ‘WHAT’ and ‘HOW’?

To understand this, we can each take a real life example from our own life. For now, I take the example of learning Piano. Like any learning, there are levels which we wish to set as goal. Certainly, (i) to learn few dozen pieces and play them later as performance is one thing; and (ii) to be a virtuoso pianist, compose music, living music every moment, communicating in music, is totally different and so is the learning process for both.

We need to first of all question. We must ask, when we learn WHAT in us learn? We need to go deeper and enquire this question to myself in as much detail as possible… to the extend possible to put whole of myself in question itself!

WHAT in me? or WHO in me?

Obviously, we begin with… Is it our mind alone? or is it our body & mind? or is it our heart too?

Slowly slowly, we move towards questioning – how about my fingers in specific? may be wrist muscles too..? and tissues beneath my spine backbone?, what about my eyes?, or deep down blood stream flow at cellular level..? List can go on, but that would be too far hue-and-cry for now!

So we stay here and we can also ask HOW learning happens inside?

So much differently that among my senses, ears learn listening, eyes learn reading, finger muscles learn to dance freely, etc..!

Thinking, feeling, and sensing faculties all learn something about rhythm, scale, tempo, patterns, chords, melody, etc… etc.

If we see this, we also see that some parts in us learn fast (like mind catching up pattern, or rhythm) and fingers (body) get to play fast with just the stronger fingers trying to take the place (mechanically) of weaker fingers, whereas some parts learn slow (like eyes cannot read as fast as fingers can play, ears cannot distinguish notes and scales as fast eyes can read, and this list is again very long…)

Isn’t this amazing revelation?

Superficially we can learn any which ways, or our some parts can learn faster but overall we learn in fragments, and when that becomes the basis of our learning (as it is getting focused on ‘faster’ and ‘quicker’ as ‘smarter’ these days), then imagine how superficial our learning be?

However, if we really ‘see’ and made to observe and feel the whole learning process cycle, slowly* (in beginning), till it gets into our whole.., our body.., our being.., we can appreciate and follow the journey. And all great remarkable masters / teachers, do teach us this key learning process and my music teacher, ‘Mahesh Sir’ is one of the remarkable teacher. I salute to him with gratitude to have blessed with such a great teacher.


I can now share here my experience with myself:

 

Before I begin playing a piece, my eyes set on Staff Notation Music Sheet, fingers soft and firm on piano keys, ears ready to listen, inner presence, freer attention.

I begin inside mind reading the rhythm, feeling tempo – all without playing. Eyes begin to read Staff Notation, and through body, and inner practice and presence, fingers gets communicated to dance on the keys, command by command, I am not seeing my fingers, eyes all set on music sheet and fingers dancing and composing the written music into live music and ears listening to what fingers are playing and sending a confirming message to mind and it reconciles inside if what eyes read and what ears listened is same.

Then there appears something in me, higher than my usual mind, who is relatively freer with a kind of quality attention and who sees the whole process and also listens to the whole music (not just ear listening the music), along with the feeling and sensation in body also inclusive. Also this attention has quality to free something inside me – anxiety, nervousness, worry, agitation, all goes off and there is enough freedom to manoeuvre and glimpse over the forthcoming notation and having a serene sense (in such a short split of second) of what’s required to be played next moment, something like very slow motion scene going on! This experience, at such a fast tempo, in midst of playing live, in allegorical sense, i feel like nothing less than, the Krishna’s divine song (Gita) to his friend and disciple Arjuna in midst of battle field.

Certainly, logically, this is beyond my usual domain to explain, so I call it a space from where higher in me appears, whenever I gets freer, to be.

 

First Expressed + Posted by ®© on 28 July 2017 ~ 04 November 2018 (on my personal blog - https://myexperienceswithmyself.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/art-of-learning/)


revisited my expression on 31st July 2024






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