Practicing v. learning

 Musicians have a better grasp of this than I do: the difference between learning and practicing.

The distinction is fluid. Of course, you learn when you practice. Your teacher says you must practice to learn. But some people who have learned a lot about music are not great practitioners. Some professors at the conservatory are great concert pianists and some are not. Just as some professors at the seminary are great Christians, Jews or Muslims and some are not. And some professors in the philosophy department … but here I’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling, as my grandmother would say.

I was thinking about why I’ve had such a difficult time finding a satisfying memoir written by a hermit. The problem usually lies in the flaws of the investigator — me. So the search continues.

But I found some light in Hermits, a documentary released in 2015. In the film, Bill Porter, a translator of Chinese poetry, knocked on the doors of huts in the mountains. He asked the hermits about their practices.

It’s an astonishing film. But I suspect there’s nothing profound to be learned from any of the individual practices. The astonishing thing is that they practice.

• Source: I found Hermits, featuring Bill Porter and directed by Shiping He, Peng Fu and Chengyu Zhou, here:

https://buddhistuniversity.net/content/av/hermits

The book version is Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits; Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2009. It's on my list.