Learn from the Best

 Learn from the Best

Shorten the Road to Understanding

To my descendants,

If you want to learn something seriously, try to learn from the best. This sounds obvious, but I believe it is one of the most important principles of education.

There is learning. And then there is learning well.

There is spending ten years wandering around a subject, collecting fragments here and there. And there is finding somebody who has already travelled deeply into that field, learning from that person, understanding the foundations properly, and therefore shortening your journey enormously.

This does not mean that everything should be rushed. Some things require time. Some understanding can only come through experience. But there is no virtue in unnecessary confusion.

If someone has spent forty years mastering something, and you have the opportunity to learn from that person, why would you deliberately begin from ignorance? Learn from the best.

The Teacher Determines the Beginning of the Journey

Suppose you want to learn mathematics. A poor teacher may convince you that mathematics is frightening. A great teacher may show you its beauty. Suppose you want to learn painting. One teacher may teach you merely how to copy. Another may teach you how to see.

Suppose you want to study philosophy. A weak teacher may give you quotations to memorise. A great teacher may teach you how to question your own assumptions.

The subject may be the same. The education can be completely different. Therefore, one of the first questions you should ask whenever you enter a new field is not merely: “What should I learn?”

Ask: “From whom should I learn?” That question may save you years.

What Does “The Best” Mean? But here we must be careful. “The best” does not necessarily mean the most famous. It does not necessarily mean the richest. It does not necessarily mean the person with the largest number of followers. And it certainly does not mean whoever speaks most confidently.

A great teacher may be famous. But a great teacher may also be almost unknown. So how do you recognise the best? I would look for several things.

Does this person understand the fundamentals? Has this person actually practised what he teaches? Can he explain difficult ideas clearly? Does his work survive careful examination? Do serious people in the field respect his contribution? Has he created something, discovered something, or pushed the field forward?

Can you trace his knowledge to evidence, experience or serious scholarship? And perhaps most importantly: Does learning from him make you capable of thinking for yourself?

A teacher who merely creates followers may not be the best teacher. A great teacher eventually makes the student less dependent upon the teacher.

Go Towards the Source

Whenever possible, go towards the source of knowledge. If you want to understand a theory, find the person who developed it. If you want to understand an important work, read the original work. If you want to understand an invention, study the inventor's explanation. If you want to understand a tradition, study its foundational texts.

The further knowledge travels from its source, the greater the possibility of distortion. One person explains another person's explanation of somebody else's interpretation. After several layers, sometimes very little of the original idea remains.

Therefore I have always liked the principle: Go upstream. Find the source.

If you want to understand the C programming language, for example, study the work associated with Dennis Ritchie and the foundational texts written by the people who created and developed the language.

If you want to understand Java, study its history and the explanations of James Gosling and the people who built the language. You may later learn from hundreds of excellent programmers.

But knowing where the ideas originated gives you orientation. The same principle applies far beyond computers.

The Classics Are Teachers Who Survived Time

Some of the greatest teachers are no longer alive. Yet they continue teaching us. They left books. This is one of the extraordinary achievements of civilisation.

A human being may live for seventy or eighty years, but a sufficiently powerful idea can continue speaking for thousands of years.

Consider Laozi. Consider Zhuangzi. Consider Confucius. Consider Plato. Consider Aristotle. Consider the Buddha's teachings. Consider the great Indian philosophical and yogic traditions.

Their worlds were enormously different from ours. Their political systems were different. Their technologies were different. Their economies were different. Their understanding of nature was different.

Yet generation after generation continues returning to these works. Why? Not because every sentence is necessarily correct for our age. Not because ancient automatically means wise. They survive because succeeding generations continue discovering something in them worth examining. That itself is extraordinary.

Why Read the Classics?

If a book has remained meaningful for two thousand years, you should at least become curious.

Ask: Why did this survive? Thousands upon thousands of books have disappeared. Thousands of fashionable ideas once seemed extremely important and are now forgotten.

Yet certain texts remain. The Dao De Jing remains. The Zhuangzi remains. The Analects remain. Plato remains. The Bhagavad Gita remains. Buddhist sutras remain. Patanjali remains. They survived dynasties. Wars. Religions. Revolutions. Empires. Industrialisation. Modern science. Computers. And now artificial intelligence. Still we return to them.

That does not mean that they contain answers to every modern problem. It means that they have touched questions that human beings continue asking: Who am I? How should I live? What is goodness? What is power? What is knowledge? What is happiness? How should society be organised? How should we deal with suffering? What is the relationship between desire and contentment? How do we understand ourselves These questions do not become obsolete simply because our machines become faster.

Learn Laozi from Laozi If you want to understand Daoism, do not begin only with somebody telling you what Laozi supposedly means. Read Laozi. Read the Dao De Jing. Then read different translations. Read commentaries. Discover where scholars disagree. Then read Zhuangzi. Afterwards, return to Laozi again. You may discover that the book has changed. Of course the book has not changed. You have.

A great classic often reveals different things at different stages of your life. At twenty, you may understand one sentence intellectually. At forty, experience gives the sentence another meaning. At sixty, the same words may suddenly appear completely different. This is why learning from the best is not something you finish. You return.

Understand the Teacher's World But there is another principle that I consider extremely important: Never separate a great thinker completely from his time. Every thinker is born somewhere. Into some political situation. Some family. Some social order. Some intellectual tradition. Some conflict. Some technological condition.

Some historical moment. These things matter. If you study Confucius, understand the instability of the late Zhou world in which he lived. Then his concern with ritual, order, moral cultivation and proper relationships becomes more meaningful. If you read Laozi and Zhuangzi, understand the intellectual and political worlds surrounding early Chinese philosophy.

If you study Socrates, understand Athens. If you study the Buddha, understand the religious and philosophical world of ancient India. If you study modern thinkers, understand industrialisation, capitalism, colonialism, war, technology and whatever historical conditions surrounded their thinking.

Ask: When was this person born? Where did he live? What problems surrounded him? What assumptions did his society consider normal? What was he reacting against? What was he trying to solve? Who influenced him? Who disagreed with him? Then you are no longer memorising quotations. You are reconstructing a mind.

Do Not Remove Ideas from Their Context This is especially important because a sentence taken out of context can become almost anything. People often quote famous thinkers as though a single sentence represents an entire philosophy. It rarely does. Understand the argument around the sentence. Understand the historical circumstance. Understand what question was being answered. Understand the terminology.

Sometimes even understand the original language if you can. Then the teaching becomes much richer. Learning from the best therefore demands effort from the student as well. 

A great teacher cannot save a lazy student.

Universities and Great Institutions Sometimes the best teachers are concentrated in great institutions. If you have the opportunity to study in an excellent university, take the opportunity seriously.

Good universities can provide extraordinary advantages: excellent teachers, excellent libraries, excellent laboratories, excellent classmates, excellent debates, and an intellectual environment where high standards are normal.

You are not merely learning information. You are entering an ecosystem of knowledge. That environment can accelerate development enormously. But prestigious institutions are not the only place where great learning occurs. This is particularly true today.

Technology Has Changed Access to Great Teachers This is one of the great privileges of your generation. In the past, if a great professor taught at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, NUS or another leading institution, you might have needed to travel across the world, gain admission and pay enormous fees merely to enter the lecture hall.

Today, some of the world's finest teachers can enter your room through a screen. Universities publish lectures. Professors record entire courses. Platforms such as edX and other online-learning systems make serious academic teaching available to people who may never physically enter those universities.

A great scientist gives a lecture. You can watch it. A philosopher gives an interview. You can listen. A programmer explains the technology he helped create. You can hear him directly. An architect explains a building. A photographer discusses his contact sheets. A musician demonstrates technique. A historian teaches an entire period. The geography of education has changed.

The best teacher may be ten thousand kilometres away, but intellectually he may be sitting on your desk. Certificate and Education Are Not the Same Thing This leads to another distinction I want you to understand. Certification and education are not identical.

Certificates have their purpose. If you want to practise medicine, law, architecture, engineering and many other professions, proper qualifications, examinations and professional standards are essential.

But never confuse the certificate with learning itself. You may not receive a Harvard degree by watching a Harvard lecture. But that does not prevent you from learning something valuable from the professor.

If the purpose is knowledge, then learn wherever knowledge is available. If the purpose is professional qualification, then follow the formal requirements as well. Know which one you are pursuing. Sometimes you need both.

Learn From Masters of Practice Not all great teachers are academics. This is another important lesson. If you want to become a photographer, study great photographers. But do not merely admire their finished photographs. Study how they worked. Look at their contact sheets if available. Study their lenses. Their editing. Their sequencing. Their failures. Their books. Their exhibitions. Their philosophy of seeing. 

If you want to understand architecture, do not merely photograph the completed building. Study the plan. The section. The site. The circulation. The materials. The construction. The architect's intention. Then visit the building and ask:

Did it work? How do people actually use it? What happened twenty years later? Now the building itself becomes a teacher. If you want to paint, study great paintings closely. If you want to write, read great writing. If you want to understand business, study businesses that endured — and also businesses that collapsed.

If you want to cultivate the body, learn from excellent practitioners who understand the body deeply rather than merely people who look impressive on social media. Always go towards mastery. Study the Process, Not Merely the Result This is one of the great secrets of learning from exceptional people.

Do not study only what they produced. Study how they thought. When you see an extraordinary result, ask: How did this person get there? What questions did he ask? What did he practise repeatedly? What did he reject? How many failures occurred before this success? What habits supported the work?

How did he organise information? How did he make decisions? What did he notice that other people failed to notice? The finished work is the visible tip. The process lies underneath. Learn the process.

Compare Masters With Masters There is also danger in learning from only one great person. You may inherit his strengths. You may also inherit his blindness. Therefore, after learning deeply from one master, encounter another. Read Confucius. Then read Laozi. They will not give you exactly the same world. Read Laozi. Then read Zhuangzi. Read Aristotle. Then read Nietzsche. Study different schools of Buddhism. Study different interpretations of yoga. Study several photographers looking at the same city. Study several architects confronting the same problem. When great minds disagree, do not become anxious. That disagreement is educational.

Ask: Why do these two intelligent people see the same problem differently? What assumptions separate them? Under what circumstances might each be right? Then something important happens. You stop merely borrowing conclusions. You begin developing judgement.

Learn From the Best, But Do Not Become Them

This is perhaps the most important warning. Learning from the best does not mean becoming a copy of the best. If you learn painting from Picasso, the purpose is not to become another Picasso. There was already a Picasso.

If you learn philosophy from Laozi, the purpose is not to pretend you are living in ancient China. If you study great photographers, do not merely reproduce their photographs. Learn how they saw. Learn how they questioned conventions. Learn how they discovered their own language. Then discover yours. A master should open a door. He should not become the room in which you remain imprisoned. The purpose of a teacher is eventually to help you become yourself.

Learn, Practise, Reflect

Learning from the best must also connect with what I said earlier about contemplation and reflection.

The process should be: Learn. Practise. Observe. Reflect. Return to the teacher. Understand again. Practise again.

The second time you read a great book, you are not the same student. The second time you hear the lecture, you hear things that escaped you previously. The second time you practise something, your questions become better. This is how knowledge deepens.

Ask Better Questions

Sometimes learning from the best does not mean finding somebody who gives you the best answers. It means finding somebody who teaches you to ask better questions. A mediocre teacher tells you: “This is the answer.”

A great teacher sometimes asks: “Why do you believe that?” Then suddenly you discover that your certainty was built upon assumptions you had never examined. That is education.

The greatest teachers change not merely what you know. They change how you think. Choose Your Teachers Carefully Your teachers eventually enter your mind. Their vocabulary becomes part of your vocabulary. Their assumptions influence your assumptions. Their standards become your standards. Their way of seeing influences your way of seeing. Therefore choose them carefully. This applies not only to formal teachers. The books you read are teachers. The videos you repeatedly watch are teachers. The people you admire are teachers. Your friends are teachers.

The internet is constantly teaching you something whether you realise it or not. Even the algorithms selecting what appears before you are shaping your attention. So ask yourself occasionally: Who is educating me? It is a very important question. Because if you do not consciously choose your teachers, somebody else may choose them for you.

Technology Makes Choice More Important, Not Less We live in an extraordinary age. Information is abundant. But abundance creates another problem. There is so much information that finding good information becomes difficult. 

The challenge is no longer merely: “Where can I find information?”

The challenge is: “Which information deserves my attention?” You have only so many years. You have only so many hours. Attention is limited.

Therefore do not spend your entire life consuming mediocre explanations when exceptional ones are available. Find the original lecture. Find the foundational text. Find the serious scholar. Find the practitioner who has actually done the work. Find several reputable perspectives.

Then think.

Technology gives you access. Judgement determines what you do with that access. Build Your Own Invisible University

I would encourage you to create what I call your own invisible university. You may be sitting at home, but your teachers can come from across civilisation. Laozi can teach you this morning. Socrates can challenge you in the afternoon. Patanjali can guide your practice. A modern scientist can explain the universe.

A photographer can teach you to see light. An architect can teach you to understand space. A programmer can explain a language. A historian can reconstruct a civilisation. A musician can teach you how to listen. Many of these people will never meet one another.

Some lived thousands of years apart. Yet inside your education they can sit at the same table. What an extraordinary privilege. Previous generations would have considered such access almost unimaginable.

Use it.

But Never Forget Reality There is one final teacher that cannot be replaced by books, universities or screens. Reality itself. You may learn architecture from the greatest architect. Then walk through his building. You may discover things that the drawing did not tell you. You may study business from the world's most successful entrepreneur. Then run a business yourself and discover another reality. You may read a hundred books about human beings. Then raise a child. Care for an ageing parent. Manage employees. Fall in love. Lose someone. Become ill. Grow old. Reality will teach you things no lecture can completely prepare you for. 

Therefore the best education combines: Great teachers. Great books. Direct observation. Practice. Experience. Reflection. None is sufficient alone. Together they become powerful.

The Shortest Road Is Not Always the Easiest Road Learning from the best may shorten the road. But that does not mean the road becomes easy. A master may show you the correct technique in five minutes. It may still take you five years to embody it. A great book may reveal a profound principle in one sentence. You may need half a lifetime to understand what the sentence truly means.

Therefore do not confuse efficiency with impatience. Learn efficiently. Then practise patiently. There is wisdom in both. What I Hope You Will Remember Whenever you want to learn something seriously, ask: Who understands this deeply? Who created it? Who has mastered it? What are the foundational books? What are the original sources? Who are the best teachers available to me? Can technology give me access to them? What was the historical context in which their ideas developed?

Who disagrees with them? How can I test what I learn through practice? These questions will lead you much further than simply asking: “Where can I find some information about this?” Information is everywhere. Wisdom requires selection.

Learn From the Best

So this is my advice to you: If you wish to learn, seek good teachers.
If you wish to learn deeply, seek the best teachers you can find. Go to the source. Read the classics. Listen to masters. Use technology. Study their lives. Understand their times. Examine their methods. Compare them with other great minds. Practise what they teach. Test it against reality. Reflect upon your own experience. Then eventually go beyond them.

Because the final purpose of learning from the best is not to spend your life standing in their shadow. It is to climb upon the accumulated knowledge of those who came before you so that you can see a little further yourself.

Learn from the best.
Understand the best.
Question the best.
Practise what is useful.
Then make the knowledge your own.

That is how you shorten the road without reducing the depth of the journey.

And perhaps, one day, after a lifetime of serious learning and practice, you may have something worth leaving behind for somebody else. Then, without intending it, you too may become one of their teachers.