The Master and the Fool
Metadata
- Author: Tim Ferriss
- Full Title: The Master and the Fool
- Category: articles
- URL: https://tim.blog/2021/01/25/mastery/
Highlights
- When he finished, he fixed me with his eyes, and repeated his question one more time.
‘Tell me. How can I be a learner?”
My mind went absolutely blank, and I heard myself saying, “It’s simple. To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.” (View Highlight) - The theme of emptiness as a precondition to significant learning shows up in the familiar tale of the wise man who comes to the Zen master, haughty in his great wisdom, asking how he can become even wiser. The master simply pours tea into the wise man’s cup and keeps pouring until the cup runs over and spills all over the wise man, letting him know without words that if one’s cup is already full there is no space in it for anything new. (View Highlight)
- When Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, was quite old and close to death, the story goes, he called his students around him and told them he wanted to be buried in his white belt. What a touching story; how humble of the world’s highest-ranking judoist in his last days to ask for the emblem of the beginner! But Kano’s request, I eventually realized, was less humility than realism. At the moment of death, the ultimate transformation, we are all white belts. (View Highlight)
- In the master’s secret mirror, even at the moment of highest renown and accomplishment, there is an image of the newest student in class, eager for knowledge, willing to play the fool. (View Highlight)
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The Master and the Fool
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