I recently asked a Vipassana meditation teacher why students who aspire to serious practice are dissuaded from practicing other techniques since they seem quite compatible to me. For those that are unaware, Vipassana or insight meditation is the practice of paying close attention to bodily sensations through which one sees the ever changing nature of existence. It was a longer conversation that covered many ideas but one point struck me particularly hard—she said “if we dig one well, we can get to the water faster as opposed to digging four wells”.
This makes practical sense. I’ve found that I learn best by toggling between intellectual learning and experiential doing. Each act of doing then brings up additional questions that I can take back to my intellectual digging. It’s a repeatable loop of learning >> doing >> observing and getting curious >> coming back to learn more >> taking deeper action and so on. And it’s not just me. This loop occurs for all of us when we hope to really get to the core of something. This level of commitment takes persistence and patience but most importantly, it takes time.
Then, once we have a certain amount of rooting in one practice, we can better understand other flavors of knowledge and practice within the same broad discipline. For instance someone trained in Tango might be able to better note the differences and similarities with Waltz, and perhaps learn a thing or two from them. An artist who favors water colors can still relate to and appreciate another who favors oil paints. Each practice can lead to a nourishing and generative experience, just the way different techniques of meditation can lead us to equanimity and different entrepreneurship journeys can lead to exponential self-awareness and growth. But it all begins with the discipline of putting on our dancing shoes, picking up the brush, sitting on the meditation cushion or pouring into our business idea day after day without self-judgment.
When we find ourselves spoilt for choice, it’s easy to jump to the next practice and the next, and then another when the going gets tricky. Every time we jump to the next thing, we get a temporary hit of optimism but over time all it does is sap our resilience and our ability to focus and commit. This is human wiring but the world we live in feeds these distractible parts of our nature. We jump from one thing to the next because we don’t want to miss life but that is precisely the recipe to missing life. Digging a few high quality wells helps us get to the water faster but also shapes our character. When we dig one well that is meaningful to us personally, we reclaim the ability to carve ourselevs in a way that we choose to be shaped. We then bring that awareness and commitment to the rest of our life and interactions.
It’s worth defining the wells we want to dig in our very limited time on earth. We owe it to ourselves—to our one precious life—and we owe it to the rest of humanity because when we dig our unique well, the rest of us get to drink that sweet water.
“Let me run
at break-neck speeds toward sceneries
of doubt. I have no more dress rehearsals
to attend.” — Major Jackson, Poet
