We are sum of mistakes and we learn everything by making mistakes. When we were kids, we just couldn't hear what our parents used to say when we were about to touch a candle flame. Our reflex kicked in when the flame hurt us and we registered that event in brain permanently. We build our knowledge base by etching the neurons and their interconnections. This etching process is called experience. As we gather such experiences, our intuition also grows and our intuition reflects in the form of our actions. Our action leads to mistake and the mistake is again fed back. It is a constant learning process. We are life long students. Some of us are quite aware about that and some of us are in the process of learning that.
But now the question is how to learn fast? One option is to learn from our mistakes/actions. Another option is learning from fellow human beings. We can agree to some extent that learning from others helps us to learn fast. But no faster. The lifetime of human beings are pretty long and if we rely on learning from human beings alone, it wont be sufficient. How about learning from animals and nature? How can it be possible to learn from animals and nature? In order to do that we ought to be simple and adopt a simplistic living. A simple living is not only leading life with less things but also living with mindful thinking.
A student asked his master. You say that each event is unique. An event occurs as it is interconnected with so many other events, some of them are dependent on other events and some of them are interdependent on other events. But yet, how can the solution to the problems or interpretation of these events can be generalized (or how come Buddha simplified that the root cause of all problems is "desire"). The master answered his student that it is all about simplification and abstraction. Simplification and abstraction are quite possible only when we live a mindful life - state of complete awareness. You have to simplify things leaving out irrelevant things and consider things that are relevant (which is abstraction). It is when you simplify, you will be able to abstract.
When we have total awareness, we can learn from ourselves, others, animals and nature. All the encounters will teach us something and even the restful mind will teach us something. Mindful Living is needed to understand interconnectedness of many events and hence a must for simplification and abstraction.
What do you think?
