Learning and Knowing: Metaphors, Mind, and Meaning

How We Begin: The Apple and the Alphabet

Learning and knowing begin not in abstraction, but in the tangible.
We start our LKG life decoding the world through concrete fragments: A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Cat.

The apple is red, round, fragrant—an object we can grasp, name, bite into. We learn first by touching the edges of things, before realising that some truths have no edges at all.

Returning to Learning: A Spiral, Not a Straight Line

At the age of 45, I went back to Azim Premji University and enrolled in a full-time MA course in Education—not to learn or unlearn, but to learn how we learn.

I remember once, as I was leaving early in the morning for class, my spouse—half in jest and half serious—remarked, “An emme (buffalo) goes for his MA in Education.” 🙂

I shot back immediately, quoting the title of the best book on leadership I had read: Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring to Excellence by Belasco.

Of course, Thara had the last word when she quipped, “Vikata Saraswati.”

And so, learning becomes a spiral—from example to essence, from form to formless, from “This is an apple” to “What is freedom?” to “What is consciousness?” to “What is the observed and the observer?” We cross thresholds without even knowing it.

Suddenly, we’re conversing in abstractions—justice, love, compassion, gender—not as fixed ideas, but as felt experiences. “Gender” no longer simply refers to biological designation; it blooms into a fluid landscape of self-perception, expression, and relational truth.

From Snow to Rain to 200 Words for Learning

Manu, my elder son, who is pursuing his graduation at JGU, taught me that there are now more than 60 different terms to denote gender—a small but powerful reminder of the difference between learning and knowing.

A long time ago, in 2004, Thara and I ended up in Troy, Michigan, while I was working on a project for GM at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. Thara, who was born in Chennai, where the three seasons of the year are hot, hotter, and hottest, had only one word for snow. Me too: snow.

I remember reading somewhere—perhaps in Language in Thought and Action by Hayakawa—that Eskimos are said to have many words for snow. But I do know for a fact that Mallus have multiple terms for rain. As a Mallu, I was quite proud of that until a good friend told me the Hawaiian language has more than 200 words for rain.

From Word to World to Wordlessness

The point is, the more we know about something, the more words our language develops to describe it. And yet, we truly know it only when we empty all those words and concepts from our minds.

Words and concepts are merely bridges, ways to approach understanding, whether of a bird, a tree, or absolute truth. But they are not the bird, the tree, or the truth itself. Krishnamurti, Zen, or any spiritual teacher worth their salt teaches this essence.

Mind: As a Concept and a Metaphor

In Zen Way—Jesus Way, Tucker Callaway outlines six types of mind: Only-Mind, Spectator-Consciousness, Stored-Up Consciousness, Turning-Over, Six-Sense Mind, and No-Mind. According to Bala, my Vedanta teacher, Vedanta offers its own lens: manas, buddhi, chitta, ahamkāra—mind, intellect, memory, ego.

There are koans that say, “No mind, no Buddha” and “Mind is Buddha.” Seemingly contradictory, yet both traditions point beyond structure—toward freedom. The koan does not merely inform; it transforms, shifting us from learning about the mind to knowing it directly.

In my understanding, Zen teaches: No-mind. Mushin. Not the absence of mind, but the absence of grasping. The presence that remains when thought stops clinging.

This is not always easy to grasp, especially when we’re conditioned to seek clarity through concepts. Mind, as conceptualized in spiritual traditions—from Zen to Vedanta—is not a rigid category, but a shifting metaphor. Psychology attempts to map it with models, but even here, we encounter spectrums, not binaries.

The Pedagogical Power of Story and Symbol in Learning and Knowing

This movement from the concrete to the abstract, from the graspable to the ungraspable, is not just epistemology—it is pedagogy. (Or andragogy.) At its best, teaching bridges learning and knowing, using stories, examples, and felt metaphors to carry us from mere information to lived understanding.

It’s no accident that teachers use animals, rivers, lamps, and chariots to talk about consciousness. Without metaphor, truth can feel dry. Sterile. Inaccessible. And perhaps that’s why some (like me) find Jiddu Krishnamurti so challenging.

Krishnamurti stripped teaching of metaphor, story, and system. He refused to be your guide. He would not tell you a parable or give you steps. He only pointed: “The observer is the observed.” For many, this was too abrupt, like trying to breathe on the moon. But for a few, like physicist David Bohm or martial artist Bruce Lee, it was ignition.

Bruce Lee, once told by his doctor that he would never walk again after a severe spinal injury, lay bedridden and broken. And there, in the silence, he read Krishnamurti. He let go of systems, styles, rigidity. From that emptiness emerged Jeet Kune Do—his art of fluid expression, of formless freedom.

“Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.” He healed. He trained. He became the river. (And he taught: “Be like water, my friend.”)

Zen Teaches You Just 1/4th: You Learn the Rest

Fr. AMA, my Zen master, once told me, “Zen teaches you just a quarter; you have to learn the rest.” It teaches just enough to destabilize the scaffolding of our concepts. And nothing more.

So what does this tell us—not just about the mind, but about learning, change, transformation?

That we learn through body, story, breath. That concepts are not endpoints, but gateways. That meta-learning—the awareness of how we learn—is the true curriculum.

It’s not enough to know something. We must also know how we know.

(I once wrote a term paper on this for my Epistemology class at APU during my MA in Education: How Do We Know What We Know? Message me if you’d like to read it.)

The Spiral of Coaching: From Apple to Paradox

Coaching—like teaching, whether with LKG students or post-retirement spiritual seekers—must follow this spiral.

Begin with the apple. Then the arrow. Then awareness. Then amnesia. Then action. And then… paradox.

Because there comes a moment when the client, student, or seeker no longer seeks answers. They become the question.

This is the Koan of Knowing. And deeper still, beneath even that inquiry, is a felt saturation—still, clear, alive. This is the Dot of Dharma. The Bindu of Being.

Between the koan and the dot, between example and essence, between Bruce’s broken back and his blazing presence, lies the river.

And like the breath, it flows—not toward conclusion, but toward depth.

Shallow Understanding or Surface Tension?

This reflection didn’t arrive in a vacuum. It emerged through a quiet exchange in a coaching forum, a space meant for exploration, not resolution.

Someone referred to the unfolding ideas as “shallow understanding.” I paused. Not with defensiveness, but with wonder.

Because perhaps what appears shallow is actually surface tension—the place where the sky first touches the water. The edge from which depth begins.

In that moment, I didn’t refute. I wrote instead.

That our learning often flows from concrete to abstract.
That metaphors aren’t ornaments—they are bridges.
That mind, gender, consciousness, God—all of these are conceptual frameworks to explore what cannot be grasped directly.

And that truth, in its deepest form, may wear no definitions, but remain alive in breath, in silence, in relationship.

We Invite with Presence, Not Conclusions

We do not teach with conclusions.
We invite with presence.

And so, the coaching conversation became part of the river.
Not an interruption, but a tributary.

Shallow? Perhaps.

But the lotus only grows there.

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