Two People Sitting.
You seem to want instant insight, forgetting that the instant is always preceded by a long preparation. The fruit falls suddenly, but the ripening takes time.”
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
We expect clarity from others yet are opaque to ourselves. Like an archer aiming a bow, no matter how carefully we ensure the arrows of our words are aimed true, once launched they are subject to winds from every direction.
And yet, given the richness of our inner lives and given the multitudes that we all contain, we yearn to be seen and understood by others. Even more so, we yearn to know what others know and to reliably check for their understanding.
This desire is justified and holds significant relevance in the field of education. We aim to impart our best advice to the youth in our society. Through education, we strive to provide students with the necessary skills to succeed individually and contribute to collective well-being. As such, on their learning journey, as we shepherd them from ignorance to awakening, we need to know that they know. We need them to show us their knowledge.
Venerable Bede writes that our lives are lived within a well-lit banquet hall where a storm of great intensity rages on outside. Birds come flying in from the unknown, they linger for an unknown time, and then fly out from whence they came. Socrates writes that these birds are pieces of knowledge, and when we demonstrate our knowledge, we are grasping a bird.
Your capability as a human involves discerning whether a bird is in your house, locating it, and capturing it at just the right moment. This analogy gives us four possibilities in the context of assessment.
You locate the bird and successfully capture it.
You locate the bird but fail to capture it.
You cannot find the bird but suspect it is hiding.
You cannot find the bird and it is not there.
In the second scenario, you intuitively sense the bird’s presence in your mind but cannot prove it. In the third, your confidence in your knowledge wanes, yet you feel it might still be undiscovered.
However, the essence of assessment is demonstration. To be assessed is akin to nature demanding: "Show me." If you can't capture the bird when necessary, your knowledge is like a neglected book on a forgotten shelf. Yet, there might be some value in having a bird that is merely hidden, rather than no bird at all.
Therefore, our assessments should be crafted to delve into another's being, to explore and unearth what lies within. Assessment, as such, is intense. It involves reaching into another's being to bring something hidden from both of you to light.
Yet, assessment is also mundane, for being alive means to constantly be asked for demonstrations of your existence.
Francisco Varela writes about this predicament:
“We always operate in some kind of immediacy of a given situation. We have a readiness-for-action proper to every specific lived situation”
Let us explore both types of assessment.
Assessment as intensely intimate.
In the ancient stories of the Upanishads, students sat at the feet of their gurus, engaging in dialogue. The word "Upanishad" literally means "sit down near." It is through such exchanges that understanding is established and insights are transmitted. The origin of the word assessment is the Latin word assidere, which also means “to sit beside or with”. There is an intimacy and intensity to a real assessment. To discover the depths of your knowledge, I have to go to the depths of your being. It is hard for a single modality of assessment to demonstrate whether the birds of your knowledge are hiding or not present at all. This is why sitting down near a teacher, or as Vygotsky would say, a more knowledgeable other, is vital.
It is said that a spiritual seeker once sat silently next to Ramana Maharishi for around fifteen minutes without saying a word. Ramana spoke, as if to assure the seeker that something was indeed happening between them.
“silence is also conversation”
Ramana often maintained that his most profound teachings were conveyed in silence.
Similarly, the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism recognizes the need for a deep connection when evaluating something as nuanced as spiritual realization. Practitioners in this tradition contemplate koans—concise and paradoxical statements designed to challenge conventional thinking. To assess one's spiritual progress and understanding of a koan's true meaning, students and teachers participate in a formal interaction known as dokusan, which means “going alone to a respected one.” This meeting is not merely an evaluation but an integral part of the spiritual journey; the act of assessment itself catalyzes progress, embodying the objective of the assessment.
“Zen meetings have the simplest of forms: two people sitting on the floor, face inches from face, in a candlelit room. And yet that small room is a large field, containing the stars and the earthworms and poems and cities.” Joan Sutherland Roshi
The intimate dynamics of dokusan are highlighted by the fact that koans do not have set answers, allowing the master to use the student’s response as a reflection of their spiritual insight.
This interaction is encapsulated in the ancient tale of a novice monk and the master Joshu. When the novice sought guidance, Joshu asked if he had eaten his rice porridge. Upon confirming he had, Joshu advised, "Then you had better wash your bowl." At that moment, the monk achieved enlightenment.
The transmission of wisdom and its assessment occur simultaneously; Joshu's question and answer were both instruction and test, perfectly timed to provoke enlightenment. While the meaning of this encounter may seem confusing, it is not for us to understand, for we weren’t there!
Assessment as profoundly ordinary.
The idea that every moment acts as an assessment is profoundly simple. Each instant poses a silent query from the universe: "Show me what you've got". And with each moment, we respond with the totality of our being, just by being in our present condition. How do you act in the face of hunger? How do you respond to the sun shining on your face? How do you answer someone who demands knowledge from you? How are you breathing in this moment?
Every interaction, from a breeze to a question, is nature asking you to reveal who you are and what you know.
In Quantum Mechanics, this idea is central. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, particles do not have a definite position or momentum until they are measured. Before measurement, particles exist only as probabilities within a wave function. When measured, the wave function collapses, and the particle assumes a specific location. This leads to a profound question: where was the particle before measurement? David Griffiths in his "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" puts it succinctly:
“The particle wasn’t really anywhere. It was the act of measurement that forced the particle to “take a stand”. Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it…we compel the particle to assume a definite position”
This act of measurement is not merely an experimental contrivance; it is a constant reality. The collapse of the wavefunction, though an actual reality, is also a useful figurative model. Do we have opinions on a topic we’ve never been asked about? Do we know how we feel before we ask ourselves or are asked by another? Do you remember your childhood before I asked you to just now? Perhaps the bird is somewhere in the house, but until you grasp it you’ll never know!
Nature compels itself into existence through continual assessment.
The Map Is The Territory.
To further collapse the duality between learning and assessment, we must explore the duality of perception and reality. As an example, when navigating the cobbled streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to my home using Google Maps, it's evident that the digital map and the physical streets are not the same. However, this distinction isn't always so clear.
In Australian Aboriginal culture, the concept of Dreamtime illustrates this blending beautifully. Dreamtime is a fundamental aspect of their worldview, consisting of a rich tapestry of narratives that explain everything from the Earth’s origins to its features and our purpose. Within this context, the land of Australia is both the map and the territory at once; the landscape is saturated with sacred meaning and stories. Aboriginal songlines, paths marked by the routes of ancestral beings, serve as linguistically transmitted maps that are intrinsically linked with the land itself.
When you navigate the Australian outback, the assessment is clear: you are being tasked with finding your way from A to B. As such, you demonstrate your ancestral knowledge by navigating successfully. But you cannot navigate successfully, or show that you’re capable of doing so, or learn to do it competently, without doing it!
Assessment is no different than learning and there is no learning without assessment.
No assessment is final but every assessment is definitive.
In any given moment, whether by another person or your environment, nature puts you to the test by demanding something from you. You either catch the bird or you do not.
To live fully is to accept the challenge of being observed and questioned by nature.
When nature beckons, and whispers in your ear: “Will you show me who you are?”
Stand fast and respond without hesitation: “Always”.
It is as it is.