on creating simplicity

Tackling a complicated task can be hard. How does one know when, where, and how to start? The task at hand could be writing a book, painting a picture, or instituting a good habit and stopping a bad one. This author has been experimenting with breaking down difficult tasks into their composite elements until but simple bits remain, then addressing those bits individually, one at a time.

Few people who write books, for example, sit down and complete the whole thing at one go. Most writers compose one sentence or paragraph at a time, churning out the pages through laborious, daily, methodical, repetitive effort. Faced with the challenge of writing a feature-length, stand-alone piece, this author sat frustrated for weeks until he tried the tactic of breaking down each chapter into an individual file, then each chapter into individual paragraphs (by marking each with an underline). The next step was setting himself deadlines for fleshing out the various paragraphs of a given chapter, whereupon he’d remove the underline markers and click the files closed upon their completion (after copying the newly created content into a master file, of course). This process turned the complex task of writing a new chapter into a series of simple acts, each with its own visible and tactile elements.

This process, he thinks, is scaleable; it applies to most tasks. To tidy up a room, identify the areas within it that need attention, grab broom and dustpan, then focus on one brush-stroke at a time. To fix a flat bicycle tire, assemble the required tools, remove the wheel, then focus on one step of the process at a time. For persons looking to understand more of the reasoning behind this may of approaching complex tasks, please refer to verse 63 of the Tao Te Ching (translated by J. Star), which reads: Step by step the world’s burden is lifted; Piece by piece the world’s treasure is amassed.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on disc golf & Taoism

  The game of disc golf (in which players, in the fewest number of tosses, throw discus-like plastic discs from a designated point to a specially-designed metal catch basket) is in certain aspects akin to the elusive tenets of Taoism. Similar to the enduringly simple (but all-encompassing) message that Lao Tzu bound up in the Tao Teh Ching, the game of disc golf is at root an easy task, one that increases in difficulty, however, in tandem with the player's internal stress levels.

  The more pressure the player puts on herself to make, say, a difficult shot into the wind around a copse of trees, the harder that shot, and her subsequent shots, will be. She will be trying to force her body to move so that the disc goes in a very specific direction, but, from her rigid posture and from her attempted dominance over her body, her shot will fly foul. As in Taoism, so in disc golf we must always remember that any attempt to subjugate the Universe to one's own will is bound to backfire, and the most coveted things (such as making that nasty headwind bank-shot) are the hardest to get. (Therefore, the Tao teaches us not to covet anything, as coveting leads invariably to ruin.) The more the player pushes to make the shot the way she thinks the shot should be made, the less she is tapping into her body's inherent ability to not only make the shot, but to do it with finesse and without pride.

  The effective disc golfer is he who can put his ego aside. The great disc golfer she who can revert to a pure animal state by incorporating her ego into herself (thus neutralizing it), a pure animal state that allows her to throw her disc far and straight, her body moving in its own curious rhythms, her mind freed from sadness and joy, her entire being focused solely on the fraction of time at which the disc leaves her calloused fingers. In my humble opinion, this is the magical, secret point that forms the center of the teachings of Taoism: rather than telling you to worship in such way to that god at this time of year, the Tao Teh Ching focuses on reducing you to your most basic and fundamental forms, forms that compel you to act with complete impartiality, intent only on breaking time from This Moment to The Next. Taoism helps you to clear your mind of all the clutter and pollution of modern society; with the Tao, you can more readily realize your deep, latent potential: you can learn to express it. The Tao focuses on deeds, not words, on completing tasks with skill and aplomb but without taking pride in them, or letting them influence your emotional state.

  So is it, at times, with the sport of disc golf. The less thought-interference there is during the throwing phase, the more fluid your body motion. The less the ego is involved, the greater the chance that you will make that daring sidewinder shot around that group of bushes. So keep on diminishing and diminishing until there is nothing left – the Tao is like a bellows that is never made empty, even though it seems hollowed out. The more you draw from it, the harder it works; the less emphasis you put on your own personal achievement, the more you operate for the good of the world, an island of calm in a sea of chaos. One of the trickiest parts, however, is learning not to covet the Tao. To covet anything is to destroy it, so toss your discs with quiet competence, without ever yearning for success, your only desire a state of primal simplicity.

  Your body knows what to do. Now all you have to do is get your mind out of the way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp