Mastery (23 page)

A year later they finally met in Vienna, and talked nonstop for thirteen hours. The younger man charmed Freud—he was so much more creative than his other acolytes. He could serve as his successor in the psychoanalytic movement. For Jung, Freud could be the father figure and mentor he so desperately needed—a grounding influence. They traveled together to the United States, saw each other on frequent visits, and corresponded incessantly. But some five years into the relationship, Jung’s initial ambivalence returned. He began to find Freud rather dictatorial. He chafed at the idea of having to follow Freudian dogma. He now clearly understood why he had initially disagreed with the emphasis on sexuality as the root of all neuroses.

By 1913 they had a definitive break, Jung forever banished from Freud’s inner circle. But through this relationship, Jung had worked out all of his doubts and sharpened certain core ideas about human psychology. In the end, the struggle had strengthened his sense of identity. Without this mentorship, he would have never come to such a clear resolution and been capable of starting his own rival school of psychoanalysis.

Sometime in the late 1960s, V. S. Ramachandran, a medical student at a college in Madras, came upon a book called
Eye and Brain,
written by an eminent professor of neuropsychology, Richard Gregory. (For more on Ramachandran’s early years, see
here
.) The book excited him—the style of writing, the anecdotes, the provocative experiments he recounted. Inspired by the book, Ramachandran did his own experiments on optics, and soon realized that he was better suited for the field than medicine. In 1974 he was admitted into the PhD Program at Cambridge University, in visual perception.

Ramachandran had been raised on stories of the great English scientists of the nineteenth century, and the almost romantic quest for truth that science seemed to represent. He loved the part that speculation played in the great theories and discoveries of men such as Faraday and Darwin. He imagined it would be somewhat similar at Cambridge, but to his surprise the students and professors tended to treat science as a kind of nine-to-five job; it was a competitive, cutthroat, almost corporate environment. He began to feel gloomy and alone in a strange country.

Then one day Richard Gregory himself, a professor at Bristol University,
came to Cambridge to give a lecture. Ramachandran was mesmerized—it was like something right out of the pages of Humphry Davy. Gregory performed thought-provoking demonstrations of his ideas on stage; he had a flair for drama and a great sense of humor. This is what science should be like, Ramachandran thought. He went up after the talk and introduced himself. They had an instant rapport. He mentioned to Gregory an optical experiment he had been pondering, and the professor was intrigued. He invited Ramachandran to visit Bristol and to stay in his home, where they could try out his idea together. Ramachandran took up the offer, and from the moment he saw Gregory’s house he knew he had found his mentor—it was like something out of Sherlock Holmes, full of Victorian instruments, fossils, and skeletons. Gregory was precisely the kind of eccentric Ramachandran could identify with. Soon he was commuting to Bristol regularly experiments. He had found a lifelong mentor to inspire and guide him, and over the years he would come to adapt much of Gregory’s style of speculation and experiment.

Growing up in Japan in the late 1970s, Yoky Matsuoka felt like an outsider. As discussed in
chapter 1
(
here
), she liked to do things her own way in a country that esteemed social cohesion and conformity above everything else. When she decided to take up tennis seriously at the age of eleven, she used the players John McEnroe and Andre Agassi as her role models, consummate rebels in what had been a very genteel sport. Later, when she moved to the United States and began attending university, she brought with her the same need to go her own way in whatever she did. If there was a field no one was studying, it excited her. Following this instinct she got into the then-esoteric field of robotics, and was admitted to the PhD program at MIT.

There, for the first time in her life, she met someone of her own temperament—Rodney Brooks, professor of robotics at MIT, and the bad boy of the department. He was bold, taking on the higher-ups in the department and arguing against some of the most entrenched ideas in the field of artificial intelligence. He had developed a completely novel approach to robotics. It excited her that a professor could get away with such an unconventional attitude. She began to spend as much time around him as possible, soaking up his style of thinking, and turning him into her de facto mentor. He was not a teacher who told you what to do; he let you find your own way, including your own mistakes, but would lend you support when you needed it. This style suited her need for independence. It was only later that she realized how much his ideas had gotten under her skin. Unconsciously following his lead, she would eventually create her own approach to robotics and pioneer a totally new field, known as neurobotics.

The choice of the right mentor is more important than you might imagine. Because so much of her future influence upon you can be deeper than you are consciously aware of, the wrong choice can have a net negative effect upon your journey to mastery. You could end up absorbing conventions and styles that don’t fit you and that will confuse you later on. If she is too domineering, you could end up becoming a lifelong imitation of the mentor, instead of a Master in your own right. People often err in this process when they choose someone who seems the most knowledgeable, has a charming personality, or has the most stature in the field—all superficial reasons. Do not simply choose the first possible mentor who crosses your path. Be prepared to put as much thought into it as possible.

In selecting a mentor, you will want to keep in mind your inclinations and Life’s Task, the future position you envision for yourself. The mentor you choose should be strategically aligned with this. If your path is in a more revolutionary direction, you will want a mentor who is open, progressive, and not domineering. If your ideal aligns more with a style that is somewhat idiosyncratic, you will want a mentor who will make you feel comfortable with this and help you transform your peculiarities into mastery, instead of trying to squelch them. If, like Jung, you are somewhat confused and ambivalent about your direction, it can be useful to choose someone who can help you gain some clarity about what you want, someone important in the field who might not fit perfectly with your tastes. Sometimes part of what a mentor shows us is something we will want to avoid or actively rebel against. In this latter case, you might initially want to maintain a little more emotional distance than normally recommended, particularly if she is the domineering type. Over time you will see what to absorb and what to reject.

Remember: the Mentor Dynamic replays something of the parental or father-figure dynamic. It is a cliché that you do not get to choose the family you are born into, but you are happily free to choose your mentors. In this case, the right choice can perhaps provide what your parents didn’t give you—support, confidence, direction, space to discover things on your own. Look for mentors who can do that, and beware of falling into the opposite trap—opting for a mentor who resembles one of your parents, including all of his negative traits. You will merely repeat what hampered you in the first place.

2. Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror

Hakuin Zenji (1685–1769) was born in a village near the town of Hara in Japan, his family on his father’s side coming from an illustrious line of samurai warriors. As a child, Hakuin had the kind of relentless energy that would seem to mark him for a life dedicated to the martial arts. But at
around the age of eleven, he heard a priest deliver a sermon about the torments of hell for those who were not careful, and this talk filled the young boy with an intense anguish that nothing could extinguish. All of his tenacious energy was now directed toward doubts about his own worth, and by the age of fourteen he decided that the only way to quell his anxiety was to pursue the religious path and become a priest. He was particularly attracted to Zen Buddhism, having read stories of great Masters in China and Japan overcoming endless obstacles and suffering to reach enlightenment. The idea of passing through a phase of suffering accorded well with his innermost doubts about himself.

At the age of eighteen he was sent to a training center to prepare him for his life as a priest. The method of teaching, however, disappointed him. He had imagined twenty-four-hour sessions of meditation and other ordeals. Instead, he was made to study all kinds of Chinese and Japanese texts. What he read and heard from his instructors did not change him at all. It was merely intellectual knowledge that had little connection to his daily life. His anxieties only increased. He left this temple and began to wander, looking for the mentor who could guide him.

He entered one Zen school after another, in every corner of Japan, and he began to get a clear idea of the state of Zen instruction at that time. It revolved around simple sessions of seated meditation, with little instruction, until finally a giant bell would sound and the monks would hurry to eat or sleep. In their spare time, they would chant for happiness and peace. Zen had turned into one large soporific, designed to lull students into a state of rest and lethargy. It was deemed too invasive and too overbearing to give students any direction; they were supposed to find their own way to enlightenment. Naturally, when given such free rein, they would opt for the easiest path—doing nothing. This trend had spread throughout Japan; monks everywhere had convinced themselves that Zen was easy and simple, and that whatever felt right was right.

Occasionally Hakuin would hear of some school or priest that was creating a stir somewhere, and he would travel to see for himself. In 1708, he spent weeks traveling to reach a temple at a coastal town where just such a provocative priest was making an appearance, but after hearing a few sentences from his lips, Hakuin felt the same profound boredom and disappointment—quotes from texts, clever stories, all to cover up the deadness of the words. He began to wonder if it was time to give up, if true enlightenment no longer existed. At the temple he met another young monk who was equally disappointed with the talk of the priest. They became friends, and one day the monk mentioned that he had studied for a few days under a strange and completely reclusive Master named Shoju Rojin, who was not like any other teacher he had encountered. He lived in a hard-to-reach
village, accepted only a handful of students, and was very demanding. This was all Hakuin needed to hear. He asked the young monk to guide him right away to Shoju.

When he met the Master, he could see something in his eyes that was different from any other priest or teacher. He radiated power and self-mastery; you could read in his expression the pain he had endured to reach his current state. This man had lived and suffered. Hakuin was delighted when Shoju said he would accept him as a pupil, but his excitement soon turned to fear. During their first personal interview, Shoju asked him, “How do you understand the koan (a Zen anecdote designed for instruction) about the Dog and the Buddha-Nature?” “No way to lay a hand or foot on that,” Hakuin replied, imagining that was a clever response, at which point Shoju reached out and grabbed his nose, pushing it with a harsh twist and yelling in his face, “Got a pretty good hand on it there!” He held on tightly for several minutes, giving Hakuin a feeling of utter paralysis.

Over the course of the next few days he endured more and more abuse. Shoju made him feel that all of his studies and traveling had taught him nothing. He could not say or do one right thing. Out of nowhere he would receive a blow or a gob of spit in his face. He began to doubt every element of his previous knowledge, and he lived in complete terror of what Shoju would do next.

Shoju gave him a series of the most difficult koans Hakuin had ever heard to ponder and discuss. He could not make heads or tails of them. His feelings of dejection and demoralization were reaching a breaking point, but knowing that persistence was important, he kept at it night and day. Soon he had doubts about Shoju himself, and entertained thoughts of leaving him in the near future.

One day, feeling particularly agitated, he wandered into a nearby village, and without knowing why or how, he began to contemplate one of the thorniest koans Shoju had given him. Deep in thought, he strayed into the garden of a private house. The woman who lived there yelled at him to leave, but Hakuin seemed oblivious. Thinking he was a madman or a bandit she attacked him with a stick, knocking him hard to the ground. When he came to, minutes later, he suddenly felt different—he had finally penetrated to the core of Shoju’s koan! He understood it from the inside out! It was alive within him! Everything fell into place and he was certain that he had finally reached enlightenment, the world appearing to him in a totally new guise. He began clapping his hands and screaming with delight. For the first time he felt the weight of all of his anxieties lifted from him.