This topic is near and dear to my heart. (I can think of at least one of you who feels the same way.) I don't always act like I know this, but I try. So here's some quotes (yep, more quotes ) to tell you what I'm talking about.
Quote:Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. -Gandhi
Quote:You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud, if you peel it to perfection. -Eric Liddell's father in Chariots of Fire
Quote:The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifaction. -C.G. Jung
Quote:Life is not the conclusion. Life is the road. -some guy on The Courtship of Eddie's Father
Quote:I've been here now for some days, groping my way along, trying to realize my vision here. I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. I've come to find out that it's not the vision, it's not the vision at all. It's the groping. It's the groping, it's the yearning, it's the moving forward..... The thing I learned folks, this is absolutely key: it’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself. -Chris Stevens from Northern ExposureIf I had to pick one sentence in this world, it would be that last one: It's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself.
Quote:You’re confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or they hate it, they’re talking about product. Now that’s not art. That’s the result of art. Alright? Art, to the degree of whatever we can get a handle on, and I’m not sure we really can, is a process. Alright? It begins in here, here, with these and these. (Indicating his heart, head, hands, and eyes, in that order.) Right? Now, Picasso said, "The pure, plastic act is only secondary." What really counts is the drama of the pure plastic act. That exact moment when the universe comes out of itself, and meets its own destruction......... The thing we gotta do with you Holling, is get your ego out of the product, and put it back in the process. -Chris Stevens again.Quote:One time I finished my best-ever pommel horse routine and walked over happily to take the tape off my wrists. Soc beckoned me and said, "The routine looked satisfactory, but you did a very sloppy job taking the tape off. Remember, every-moment satori." -The Peaceful Warrior
And a couple of bigger quotes:
Quote: He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up, exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the physical strength but that physical strength wasn’t enough. He had the intellectual motivation but that wasn’t enough either. He didn’t think he had been arrogant but thought that he was undertaking the pilgrimage to broaden his experience, to gain understanding for himself. He was trying to use the mountain for his own purposes and the pilgrimage too. He regarded himself as the fixed entity, not the pilgrimage or the mountain, and thus wasn’t ready for it. He speculated that the other pilgrims, the ones who reached the mountain, probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take.
To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here". What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. -Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
For those of you who don't know (a thought that saddens me no end
), In the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, there is a character called Data. He is an android. He is far stronger than humans, and able to perform billions of calculations per second. But his programming did not include any emotion. Because he was created by a human, is shaped like a human (although he has yellow eyes and metallic-yellow skin), and lives with humans, he has been studying humans very carefully, hoping that learning about us would help him become human himself.
In one episode, Data built a child for himself, which he named “Lal”. Data and Lal had the following conversation:
Quote:Lal: I watch them, and I can do the things they do. But I will never feel the emotions. I’ll never know love.
Data: It is a limitation we must learn to accept, Lal.
Lal: Then why do you still try to emulate humans? What purpose does it serve, except to remind you that you are incomplete?
Data: I have asked myself that, many times, as I have struggled to be more human. Until I realized it is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are, Lal. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i>Edited by: Highdrake at: 3/23/03 9:00:11 pm
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