Bookish Knowledge

See… even the very title needs no elaboration! Our mind pops up the ‘implied’ meaning!

Perhaps this has been the most difficult problem that I have been facing when trying to help people as a ‘volunteer’ when I was assigned the humble task(18 years ago), of ‘back-office-support’ after they attend certain spiritual oriented programs. Invariably, the bulk of them are already better informed than me, well learned, and unfortunately for me, already more clever in ‘worldly-ways’! What ever little progress that I ‘happened’ to make on my ‘approach’ to that pathless spiritual path, I owe it to two major contributors. One is my ‘weakness’ to blank-out when something is being told and look at it afresh, as if learning it for the first time, and more importantly, next contributor, my dear spiritual guide who is already a past-master at the art of molding such gullible much more effortlessly and very compassionately! In fact, I recognise how stupid I am for lack of true appreciation for that rare gift, only when I look at the tremendous rate of ‘drop-outs’ who constitute those well learned, well informed, and knowledgeable people!

(My earliest memories date back to childhood, where, I even misunderstood partially, a wonderful Sanskrit couplet/saying explained to me by my uncle… “Pustakastaatu Yaa Vidhya, parahasta gatam dhanam, karya kaale samutpanney, na sa vidya, na tat dhanam… meaning, knowledge lying in books, and our money in other person’s hands do not come to our rescue in times of need! That misunderstanding or rather the lack of it, persuaded me to jump into practical/live chase of spiritual oriented pursuits, instead of waiting for that abundant wealth of ancient texts to seep into me! ) Oh! This is tending to become more of a ‘confessional’ narrative! Quite redundant, to the purpose.

Surprisingly enough we have stories that show that unskilled people somehow manage to land that injured aircraft damaged in mid-air, with the pilots also disabled! It is not to belittle book-knowledge or theoretical-skill, but to bridge the gap in those people who have potential, but are yet to learn something theoretically. At least, they would not reduce the cooking time to exactly half, when they ‘trial-cook’ from a recipe book, using less than half the ingredients, to try it out!

I thought I made a wrong guess, when my answer tried to incline towards spiritual aspect, but was surprised, when the asker agreed to the answer, making a special mention about that ‘mystic’ element(in the comments about the answer)! I thought that the question confined itself to the practical implementation difficulties of managerial skills learnt in those business schools, where as my answer had failed to ‘touch’ any such aspect!

I on my part have to remain contended with what ever little ‘bookish knowledge’ that I happened to acquire/retain, and consider myself to be a bit fortunate to be able to manage with practical experience (especially in the field of my special interest!). At banks especially, they say ‘practice prevails over the law’. Needless to add, on a humorous note, even politicians seem to concur, when they practice utter disregard to all of the known bookish-laws!

It is the asker’s choice in my favor, with a relatively quick response, that prompted me to share it here with you.

Regards,
Psn(21st July, 2010)


http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100720064325AAylHa4&r=w#NbUvWzq9WThW9GWqYeRc

We are good in theory but very poor in practical life ,why? How can we use our bookish knowledge in real life?

My answer:
If only the answer, the solution to this question were so easy for implementation!

Robots are very practical. They perform as per the 'program-parameters' till the last ounce of energy (battery-power) is left in them! .... No hurdles like,........
a) if, but, how, why, only if.. etc, and
b) they don't have those negative emotions we know as anger, jealousy, hatred and fear!
c) lastly but not 'in least' their focus is never interrupted by their own 'thought-process', especially those doubt-creating & self-opposing, self-negating, self-canceling thoughts like we humans have.

These three are major differences, we can go on listing, smaller ones like procrastination (putting off, postponement of plans, etc).

On the other hand, if we are only willing, we can do better than a robot if our emotions are well balanced, because we have that unique human gift of self awareness, whereby, we can become flexible and also, we can draw that power, the mystic power from 'nature' which is quite logic-defying, rare and looks 'super-human' too (and hence quite difficult to even accept, agree, or listen to!).

As an abundant example, we do defy logic, when we experience that 'extra-gravitational' pull on our bed, when it is already late to get up, and we tend to once again yield to drowsy sleep, after waking at that irritating noise of the alarm clock!