Letters to My Son. Kent Nerburn

has a life apart from our particular perspective, and we can begin to understand this life more fully if we give over our perspective and see from other points of view.

      This may seem abstract, but in fact it is obvious. Our language contains a tyranny of separateness that wears away at our sense of unity like water dripping on a rock. “I see something, I do something” — the “I” stands apart from the world around me, linked to it only by an action. Over time my very language increases my separation and isolation by making me see and understand the world as apart from me. I find myself estranged and alone, and I don’t know why.

      Other cultures, especially those where “being” is seen to permeate all objects, have unity built into their language. That which they see, not the self, is the natural subject of their thoughts. In ours it is not. We have to make a continual effort to move ourselves out of the center of our point of view.

      Very few people ever make that effort. Poets, perhaps, and painters, and artists, and people for whom empathy is a gift of the spirit. But for most of us, the self reigns supreme in both perception and importance.

      We need to be shaken from our stance and knocked out of our complacency. We need an epiphany, a koan. Rainaldi gave me mine.

      I would wish nothing more than that I could give you yours. But the heart receives such knowledge when it is ready, and your heart will receive it when it is time.

      But when it happens, the world will shift in a way you cannot imagine. You will stop trying to find your home in the universe and begin making the universe your home. Judgment will ebb and appreciation begin. Everything will gain the potential to be interesting and beautiful, and every moment will become an opportunity for growth and discovery.

      And though you will never completely lose your sense of self — that is the realm of the buddhas and the saints — you will have embarked on one of the most exciting journeys in life. You will have begun to see the world with the heart of an artist, and that, more than anything else, is the secret of keeping the heart eternally young.

       CHAPTER 5

       EDUCATION AND LEARNING

      Education is one of the great joys and solaces of life. It gives us a framework for understanding the world around us and a way to reach across time and space to touch the thoughts and feelings of others.

      But education is more than schooling. It is a cast of mind, a willingness to see the world with an endless sense of curiosity and wonder.

      To be truly educated, you must adopt this cast of mind. You must open yourself to the richness of your everyday experience — to your own emotions, to the movements of the heavens and the language of birds, to the privations and successes of people in other lands and other times, to the artistry in the hands of the mechanic and the typist and the child. There is no limit to the learning that appears before us. It is enough to fill us each day a thousand times over.

      The dilemma of how best to educate has always pivoted on the issue of freedom to explore versus the structured transmission of knowledge.

      Some people believe that we learn best by wandering forth into an uncharted universe and making sense of the lessons that life provides.

      Others believe that we learn best by being taught the most complete knowledge possible about a subject, then being sent forth to practice and use that knowledge.

      Both ways have been tried with every possible method and in every possible combination and balance.

      If we find ourselves tempted to celebrate one approach over the other, we should remember the caution of the Chinese sage Confucius, who told his followers, “Study without thinking and you are blind; think without studying and you are in danger.”

      Formal schooling is one way of gaining education, and it should not be underestimated. School, if it is good, imparts knowledge and a context for understanding the world around us. It opens us to ideas that we could never discover on our own, and makes us one with the life of the mind as it has been shaped by people and cultures we could never meet in our own experience. It makes us part of a community of learners, and helps us give form and direction to the endless flow of experience that passes before us.

      It is also a great frustration, because it often seems irrelevant to the passions of our own interests and beliefs.

      When you feel burdened by formal education, do not be quick to cast it aside. What you are experiencing is a great surge in your growth and consciousness that is screaming out for immediate and total exploration.

      You must remember that all other learners have traveled the same path. And though all true learners have felt this urge to strike out on their own, formal education, in its many shapes and guises, has been sought and revered by all people and all cultures in all times. It has a genius that is greater than your passions, and it is abandoned at your own peril.

      Still, formal education will not inform your spirit and make you full. So, along with knowledge, you must seek wisdom. Knowledge is multiple, wisdom is singular. Knowledge is words, wisdom is silent. Knowledge is standing outside, understanding what is seen, wisdom is standing at the center, knowing what is not seen. No person can be whole without both dimensions of learning.

      There are many ways to seek wisdom. There is travel, there are masters, there is service. There is staring into the eyes of children and elders and lovers and strangers. There is sitting silently in one spot, and there is being swept along in life’s turbulent current. Life itself will grant you wisdom in ways you may neither understand nor choose.

      It is up to you to be open to all these sources of wisdom and to embrace them with your whole heart.

      So do not disparage the lessons of either the schooled or the unschooled.

      Those who have less formal education may have learned some single thing more deeply, or they may have embarked early upon the search for wisdom. In their uniqueness, they have discovered something special about life, and it is yours to experience if you are open to what they may have to teach.

      Those who have devoted their life to formal learning may have walked further along a path than you can even imagine, and may be able to lead you to a vista that will take your breath away, if only you can overcome your boredom and fatigue at the rigors of the search.

      Remember the words of the musician who was asked which was greater, knowledge or wisdom. “Without knowledge,” he answered, “I could not play the violin. Without wisdom, I could not play the music.”

      Place yourself among those who live their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.

       CHAPTER 6

       WORK

      I often hear people say, “I have to find myself.” What they really mean is, “I have to make myself.” Life is an endlessly creative experience, and we are making ourselves every moment by every decision we make.

      That is why the work you choose for yourself is so crucial to your sense of value and well-being. No matter how much you might believe that your work is nothing more than what you do to make money, your work makes you who you are, because it is where you put your time.

      I remember several years ago when I was intent upon building my reputation as a sculptor. I took a job driving a cab, because, as I told people, “I want some job that I will never confuse with a profession.” Yet within six months I was talking like a cab driver, thinking like a cab driver, looking at the world through the eyes of a cab driver.