Understanding Understanding

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Q: What is meant by Understanding?

A: I haven't Understood.

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That about sums it up.

We had this Senior Professor at IIT KGP living for a while in our young Faculty Hostel till his family joined him (happily for us). He had this most irritating mannerism: while holding forth on even such a trivial thing as the 3-Language Formula (his pet baby) he would peer at everyone after every sentence and ask ponderously: "Do you understand?".

Lucky he was an Esteemed Senior 15 years older to us; if he were our age and a friend, I would have given him a verbal slap every time he uttered those three Golden Words and diluted them infinitely (like in Kohlrausch Method).

When one is deeply troubled for months trying to make out a thing and fails and approaches another who he feels can help, it is the Golden Moment for the teacher and the taught (whatever their relative ages are). The teacher leaves everything he is doing at the moment and passes on his Understanding to his pupil as best as he can, mostly by examples one after the other.

If it clicks it is a Million-Dollar Moment for both.

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There are dozens of these Golden Moments in the Upanishads.

The best is in the Taittiriya Upanishad when Bhrigu is troubled and approaches his father Varuna to address the question that was troubling him for long.

Varuna shows the way and asks his son to spend more time struggling to Understand it by himself. Thereafter, every time Bhrigu comes up with an answer, Varuna asks him to struggle some more. This repeats four times. And finally Bhrigu Understands it all by himself and troubles his father no more.

Varuna was just helping his son dispel his Misunderstandings his own way:

The Best way to Teach (if you have the time and the inclination).

In the Chandogyopanishad, the sage Uddalaka sends his son Svetaketu in his 12th year to a Boarding School (Rugby?) for 12 years. At the end of which Svetaketu returns home thinking that he has learned all that is to be learned. Seeing his son's smugness, Uddalaka takes his Viva by asking him just a simple but fundamental question that baffles his son who says his teachers at Rugby didn't teach this thing; they would definitely have taught it if they knew the Question and its Answer!

Svetaketu then begs his father to let him know the answer: Golden Moment.

Svetakatu needs Nine different examples from his father: at the end of each of which Svetaketu begs his father: "Please teach me some more". Finally at the end of the Ninth, Svetaketu falls eloquently silent (the silence of fulfillment).

And there is this famous Instruction by Yagnyavalkya to his wife Maitreyi who was not interested in goods and goodies like his other wife Katyayeni; but asks her husband going forth as a mendicant to instruct her the gist of what he has learned in his life.

The detailed reply of the immensely delighted Yagnyavalkya forms the most sublime poetry of the bulky Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (with otherwise juicy stuff like the Song of Solomon in the Holy Bible).

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AND our Senior Professor tries to spread his querulous Message by asking: "Do you Understand?" after every silly sentence!!!

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It is said that students eager to learn come in 3 grades (to set their minds afire):

1. Like Coal: These need example after example

2. Like Dried Grass: These need one example

3. Like Gun Powder: These need just one word.

AND I was asked to teach 350 students in a Jumbo Lecture Class towards the end of my stay at IIT KGP.

But this Mass-Instruction does have its value: In those few to whom Feynman refers Gibbon, it just raises the right question. Framing the right question is so tough; and one good question makes the teacher struggle for decades to get the right answer.

I just asked that Senior Professor why during the New Moon when the Sun and the Moon are on the same side of the Earth there are tides on both sides of the Earth.

He left me in peace for the rest of our stay at KGP. The right question can be a silencer for tormentors.

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Nowadays I find in Hyderabad a new breed of schools for 8-year-olds: "Concept Schools".

Can anyone explain to me in simple words how a "Concept" is communicated....?

This of course begs the question: "What is a Concept?"

Please don't tell me the Online-Webster Definition!

I can look it up myself: "Something which is conceived in the mind".....

Looping the Loop!



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