Method of learning and through it, the realization of self - An Indian perspective

Following a rather grueling period at work in 2024, when I was on a customer site and under a lot of pressure to deliver results, I realized a major shortfall in my ways -

I didn't know how to learn.

Years of moving through the Indian education system made me believe that degrees were indicators of my worth in society. Turns out, nothing could be further from the truth. They barely turned out to be an indicator of competence and distracted me from mastering the things that were true to my nature.

I realized this after being faced with the culture of a startup where performance, trust, consistency, expertise, and the ability to analyze problems and requirements accurately counted, I realized that while I may have partially gotten through the door, it's hellish and unscalable to continue working without these foundational skills. I felt cheated of four years of my time studying computer science by all the classes mandated by instructors who were barely older than us (with some notable exceptions), with their AI-generated slideshows and quizzes and unethical placement cell practices built to ensure that every single student contributed to the university's KPIs. I was dazed for what felt like an indefinite time.

The point when I escaped the survivalist nature of this hellscape, however briefly, was during a pivotal conversation with my manager at the time.

A smart guy by all means, and from my impression, very in touch with the concept of विद्या, or learning, and how to carry it out.

He described the process in pretty simple terms - "Don't use too many words in place of defining the problem or jump right into things without thinking, otherwise you'll miss the mark of what you're trying to achieve. Just read, and do."

I didn't fully grasp what he meant at the time, but in retrospect, I realized that this was something that was touched upon in my childhood Sanskrit education.

Figure 1: Dhritharashtra in conversation with Sanatsujatha (ref.)

आचार्यात् पादमादत्ते पादं शिष्यः स्वमेधया ।

सब्रह्मचारिभ्यः पादं पादं कालक्रमेण च ॥

- सुभाषितम् derived from महाभारत उद्योगपर्व अध्याया ४४, a conversation between Sanatsujatha and Dhritharashtra on the nature of ब्रह्मन् and how to attain it through विद्या.

"One-fourth is obtained from the teacher, one-fourth from one's मेध, one-fourth from peers/classmates, and one-fourth from the passage of time."

I've retained मेध as is here due to a unidimensional translation in most sources as 'Intelligence'.

In reality, it's a multidimensional word that in this case, simultaneously means one's wisdom (obtained by study) and sacrifice (through effort), i.e, to read and do.

In the process of learning, you can attain a strong foundation in any subject through

1. A teacher who can show you the way and provide the aperture of exposure to the world.

2. Your reading and doing (be it through practice, thinking, meditation or memorization).

3. Your conversations and interactions with your peers studying the same domain.

4. Experience.

   
   

When choosing what to read, a common concern that came to mind was - how do I know if reading this textbook will give me the knowledge I need? What if I invest a lot of time in this book and realize it doesn't help me achieve what I wanted to achieve through it at all?

Reading only begets a solution that you have to individually come up with to achieve a goal. To verify if something you're about to read serves your purpose, just research how to achieve your goal. For example, if I want to write a ROS/C++ package to execute a behaviour in a robotic arm, then I would search for how to do that and make a list of all the things that I don't know to execute that process.

A Google search will reveal that you need to know how to write a behaviour and how to integrate it with the robotic arm. Behaviours are written as behaviour trees, and there you go. You have topic number 1 - behaviour trees. Find your आचार्य (an online course or a video) and a textbook on the topic that derives a behaviour tree from an axiomatic space and implement it (read and do - मेध). The video will expose you to more applications and resources for your concept, and sometimes even a peer group in the comments/ attached forums.

As you focus on your holistic education in this topic, covering the classes, reading, and conversations with your peers (स्वभ्रह्मचारिभ्यः), you can ask questions on how to integrate this with a real-world system (like your robotic arm that you wanted to work on). Someone will inevitably respond or point you to a place to learn a design pattern to do this integration, and even perhaps, introduce you to a tool like MoveIt and ready-made robotic arm simulation files.

Now you can embark on your project and accumulate the experience (कालक्रामः) of designing and implementing the whole thing, preferably in a planned manner, following system engineering methodologies so that you stay aligned and on target. The quality of your work will be determined by how tangible your standards are.

Moving to the other side of the origin of that सुभाशितम्, we have the overarching युङ् that this enables us to acheive, being presented by Krishna to Arjuna at Kurukshetra in the form of ज्ञानयोग, one of the many युजः being presented to him at the time, and the one that covers a path to acheive मोक्श through philosophical and intellectual inquiry to understand the nature of reality and one's place in it.

The concept of मोक्श is a bit difficult to present in an article of this scope, so I'll use the heirarchy of needs put forward by Abraham Maslow in his paper, A Theory of Human Motivation (ref.) as a simpler thought framework to highlight a path to self realization by equating the ultimate human goals of self-actualization and मोक्श. It needs to be noted at this point that I'm using this as a means to simplify what मोक्श means in the scope of ज्ञानयोग or the yoga of knowledge. Even Maslow's original work was criticized for lacking empirical support and for potentially oversimplifying the complexity of human needs.

Figure 2: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (ref.)

In today's world, it's impractical not to work unless you're born into wealth, which most of us aren't. However, being a software engineer in India, I make enough money to take care of my physiological and safety needs and also put away a good sum for my future. Social needs are highly unique to the nature of the individual and a parallel pursuit to what's being discussed altogether. One could say the same about self-esteem. As presented by Maslow,

The esteem needs. -- All people in our society (with a few pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. By firmly based self-esteem, we mean that which is soundly based upon real capacity, achievement and respect from others. These needs may be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom.[5] Secondly, we have what [p. 382] we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.[6] These needs have been relatively stressed by Alfred Adler and his followers, and have been relatively neglected by Freud and the psychoanalysts. More and more today however there is appearing widespread appreciation of their central importance.

For a stable and firmly based high evaluation of oneself, be it through external or internal validation, mastery is important. Perhaps some older folks may refute this, but it seems like you can't build the trust needed for this and also suck at everything your whole life.

Okay. Knowing now that it's not an option to suck at everything your whole life, how can we choose a direction? How do we find that thing that we don't want to suck at?

The ज्ञानयोग presented by Krishna advises the seeker to look out for a guru based on rigorous self-assessment and intuition and devote themselves to them. This is a rather non-deterministic methodology, and I couldn't find any non-derived sources proposing alternate methods. I guess it makes sense. Why would you need determinism for this in an age when you were free to devote yourself to your spiritual upbringing, unburdened by economics and other learning interests?

For modern times, this pursuit can be augmented by another concept from psychology.

生き甲斐 is a theory on finding the reason for being, presented by Mieko Kamiya in her book 生き甲斐について (1966, ref.). The kanji in 生き甲斐 (pronounced いきがい when conjugated) translates to' a motivating force'. A reason to live, if you will.

生き甲斐 is a great method to narrow down this reason because one of the sanity checks it employs to verify the viability of a field to dedicate your life to is if it can be profitable, which ensures that you'll be able to find a passion that can keep you sustained in a world where cash flow is essential to meet our physiological and safety needs. Also, choosing a job that allows you to pursue your intellectual interests allows you to expand on the experiential पादं that we discussed in the introductory सुभाशितम् to a lifelong pursuit, making you stronger in your field of interest the more time you spend, which you will no matter what because you need to put food on the table at the end of the day. It healthily relieves you of the option to run away from your challenges. Makes sense when you note that this book came out at the cusp of Japan's economic boom in their post-war reconstruction era.

Hector Garcia and Ichigo Ichie present a really good Venn diagram in his book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life that encapsulates these sanity checks.

Figure 3: Ikigai visualized (ref.)

ज्ञानयोग provides you with the framework for self-realization through study and work, which provides you with an assurance of continual improvement in the field you choose, covering what you're good at. What the world needs can either be determined for yourself by your values or through a profit motive. The latter might work out better since that almost assures that you'll be paid for your work.

This allows you to simplify the question of what you should dedicate your life to, to - What do I love doing that meets these conditions?

This thought framework ultimately allows us to choose to pursue what we love from the get-go and free ourselves from being pushed into templates pre-determined by society that could potentially ignore the true धर्म of the individual and ensures that societal constructs don't force a person into making choices that are against their nature, trapping them in the suffocating position of being stuck in a life that they never truly had a say in.

I'm glad for that difficult experience on-site. Reflecting on it through the lens of ज्ञानयोग satisfied my need for assurance in my self-actualization, and I hope that putting this out there gives more folks the peace of mind that it gave me.