MJ08 - 38 Blessings - Mastering Your Craft (09 of 39)

Last time you saw me we looked at blessing number seven,

Artfulness in knowledge or learnedness.

With the time at all today we will continue our series on enlightened living with blessing number eight,

Artfulness in application or perhaps put more simply mastering your craft.

Since the previous blessing we have already discovered the value of being artful in knowledge.

But this is not good enough.

It is also necessary to be artful in the way we apply what we know the subject of this blessing.

Many people confuse a knowledge with ability.

Artfulness in the application of knowledge means that even if you have learned an occupational subject,

If you have learned all the necessary theory,

You will need to transform that theory to practice allowing you to earn your living.

On the spiritual side,

Even if you have learned Dhamma theory,

You still have to transform that knowledge into Dhamma practice.

It's like someone who reads a manual of swimming who can memorize every page of the manual.

They know all the basic swimming strokes,

The differences between them.

But having read the book,

They put on the side of the swimming pool and jump in sinking without trace.

This is one reason why many graduates are unemployed.

They have only knowledge from examinations or from copying their college friends,

But they have no practical knowledge.

They expect to get a prestigious job in keeping with their prestigious degree and look down on almost every type of work.

When they have only academic knowledge,

But no practical experience,

They can hardly expect to choose what they want to work at.

No employer would want to take them on.

If they don't want to end up on the welfare line,

They need to be willing to take on any work they can find to get the practical experience,

Ideally,

Even before they graduate to make themselves more attractive as a prospect for employers.

If they can do this,

There will be talent scouts trying to track them down even before they graduate.

Some people get themselves a prestigious degree in accounting.

They become a lecturer in university because they can teach their students to become successful accountants.

Because of that,

They assume that they also must be a capable accountant.

Seeing their students are richer than they are,

They give up their teaching and set up shop themselves.

But as the saying goes,

For some teachers anyway,

Those who can do,

Those who can't teach.

After a while,

They realised there was a reason they should have stayed as a teacher because their business is tanking.

After bankruptcy,

They have to go back to teaching.

Only then would they realise the reality that knowledge and application of knowledge are completely different attributes.

The name of this 8th blessing on mastering your craft is derived from the Pali word Siddhang,

Which means one endowed with art history.

It means someone who is skilled in application of their knowledge.

The Bahu Sutta of Blessing 7 is one who is skilled in knowledge.

The person who has mastered this 8th blessing is one who can apply that knowledge fruitfully as well.

At this stage in the sequence of blessings,

We are not so worried about the ethics of our livelihood because we will return to this aspect later.

Nonetheless,

At this stage,

We still need to bear in mind that not all performances or displays of application of knowledge qualify as wholesome.

You can learn skills,

But it doesn't guarantee that using a skill would be a blessing.

Therefore,

Before consuming yourself to a skill,

You want to learn,

You have to consider the merits of it first,

For the harmony of society.

If you are a sculptor,

Then why not use your skill to sculpt Buddha images that can bring inspiration to others?

Draw,

Then why not draw the sort of pictures that would inspire others to do good deeds?

Even little skills like being able to make toys for one's children can help save spending your hard-earned money on movie tie-ins and merchandise.

So,

Keep things wholesome,

Bear in mind the following 6 qualities of applied work that demonstrate true artistry.

Firstly,

It must be refined.

Secondly,

It must add value to the raw materials.

I once read a book on Maori values where they have to think long and hard about fashioning a new canoe because the need and the workmanship have to justify cutting down the tree in the first place.

The same caveats would apply to leaving expensive ingredients in the hands of an incapable cook.

The third thing is the product of the work should lead to a creative rather than aggressive or destructive thinking.

A motor engineer should use their skill to build engines to help people in their everyday lives rather than to build weapons to wage war.

The fourth thing is that the product of the work shouldn't lead to sensual obsession.

Don't go studying the sort of arts that will stir up base emotions like burlesque or peep shows.

Even the nude section of the art gallery has different implications for mastering your craft than the portrait section.

Fifth,

The product of the work shouldn't lead to obsession with revenge.

For example,

One shouldn't engage in arts that will cause people to seek vengeance such as inventing propaganda slogans.

Lastly,

The product of the work shouldn't lead to delusion.

For example,

Supporting superstition or gullibility like the propagation of disinformation.

It's not only manual skills that qualify for fulfillment of the eighth blessing.

Mastering your craft can be applied through all three channels of body,

Speech and mind.

Mastering your craft through bodily action applies to various sorts of applied expertise like let's say plumbing,

Mechanics,

Painting,

Design,

Sculpture,

Photography,

Printing or other vocational skills such as a gardener,

Farmer,

Author or nurse.

And further than that,

Having the manners to walk,

Stand,

Sit and lie down politely,

Dressing appropriately,

Being hospitable,

Expressing respect and behaving in a cultivated way.

Mastering your craft through verbal action applies to communication skills,

Knowing what to say and how to say it in a way that will inspire the hearer towards virtue.

You will look at that verbal aspect of mastering your craft in more detail in the tenth blessing.

Mastering your craft through mental action applies to skillfulness in thinking,

Having one's wits about one and creative thinking.

In a nutshell,

Mastering your craft can be expressed through all three channels of body,

Speech and mind.

An important part of turning one's knowledge into skills is repetitive practice or rehearsal.

The 10,

000 hour rule is a theory that it takes 10,

000 hours of practice to become an expert in something and it seems to be most frequently applied in the fields of sport and music.

The Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell argued in his 2008 book Outliers that it appears that you need 10,

000 hours to become a world leader in any given field,

Alongside the usual requirements of opportunity and privilege in order to get that lucky break.

Examples of the 10,

000 hour phenomenon include musicians,

Athletes and entrepreneurs.

Bill Joy,

Who is sometimes known as the Edison of the internet,

Is one of the most influential people in computing history.

He was lucky enough that the University of Michigan kept its computer center open all night,

Which allowed him to practice computer programming for eight to ten hours a day.

While it's true that Bill Joy had an enormous aptitude for math,

He was also lucky enough to be given the opportunity to get in 10,

000 hours of programming practice,

Which was basically just down to luck.

So either Joy was talented and put in the effort,

But he also needed a whole lot of fortune of circumstance to come together so that he could amass 10,

000 hours of practice,

Which meant that by the time he was in his third year at Berkeley,

He was up to the task of rewriting Unix source code.

To take another example,

This time from musicians,

There was a survey at Berlin's elite academy of music where violinists were divided up into three groups.

Those with the potential to become world-class soloists,

Those who were judged to be merely good,

And those who were unlikely ever to play professionally.

They were asked a simple question.

Since you first picked up a violin,

How many hours have you practiced?

By the age of 20,

The elite students had amassed a total of 10,

000 hours,

The good students 8,

000,

And the future music teachers only 4,

000 hours.

Similarly,

The Beatles didn't start out as a famous group.

They started out as a mediocre garage band.

However,

The group had the experience in Hamburg before they got their big break that they were required to play eight hours a day and seven days a week.

They weren't able just to do their best numbers.

They had to learn a lot of covers and being foreign,

They had to put in a lot more energy into their routines to come across effectively.

Between 1960 and 1962,

They played a total of 270 nights in Hamburg.

They went out average and they came back uniquely excellent.

No one else sounded like them,

With a total of 1,

200 live performances,

A figure which most professional bands struggle to achieve in the course of their entire careers.

From the Beatles Hamburg experience,

A particular promoter from Germany was in London scouting for bands and met a guy from Liverpool who knew the Beatles just randomly in a bar in Soho,

And it was this connection which propelled them to world fame.

The Bill Gates story is also told as one of individual grit.

He started out as a company that needed someone to write payroll software.

Gates took the advantage of that opportunity and he happened to live within walking distance of Washington State University,

Which had free computer time between 3 and 6 am that Gates took advantage of.

All the above opportunities gave Gates time to practice programming and by the time he dropped out of Harvard he was way past his 10,

000 hours of programming experience.

So what truly distinguishes Bill Joy,

Bill Gates,

Berlin Elite Violinists and the Beatles was not their extraordinary talent necessarily,

But their effort through all the cases that I mentioned,

But rather their extraordinary opportunities to practice for 10,

000 hours.

This seems to be the rule rather than the exception,

With software engineers and rock stars alike.

This pattern has been found also amongst the musicians,

Sports stars and grandmasters at chess.

This idea that to become an expert requires a critical mass of practice hours surfaces again and again,

So much so that the magic number of 10,

000 hours to be an expert has emerged.

Since Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book,

It must be admitted that there have been some detractors to the 10,

000 hour theory.

For example,

The caveats that the practice has to be deliberate,

Focused practice with experts on hand.

It's also been pointed out that emotions play a critical part in learning,

That mental practice is surprisingly powerful and that practice takes on meaning and relevance when the goal is connected to purpose and long-term values.

Nonetheless,

The idea that practice makes perfect continues to hold water,

Particularly for the practice of meditation.

Therefore,

If you want to master any skill within a five and a half year period,

You will need to make sure that for 44 weeks of the year you practice your skills five days a week for eight hours a day.

I suppose this is what's known as professionalism.

So we have time for a quick story to illustrate the value of applied knowledge as compared with mere theory.

Once upon a time there was a young professor who was making a sea voyage.

He was highly educated and had a long trail of letters after his name,

But he had little experience of life.

In the crew of the ship on which he was traveling,

There was an illiterate old sailor and every evening the sailor would come to visit the cabin of the young professor to listen to him hold forth on many different subjects.

He was very impressed with the learning of this young man.

One evening the sailor was about to leave the cabin after several hours of conversation and the professor asked,

Old man have you ever studied geology?

What's that sir?

The science of earth.

No sir,

I've never been able to go to school or college,

I've never studied anything.

Old man you've wasted quarter of your life.

With a long face the old sailor went away.

If such a learned person says so,

Certainly it must be true he thought and I wasted a quarter of my life.

Next evening as the sailor was about to leave the cabin the professor asked him,

Old man have you ever studied oceanography?

What's that sir?

The science of the sea.

No sir,

I've never studied anything.

Old man you've surely wasted half of your life.

With a still longer face the sailor went away.

I've wasted half my life,

This learned man says so.

Next evening as the sailor was about to leave the cabin he heard,

Old man have you ever studied meteorology?

What's that sir?

I've never heard of it.

Well it's the science of the wind,

The rain and the weather.

No sir,

As I told you I've never been to any school,

I've never studied anything.

You've not studied the science of the earth on which you live,

You've not said the science of the sea on which you earn your livelihood,

You have not studied the science of the weather on which you encounter every day.

Old man you've surely wasted three quarters of your life.

The old sailor was very unhappy,

This learned man says I've wasted three quarters of my life,

Certainly I must have wasted three quarters of my life like he said.

Next day it was the turn of the old sailor however,

He came running to the cabin of the young man and cried,

Professor have you ever studied swimology?

Swimology what do you mean?

Can you swim sir?

No I don't think I know.

Professor the ship has struck a rock and is sinking,

Those who can swim will reach the nearby shore but those who cannot swim will drown.

I'm sorry professor but I have surely got to inform you that you've lost the whole of your life.

So you may study all the ologies of the world but if you don't learn swimology then all your studies are useless.

You may read and write books on swimming,

You may debate on its subtle theoretical aspects but none of these are going to help you if you refuse to enter the water yourself.

So being able to master the applied art of swimming will certainly be more of a blessing to you than the combined knowledge of three academic disciplines once your ship goes belly up in the middle of the ocean.

So to return to our subject matter for today on the mastering of our craft,

If you want to transform your academic knowledge into transferable skills you have to possess five qualities that include confidence,

Strong health,

Humility,

Diligence,

And wisdom.

So let's look at each in turn.

Firstly you need to believe in what you do or at least have a confidence in yourself.

You have to believe that what you're doing is of real benefit and virtue.

You should be enthusiastic about doing it and have the confidence that you can make a success out of it.

Some doctors for example get that qualification but have no confidence in the ability of modern medicine to fix people's problems.

It could be that they'd be better off switching to preventative medicine instead.

They need to believe in what they're doing if they're going to make a success out of it and to dedicate themselves to it.

Secondly you need to safeguard your health.

You shouldn't be the sort of person who's a hypochondriac or who catches cold simply by sitting in a draft.

If you are always worried about your health then it will be hard for you to succeed in learning a trade.

A practical way to safeguard your health from all the possible risks is very simple which is to keep the five precepts strictly.

If you neglect your health or willfully destroy yourself by engaging in behaviors contrary to the five precepts then you'll find it hard to ever achieve success in learning a trade.

Thirdly you need to be humble.

Those who spend all day bragging about what they will do but never get around to doing it will never manage to master a trade.

No one wants to accept someone who is boastful as an apprentice.

The only skill which boastful people manage to develop is the ability to find fault with other people in order to let everyone know how wonderful they are themselves.

By pushing others down they're able to hoist themselves up in the estimation of others.

The habit of a boastful person is to take very minor virtues or abilities and exaggerate it beyond all proportion.

Fourthly you need to be diligent.

If you have only knowledge but you're too lazy to do anything with it then you'll be no more than knowledgeable for the rest of your life.

Lastly you need to cultivate wisdom.

Wisdom is cultivated by being observant and reflecting on new skills and techniques.

Part of the process of mastering our craft which we will look at now.

So you cannot acquire wisdom just by lying around aimlessly.

You have to be active in your search for wisdom according to six steps.

Firstly you need to be observant of yourself and the things around you.

It's all very well to say be observant but in fact it's important to know what to observe.

In a nutshell our powers of observation should always attempt to seek out the good and useful characteristics of the things we observe.

You have to start by observing yourself first because to observe yourself is theoretically the simplest.

You should start by noticing aspects of your lifestyle for example your eating and sleeping habits to try to define what is appropriate or inappropriate and where the point of equilibrium lies for various factors.

If you eat too much it will make you sleepy.

If you eat too little your stomach will rumble at night.

Here you have to notice what happens to you if you go to bed late.

You have to notice what happens to you if you get up late which is better for you to go to bed at 10 at night and wake up at dawn or to go to bed at midnight and to wake up at 7 in the morning.

Once you know how to be observant of yourself then you can gradually extend your observation to the things around you.

We notice our clothes,

How our clothes get dirty at the collar or around the cuffs.

We notice what sort of clothes are suitable for what sort of situation.

We gradually extend our observation to the things more distant from us.

Noticing how to speak to people in an appropriate way,

How to speak to people to inspire them instead of making them lazy.

Notice the characteristics of things around you.

If you train yourself to be observant even of yourself any skill you want to learn will soon be within your reach and wisdom will follow.

Secondly you need to train yourself to do everything better than best.

Never look down on any work that comes your way.

Never think any task you do is unimportant.

Even simple tasks like your handwriting should be done with care.

From the time when a child is young they should be trained to write neatly whatever they do so that being careful about whatever work they are to do in the future will be ingrained from an early age.

Some people write with such messy handwriting that others can barely decipher what's been written.

Someone who writes like that since their youth until adulthood will soon get themselves in the habit of doing everything in a shoddy way never achieving anything better than passable quality.

If you do everything to the best of your ability skills and abilities will soon come your way without you even having to spend time looking for them.

Even if you don't study the specific qualities of a particular art if you are always observant of quality and do things cleanly and in a detailed way even though you cannot produce artwork for yourself you will at least be able to tell quality in the work of others.

Once you have trained your mind to be refined and to notice details even the way you speak will be of a higher quality because it is rooted in reason and confidence since your train of thought has become more systematic.

Thirdly you need to train yourself to be refined in all that you do.

Some might accuse you of being obsessive but if you insist on high quality in your work even in the details before long you'll start to master your craft because as they say for the challenging skills the devil is in the detail.

Fourthly you should always look for better ways to do the same thing.

Sometimes you can already do a task but nonetheless you should always look for quicker more efficient and more cost-effective ways to do the same thing.

It will force you always to improve your skills and never become complacent.

Fifth you need to apprentice yourself to an established craftsman.

Seek out craftsmen in the field which you want to master and become apprentice to them.

Be respectful and helpful to them so they will have the compassion to push you further in the direction of mastering your craft.

It's like the policy deployed since the late 19th century by William Stuart Halstead as a method to train surgeons at Johns Hopkins University residency program of see one do one teach one where capable students were not only those who could witness and perform surgery they're also able to teach surgery to others too.

In that way all your mastery of knowledge will not only be limited to overcoming your own shortcomings but the application of knowledge can also be used to overcome shortcomings of others as well.

Lastly you need to make sure you meditate regularly.

The art of training our capabilities of action and speech is rooted in our capability to train the mind.

Systematic thinking and observation can only be developed when the mind is well trained.

Train the mind through meditation will make the acquisition of other capabilities easy because to be able to meditate is the ultimate skill since it deals with our discernment of detail at its root.

If you remember back to the learning process already described in the previous blessing you'll realize that mastering a craft concerns the last two steps of the knowledge acquisition process which involves the application of that knowledge for the good of ourselves and others.

Some people use their knowledge and skills only for their own selfish benefits.

Sometimes they are afraid that if they teach all they know to anyone else and that those other people will set up as a competitor or sell their trade secrets to an industrial spy.

They're hesitant about sharing benefit with others.

Call to mind the sharing of vocational knowledge is one of the forms of generosity we mentioned back in blessing number five which was termed Vityadhana.

The attitude which is the healthiest for rounding off a body of knowledge that you've learned is to use your knowledge both for your own benefit and for the benefit of others too.

If you want to learn artfulness in application quickly you have to make sure that you're not the sort of person who can do nothing better than find fault with the work of others.

Next you're training of course to be a professional critic.

If you've done nothing but criticize others when it comes to your turn to show off your mastery of your craft then you will not have the confidence to let others see what you've made or done for fear they will criticize you in the same way that you have done for them.

In such a case you'll end up as someone who never achieves anything.

Although we will revisit the subject more in blessing number 18 with any skill or task that you master it's also essential to locate the ethical gray areas within that job so that you always keep your diligence on the right side of the law of karma.

But for today let's finish off with a story to illustrate the point that a person who has mastery even of a single skill can eke out their livelihood with ease.

In this story we will see how flicking goat dung can be a skill that can transform someone from rags to riches and even bring significant benefit to the whole of a nation.

So here comes the story.

In ancient times there was a child with polio.

His legs were so weak that he couldn't walk anywhere unaided.

He had to stay wherever his friends put him.

He couldn't even get up.

Although his body was disabled his intelligence was as smart as a whip.

He didn't look down on any subject.

The child would practice flicking sand until he could flick sand a long distance very precisely.

The boy used his skills to earn favors from others.

The boy could flick sand so accurately that he could shoot holes in the leaves of trees above.

Not only holes but he could shoot holes in the shape of anything he wanted.

Whether they be the shapes of rabbits or tigers or deer.

The boy would shoot holes in leaves to the order of other children in return for candies and snacks.

The boy with polio had never studied in school but through his skill he had more treats to eat than the other children every day.

One day the boy was flicking sand on the sand keep for the other children.

When the king passed by all the other children ran away and the boy with polio was left alone because he was unable to run away.

The king came to rest in the shade of the tree by the sand heap and when he looked up he was surprised to see that almost every leaf of the tree had been perforated in the shape of different animals.

The king asked how such a tree had come to be that way and found out that it was due to the skills of the boy with polio.

The king thought the skills of such a boy should not be wasted in a sand pit.

So the king happened to have something on his mind which was every time he had a meeting of his counsellors there was a particular counsellor who would always interrupt and dominate the discussion persistently wasting the time for everyone else in the meeting.

King asked the boy if someone were to open their mouth would you be able to shoot goat dung into their mouth in the same way that you flick sand through the leaves and the boy said it would be a piece of cake.

The king arranged that the boy be taken into the palace whereas all the people with all their health and strength never got the chance to visit the palace at all but because of his skills this disabled boy got the VIP treatment.

Every time there was a meeting the boy was concealed behind a curtain in the meeting room and every time the counsellor in question opened his mouth to speak the boy flicked goat dung into his mouth.

The boy was so fast that the counsellor didn't even know where the strange taste in his mouth had come from.

The counsellor would want to speak but change his mind since every time he would have to swallow what was in his mouth.

One day the counsellor had opened his mouth so many times that the boy had used up a whole bucket full of goat dung.

The king at that time felt sorry for the counsellor and was afraid he was going to get dysentery so he ordered the counsellor to go and wash his mouth out immediately and told him to reduce the amount he said or else in future he would get two bucketfuls of goat dung in his mouth instead.

On future occasions the counsellor had to consider carefully before saying anything in case he became the target of more flying goat dung.

As a result of having more effective meetings the economics of the kingdom improved considerably and the king rewarded the disabled boy by allocating all the money earned in taxes from a particular province to that boy as private income.

The boy grew up to be a rich man as a result of a single skill simply because he put his mind to mastering his craft.

So this session I have introduced you blessing number eight on mastering your craft.

For my next session I'll move on to the ninth blessing on the topic of self-discipline which explains how being self-disciplined in the way you apply your abilities can be a pathway of blessings.

Hopefully as a result of today's session for those of you who are already knowledgeable you'll be a little bit more savvy now about how to become skilled in applying the things that you know.

So for today this is me Pratniklas signing off for now so long folks and stay safe.