Restarting, once again

Three months ago I wrote a post crowing over how much of the Ashtadhyayi I had managed to memorize. Shortly after, I completely stopped. I can’t quite say why. Was it the demands of everyday life overtaking a humble pursuit of knowledge? That’s a convenient narrative, but it’s also totally false. In a phrase, I lost my enthusiasm for the text.

In any field, true excellence comes from unwavering dedication. That dedication is easier to summon if the task is enjoyable. But once again I turned the task of memorizing the Ashtadhyayi into something unenjoyable. Perhaps I was done in once again by a need to quantify my progress.

So here we go, once again.

This is a record of my attempt to memorize the Ashtadhyayi. I have tried before, and I failed to complete even the third book. I failed because the text was overwhelming and because I lost my enthusiasm for the text. But my enthusiasm is renewed (if only a little bit), and now I am trying again.

I will here record my struggles and failings, of which there will probably be many. I will make notes of how I am memorizing these texts, what techniques I found useful, and what insights I’ve gleaned from spending so much time with them. I will commit time to this task every day, if only a minute. And I will continue for as long as I can.

Of course, thousands of other people have memorized this text before. Nothing makes my task unique or extraordinary. But I have a poor record of completing things, and just for once, I’d finally like to do so.