I am not like I was before – is that not the defining element of understanding? It is not something that requires work to maintain, because it changes the very way we look at things.

While I am still trying to learn basic Japanese, I have reflected on the different ways of learning: By association, by repetition and by understanding. These are complementary, that is to say they complete each other, but they are also very different. In particular I would say that understanding is in a class of its own.

Associations fade over time, and habits take time to build. But understanding happens in a moment and lasts for a lifetime. In light of this, we might wish that we could learn by understanding only; but in this world that is not possible. On the contrary, the “inferior” forms of learning seem to be necessary to lay the foundation for the experience of understanding. “Before we can make apple pie, we must grow the apples.”

***

I have reflected a little on how this applies to our spiritual life, if any. I can’t help but notice that the monasteries of the various religions all seem to be focused on habit (pun not originally intended). There are routines to be followed for every hour of the day, and they are followed strictly. It may seem to the casual bystander that people are reshaped into robots, mindless machines of the religion. And certainly that could happen. But I believe that the purpose of all this habituation is to lay the groundwork for understanding. Whether that happens in each individual life or not, is another matter.

The secular reader may discard the possibility that there is a human spirit, but look at it this way: Even if we know today that Earth rotates, rather than the Sun circling around us, the experienced reality of the sunrise and sunset is spot on. In the same way, even if we should be able to find another way of looking at spiritual realities, the experience of them will remain, as it has remained for thousands of years.

And in light of this, I hope we can agree that understanding seem to take place at a deeper level, which may be that of the spirit or at least the soul. These words are not interchangeable, the soul is personal but the spirit not so much. And when you gain and understanding, the flash of profound insight that makes your view of something suddenly tilt and you see it from a whole new perspective, I think that may belong to the deeper part of you that is not entirely personal.

For instance, say you are 12 years old and live in a poor family and one day you realize why Pythagoras had it right about those right-angled triangles. (It really is very obvious once you see it.) Before then, you had just read it in a book and accepted it as a fact. Now that you understand it, it becomes more true than your current personality. Even if you grow up and become affluent, even if you fall in love and marry and have kids, even if you divorce and suffer from depression for over a year, even if you lose your religion and gain another, the understanding you had that day remains unchanged. You are never going to look at those triangles the same way again, even if decades have passed.

The purpose of spiritual practice, I believe, is not to simply accustom you to living outwardly a life that is compatible with your religion. That is certainly not a bad thing, but the idea is that at some point a revelation will strike like lightning in your soul and you will realize The Truth. From then on, even if you make mistakes, even if good people happen to do bad things, even if your outward conditions and even your state of mind may vary over time, you will never look at life the same way again.

“Enlightenment is like being hit by lightning” say eastern Buddhists, meaning that you cannot train yourself up to enlightenment by practice; “but meditation is like being outside in a thunderstorm.” In other words, you can reduce your chance of being hit by Enlightenment, or more generally by Understanding, if you don’t stay in the zone where it is likely to happen. Sometimes it happens anyway, to the undeserving and unaware. Often it does not happen even if you seek it for a long time. But you can increase your chances, and it is not like you are doing anything criminal in the meantime. Just don’t mistake the habit for the understanding.

Well, that was a strange revelation from memrising Japanese vocabulary. But then I live a strange life, filled with small things. I guess my life is a bit like a bonsai garden. ^_^