This blog hosts articles contributed by members of the Chicago Zen Center. For news about events at the Center and in Chicago, please visit our El Que No Se Aventura No Cruza La Mar
by Sean Poust
I came into learning my second language, Spanish, in much the same manner as I came into Zen practice: out of the blue I simply decided that I wanted to do it. I came into both with a rather fantastic number of preconceptions and ideas about the best way to learn, the amount of time it should take to get from point A to point B, the manner in which I would get there, and most importantly—or perhaps worst of all—the notion that I was good at this.
After three semesters of college-level Spanish, I arrived where I am now: Chillán, Chile. This is the city where the Chilean equivalent of George Washington was born, Bernardo O’Higgins and it lies in the heart of Chilean wine and agricultural territory. Along with this territory comes a culture of folclor (traditional folklore music) with singing and the national dance, the Cueca. There are also shopping malls and huge stores that are almost exactly the same as those in the US, save the fact that they speak Spanish instead of English. However, within walking distance from the mall—albeit a generous walking distance—one can find people who get around walking or on horseback and raise a good deal of what they eat. It is very interesting to see the interactions between the new, modern global economy and the older agricultural one and the delicate and changing equilibrium that exists between the two. Here, I live with a normal Chilean family, with a mom and two children: a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. I attend classes at the Universidad del Bio-Bio and spend my time trying to integrate myself into Chilean life as much as I can.
In this environment my real Spanish lessons began. Quickly finding out that my three semesters of language, my ideas about how to learn and how good I thought I was did very little to help me at the beginning, I panicked. I spent a hefty amount of time looking for Spanish immersion schools in Santiago (the capital here and where about a third of the country lives and a majority of the institutions of Chile). I looked for things on the Internet about the best strategies to learn another language and how one should organize oneself in order to learn the language in the fastest manner possible. Besides this, I would profusely apologize for the errors that I would make in speaking with my family and my friends at school and I would often be quite nervous when trying to talk to people. Studying grammar treatises was another of my frequented activities.
I soon found out that none of this really helped me all that much. I cannot recall ever reading a grammar treatise as a child and yet, my grammar at 5 years of age in English was better than my grammar in Spanish now, despite the rather large amount of time that I have spent studying grammar. This is not to say that studying grammar is not a worthy activity, quite the contrary, the grammar is the superstructure that one needs in order to speak, but it is not a language. The postures, bell and traditions of Zen are needed to practice Zen, but they do not constitute Zen practice. As an example, let us suppose that someone knows all the grammar rules and all the words in another language, would that person know how to speak and interact with people?
Personally, I feel that the answer to that question is no. If that were the case, that person would be a word processor, capable of finding everything that is wrong with a written or spoken language, but incapable of really producing it. Language learning, like Zen practice, is an intensely human process; the process changes us, changes the very structure of our brains, there are no shortcuts. Implicitly, a shortcut cannot exist, as that would mean that one could change without the tortuous process of struggle. Having a shortcut would be similar to being able to train for a bike race by watching videos; one has to get out on the bike to improve. To practice Zen one has to sacrifice and work; likewise, to learn language, one has to get out there, speak and try to communicate. There may be techniques and tools, but there are no ways around the work, as much as we might look for them. Personally, I like to hide in superstructures like grammar, but to really get somewhere, one has to internalize and forget about those constructions and just talk, just communicate... just the practice. Sound familiar?
In the process of acquiring a new language later in life, one realizes that the other tongue is not just another version of the mother tongue, but rather a whole new system of conveying ideas; one could even say the foreign tongue is a new way of thinking. I have realized that what is commonly spoken and discussed in Spanish is very different from what is said in English and that the entire structure of the language is different, more precise in some ways, less in others. Many things simply do not have good translations. For me, I have discovered that Spanish is a completely new way of rendering myself, a totally new way of displaying myself and my thoughts to the world. I see a certain parallel with this and Zen practice; Zen is a wholly new way of rendering ourselves—or perhaps un-rendering ourselves—to the world. We seem to have honestly no idea how to step forward at some times, other than to just work at it in an inglorious, extended and continuing manner.
When I had recently arrived and was feeling somewhat discouraged at how far I still had to go, my Spanish tutor told me, “You never stop learning a language.” At the time, I didn’t really appreciate that statement, as I still thought of the progression in another language more like a light switch, one day, you just wake up and everything’s done. During the beginning of my Zen practice, I similarly thought that one day, I would come home from Sesshin and have everything figured out, sort of like toast in a toaster. However, that interpretation misses the point. There is a saying in Spanish, “El que no se aventura no cruza la mar: Que no se arriesga no pasa la mar.” Literally translated, “He who doesn’t dare doesn’t cross the sea: he who doesn’t risk himself does not pass the sea.” In language and in Zen, the determining factor is how much of yourself do you throw into it: all of yourself or enough to still feel comfortable? Forget about the progress and descend into the practice. Are you going to leave some of yourself on one shore so that you’re okay if you sink? Or do you go out there with the intention of sinking, sinking into the exploration so that it doesn’t matter any more? Nothing ventured, nothing gained; everything ventured, ¿quién sabe?
Copyright 2006 Zoe Kaufman
I came into learning my second language, Spanish, in much the same manner as I came into Zen practice: out of the blue I simply decided that I wanted to do it. I came into both with a rather fantastic number of preconceptions and ideas about the best way to learn, the amount of time it should take to get from point A to point B, the manner in which I would get there, and most importantly—or perhaps worst of all—the notion that I was good at this.
After three semesters of college-level Spanish, I arrived where I am now: Chillán, Chile. This is the city where the Chilean equivalent of George Washington was born, Bernardo O’Higgins and it lies in the heart of Chilean wine and agricultural territory. Along with this territory comes a culture of folclor (traditional folklore music) with singing and the national dance, the Cueca. There are also shopping malls and huge stores that are almost exactly the same as those in the US, save the fact that they speak Spanish instead of English. However, within walking distance from the mall—albeit a generous walking distance—one can find people who get around walking or on horseback and raise a good deal of what they eat. It is very interesting to see the interactions between the new, modern global economy and the older agricultural one and the delicate and changing equilibrium that exists between the two. Here, I live with a normal Chilean family, with a mom and two children: a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. I attend classes at the Universidad del Bio-Bio and spend my time trying to integrate myself into Chilean life as much as I can.
In this environment my real Spanish lessons began. Quickly finding out that my three semesters of language, my ideas about how to learn and how good I thought I was did very little to help me at the beginning, I panicked. I spent a hefty amount of time looking for Spanish immersion schools in Santiago (the capital here and where about a third of the country lives and a majority of the institutions of Chile). I looked for things on the Internet about the best strategies to learn another language and how one should organize oneself in order to learn the language in the fastest manner possible. Besides this, I would profusely apologize for the errors that I would make in speaking with my family and my friends at school and I would often be quite nervous when trying to talk to people. Studying grammar treatises was another of my frequented activities.
I soon found out that none of this really helped me all that much. I cannot recall ever reading a grammar treatise as a child and yet, my grammar at 5 years of age in English was better than my grammar in Spanish now, despite the rather large amount of time that I have spent studying grammar. This is not to say that studying grammar is not a worthy activity, quite the contrary, the grammar is the superstructure that one needs in order to speak, but it is not a language. The postures, bell and traditions of Zen are needed to practice Zen, but they do not constitute Zen practice. As an example, let us suppose that someone knows all the grammar rules and all the words in another language, would that person know how to speak and interact with people?
Personally, I feel that the answer to that question is no. If that were the case, that person would be a word processor, capable of finding everything that is wrong with a written or spoken language, but incapable of really producing it. Language learning, like Zen practice, is an intensely human process; the process changes us, changes the very structure of our brains, there are no shortcuts. Implicitly, a shortcut cannot exist, as that would mean that one could change without the tortuous process of struggle. Having a shortcut would be similar to being able to train for a bike race by watching videos; one has to get out on the bike to improve. To practice Zen one has to sacrifice and work; likewise, to learn language, one has to get out there, speak and try to communicate. There may be techniques and tools, but there are no ways around the work, as much as we might look for them. Personally, I like to hide in superstructures like grammar, but to really get somewhere, one has to internalize and forget about those constructions and just talk, just communicate... just the practice. Sound familiar?
In the process of acquiring a new language later in life, one realizes that the other tongue is not just another version of the mother tongue, but rather a whole new system of conveying ideas; one could even say the foreign tongue is a new way of thinking. I have realized that what is commonly spoken and discussed in Spanish is very different from what is said in English and that the entire structure of the language is different, more precise in some ways, less in others. Many things simply do not have good translations. For me, I have discovered that Spanish is a completely new way of rendering myself, a totally new way of displaying myself and my thoughts to the world. I see a certain parallel with this and Zen practice; Zen is a wholly new way of rendering ourselves—or perhaps un-rendering ourselves—to the world. We seem to have honestly no idea how to step forward at some times, other than to just work at it in an inglorious, extended and continuing manner.
When I had recently arrived and was feeling somewhat discouraged at how far I still had to go, my Spanish tutor told me, “You never stop learning a language.” At the time, I didn’t really appreciate that statement, as I still thought of the progression in another language more like a light switch, one day, you just wake up and everything’s done. During the beginning of my Zen practice, I similarly thought that one day, I would come home from Sesshin and have everything figured out, sort of like toast in a toaster. However, that interpretation misses the point. There is a saying in Spanish, “El que no se aventura no cruza la mar: Que no se arriesga no pasa la mar.” Literally translated, “He who doesn’t dare doesn’t cross the sea: he who doesn’t risk himself does not pass the sea.” In language and in Zen, the determining factor is how much of yourself do you throw into it: all of yourself or enough to still feel comfortable? Forget about the progress and descend into the practice. Are you going to leave some of yourself on one shore so that you’re okay if you sink? Or do you go out there with the intention of sinking, sinking into the exploration so that it doesn’t matter any more? Nothing ventured, nothing gained; everything ventured, ¿quién sabe?
Copyright 2006 Zoe Kaufman
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