Learn to Juggle

 I'm thinking a lot lately about learning processes and teaching kids (and humans in general) "learning how to learn".

Most of the things we would teach people are too complex. Take reading as an example. We might tell kids, "go learn to read. It's easy". But it's not. There are lots of formal rules. Unwritten rules. Exceptions. Feedback loops can be slow. Grades are confusing. Getting an A in grade 1 is very different from Grade 10. And reading Hemmingway, one might judge his sentence structure to be "too simple". 

ASIDE: I've had teachers mark points off my writing for using the same word in two sentences. In programming, using the same word is NORMAL and IMPORTANT. But some judge writing by rules by, "never end with a proposition". "Don't use sentence fragments". And "never start a sentence with a contraction". Or "Put the period inside the quotation marks". Or "Don't use nested parenthesis (like [brackets] can also be considered parentheses)"

I'm trying to learn the Thai alphabet. And, this might be something every 2nd grader in Thailand gets. But it's taking me a long time.

So, one of the ideas is that we need to teach kids how to learn by using very simple domains. This is also helpful in Buddhism. Use very simple domains.

Hence, juggling. 

• Juggling give instantaneous and obvious feedback.
• Either you catch the ball or you drop it.
• Practice shows results. In this case, the beginning progress is fast.
• Tasks can be "chunked" or broken down. Throwing. Catching. Timing. Each can be improved independently.

So, if you are stuck in your buddhism, consider learning to juggle. I find it also helps with turning off the discursive (papanca) mind. But that is secondary to using juggling to develop the skill of learning to learn. And to troubleshoot and watch how the mind doesn't like learning to learn.