Ahah! Your hands have the knowing of it. A materials gem you might be interested in is that knapped flints, such as made by my friend Morten Kutschera, are so sharp that they are only 1 molecule thick at the edge. He makes special blades from obsidian for eye and brain surgeons, as they are sharper than any metal alloy.
Taoist tales, especially in the Chuang Tzu, lean heavily into woodworking more than any other craft. And of course, St Joseph was a carpenter... Is there some secret spiritual transmission via woodworkers we have all been missing?
Regarding obsidian and such materials -- and their sharpness! -- I remember a wonderful woman I shared a workbench with at furniture-making school almost 30 years ago, she was ... intelligent, practically gifted and knowledgeable about many things ... anyways: Later she went back to university and became a biologist. She told me that when cutting thin slices of things to look at in the microscope they used small shards of glass (attached to some sort of handle presumably). And it was her job to make them by knapping, being nimble-fingered and junior in the lab.
As for secret spiritual transmissions and woodworkers ... on average I wouldn't say we're an especially spiritual bunch, rather the opposite. It's a job and we must get it done. But then there are some of us who ... are sort of drawn to the material, or perhaps to the process of making things? It's such a beautiful material ! (And trees are also amazing) It's a joy to make useful and sometimes even handsome things of it. It is so very varied, just like people, and therefore it requires great patience and experience to get to know it well. Every single piece of wood is unique, something that becomes very obvious when you try to work it with hand tools and your own muscle power, as opposed to roaring through it with a machine (and for the record: I use and like machines - but I love hand tools :-) I guess it's a material that encourages a certain kind of engagement, or immersion, perhaps ? I've always made stuff out of wood, since I was a small boy. I made things of wood that could fly ! I still have some of my childhood tools.
I have this notion that wood is a material that nudges you in the right direction, if you're attentive. It simply shows you the right way of going about things. Go with the grain and your plane will wistle a clean curly shaving and leave a silky smooth shimmering surface. Go against the grain and you get tear-out, sweat and frustration. It's obvious ! The difficult bit is understanding the rest of the world, so I leave that part to Mr. Kingsnorth :D
In my workshop library I have stashed away some non-woodworking books for my successor to find after I'm gone. One of them is 'Tao Te Ching' and another is Thomas Merton's version of 'The Way of Chuang Tzu'. I sometimes like to read a little bit of them in the morning before I start the day's work. Some things I think I understand, but most things are unclear to me. How could it be otherwise ? I like having something to think about when I'm working.
Well, my friend Andres Roberts of 'Way of Nature' says that 'if it ain't practical, it ain't spiritual', I agree, so for me they go hand in hand. My girl's school had no wood or metal work, such were the times. I had always left the woodwork to my brother and partners, but later in life, thanks to learning bushcraft at www.wilderness-survival.co.uk I now love working with green wood, as a novice. It does indeed teach how to go with the grain. I love the richness of embodied metaphor from woodworking. I like your workshop library and have not yet read Thomas Merton's versions, so must now add that to the to-read list. I shall now tell Paul it is his job to understand the rest of the world. I am sure he is up to the task :)
Having read this story many times, you’ve shone a clear and succinct light on it and gives it a whole new depth for me. Thank you. Maybe too much reading..
You are really welcome. I found this story at about the same time I began studying T'ai Chi Sword and Sabre and began to accept that tool-use was not 'the Fall', but rather that a certain kind of controlling mind was the problem. 15 years later... still working on that conundrum!
Thank you for this! I sometimes use the story of Wheelwright Pian, from one of the outer chapters, to talk about how hard it is to talk about improvised theatre.
I recall with fondness those subtle smiles and nods from my Tai Chi teacher and his more advanced students during push hands 10 years ago. Though I practiced religiously for about 5 years, my mind was (and perhaps still is) more like a dull axe. I couldn't really appreciate how to 'listen' and feel the adjustments as they were confirmed. Too much philosophizing along with neurotic self-analysis.
As you embark on this work of writing about your path through traditional and modern ways to the Way, I'm curious to learn your take on the austerities in the various forms you've encountered them along your way.
So glad you're writing here and looking forward to following along as things develop in real time.
Thanks Dan. A mind like a dull axe is no bad thing, 'a too sharp knife blunts quickly' as the Tao Te Ching says. A 'dull' axe splits firewood superbly, and doesn't snag in the wood fibres... so perhaps is is just right.
Tactile metaphors aside for a brief moment, being the modern era, and the west, I am not sure how many austerities I truly have encountered personally beyond long periods of practice, doing difficult things for many years until they are less so, and getting pushes that were unpleasant, difficult and sometimes upsetting, all so that I could learn to yield to them, and then no longer find them a problem. Certainly my teachers had some harsher old-school Chinese teachers, but also some very gentle and even funny ones. The teaching stories in my tradition must number in the hundreds, and I suppose some of my own stories are now part of that, from studying with Mark Raudva or John Kells, and encountering other Masters of quality such as Sam Masich, Faye Li Yip and Wang Hai Jun.
The great austerity, and the main task of any internal path worth its salt, is yielding to one's conditioning, which I will write about this weekend partially in response to Rhyd Wildermuth's interesting comments. In brief, this is the icky, revealing, awkward process of psychological, emotional and cultural drain-cleaning and well-tending that is clearing and composting all one's accumulated rubbish, baggage and unaddressed gubbins. Then seeing what we have been complicit in, understanding what people are currently calling 'privilege' (but which I see as just a social part of conditioning) and un-meshing oneself form the machine. For a secular, sensitive and extremely timely book which incidentally covers much of this from a thoughtful Indigenous perspective. I would recommend Vanessa Machado de Oliveira's 'Hospicing Modernity'.
But in standing here typing to you I am putting off going to the cliff top to do a Long Form before it gets too cold. So I will look forward to our conversations ahead.
Thank you very much for this, i have had this article open as a tab of months(?) now, and finally read it - at the right time. Lately I have felt, washed up against my own life - or self. Shipwrecked, my mind and spirit completely blunted and exhausted by trying or trying to try. I always seem to lose the way, the light, rightness, lost and lonely, i loose connection and get washed out into the world and its mentalities,- if our lives our 'broken', we should fix them by doing xyz, rather than just, let-being. My mind feels relieved having let go, let go of trying again and coming to accept my life the way it is, having trust in the inevitable change that is life - that i don't have to do everything or fix everything myself. Thank you again.
I have blunted my tool endlessly (and still do) on anger and frustration. I have a hate/love relationship with most things human. Especially language. It took me so long to find some resonance in the available. I held on to my knowing but was unable to express this how. The way. I have known for a long time the thinking without words, and then dulling my tool in the attempts to explain it to find others who knew. Finding bits and pieces, people who seemed to understand parts but turned out soon to be no where near the full embodied practice of the preach. Finding McGilchrists book was a revelation. Reading about how the right hemisphere way has no arguments was liberating. Now I better understood why I couldn’t find the words.
But Caroline, you are something else. You had the kind of conversation I imagined having with Iain, as opposed to the many, many intellectual diversions he has with clever academics, who got bits and pieces but never seemed to get the core. And here in these honest writings and in your voice I find a teacher. Thank you.
I'm a woodworker and I very much like "the edge of the cleaver has no thickness".
Just so !
Ahah! Your hands have the knowing of it. A materials gem you might be interested in is that knapped flints, such as made by my friend Morten Kutschera, are so sharp that they are only 1 molecule thick at the edge. He makes special blades from obsidian for eye and brain surgeons, as they are sharper than any metal alloy.
Taoist tales, especially in the Chuang Tzu, lean heavily into woodworking more than any other craft. And of course, St Joseph was a carpenter... Is there some secret spiritual transmission via woodworkers we have all been missing?
Regarding obsidian and such materials -- and their sharpness! -- I remember a wonderful woman I shared a workbench with at furniture-making school almost 30 years ago, she was ... intelligent, practically gifted and knowledgeable about many things ... anyways: Later she went back to university and became a biologist. She told me that when cutting thin slices of things to look at in the microscope they used small shards of glass (attached to some sort of handle presumably). And it was her job to make them by knapping, being nimble-fingered and junior in the lab.
As for secret spiritual transmissions and woodworkers ... on average I wouldn't say we're an especially spiritual bunch, rather the opposite. It's a job and we must get it done. But then there are some of us who ... are sort of drawn to the material, or perhaps to the process of making things? It's such a beautiful material ! (And trees are also amazing) It's a joy to make useful and sometimes even handsome things of it. It is so very varied, just like people, and therefore it requires great patience and experience to get to know it well. Every single piece of wood is unique, something that becomes very obvious when you try to work it with hand tools and your own muscle power, as opposed to roaring through it with a machine (and for the record: I use and like machines - but I love hand tools :-) I guess it's a material that encourages a certain kind of engagement, or immersion, perhaps ? I've always made stuff out of wood, since I was a small boy. I made things of wood that could fly ! I still have some of my childhood tools.
I have this notion that wood is a material that nudges you in the right direction, if you're attentive. It simply shows you the right way of going about things. Go with the grain and your plane will wistle a clean curly shaving and leave a silky smooth shimmering surface. Go against the grain and you get tear-out, sweat and frustration. It's obvious ! The difficult bit is understanding the rest of the world, so I leave that part to Mr. Kingsnorth :D
In my workshop library I have stashed away some non-woodworking books for my successor to find after I'm gone. One of them is 'Tao Te Ching' and another is Thomas Merton's version of 'The Way of Chuang Tzu'. I sometimes like to read a little bit of them in the morning before I start the day's work. Some things I think I understand, but most things are unclear to me. How could it be otherwise ? I like having something to think about when I'm working.
I'm hungry now, must make dinner.
So long !
Well, my friend Andres Roberts of 'Way of Nature' says that 'if it ain't practical, it ain't spiritual', I agree, so for me they go hand in hand. My girl's school had no wood or metal work, such were the times. I had always left the woodwork to my brother and partners, but later in life, thanks to learning bushcraft at www.wilderness-survival.co.uk I now love working with green wood, as a novice. It does indeed teach how to go with the grain. I love the richness of embodied metaphor from woodworking. I like your workshop library and have not yet read Thomas Merton's versions, so must now add that to the to-read list. I shall now tell Paul it is his job to understand the rest of the world. I am sure he is up to the task :)
Having read this story many times, you’ve shone a clear and succinct light on it and gives it a whole new depth for me. Thank you. Maybe too much reading..
You are really welcome. I found this story at about the same time I began studying T'ai Chi Sword and Sabre and began to accept that tool-use was not 'the Fall', but rather that a certain kind of controlling mind was the problem. 15 years later... still working on that conundrum!
Thank you for this! I sometimes use the story of Wheelwright Pian, from one of the outer chapters, to talk about how hard it is to talk about improvised theatre.
Thank you for this, Caroline.
I recall with fondness those subtle smiles and nods from my Tai Chi teacher and his more advanced students during push hands 10 years ago. Though I practiced religiously for about 5 years, my mind was (and perhaps still is) more like a dull axe. I couldn't really appreciate how to 'listen' and feel the adjustments as they were confirmed. Too much philosophizing along with neurotic self-analysis.
As you embark on this work of writing about your path through traditional and modern ways to the Way, I'm curious to learn your take on the austerities in the various forms you've encountered them along your way.
So glad you're writing here and looking forward to following along as things develop in real time.
Peace,
Dan
Thanks Dan. A mind like a dull axe is no bad thing, 'a too sharp knife blunts quickly' as the Tao Te Ching says. A 'dull' axe splits firewood superbly, and doesn't snag in the wood fibres... so perhaps is is just right.
Tactile metaphors aside for a brief moment, being the modern era, and the west, I am not sure how many austerities I truly have encountered personally beyond long periods of practice, doing difficult things for many years until they are less so, and getting pushes that were unpleasant, difficult and sometimes upsetting, all so that I could learn to yield to them, and then no longer find them a problem. Certainly my teachers had some harsher old-school Chinese teachers, but also some very gentle and even funny ones. The teaching stories in my tradition must number in the hundreds, and I suppose some of my own stories are now part of that, from studying with Mark Raudva or John Kells, and encountering other Masters of quality such as Sam Masich, Faye Li Yip and Wang Hai Jun.
The great austerity, and the main task of any internal path worth its salt, is yielding to one's conditioning, which I will write about this weekend partially in response to Rhyd Wildermuth's interesting comments. In brief, this is the icky, revealing, awkward process of psychological, emotional and cultural drain-cleaning and well-tending that is clearing and composting all one's accumulated rubbish, baggage and unaddressed gubbins. Then seeing what we have been complicit in, understanding what people are currently calling 'privilege' (but which I see as just a social part of conditioning) and un-meshing oneself form the machine. For a secular, sensitive and extremely timely book which incidentally covers much of this from a thoughtful Indigenous perspective. I would recommend Vanessa Machado de Oliveira's 'Hospicing Modernity'.
But in standing here typing to you I am putting off going to the cliff top to do a Long Form before it gets too cold. So I will look forward to our conversations ahead.
Thank you very much for this, i have had this article open as a tab of months(?) now, and finally read it - at the right time. Lately I have felt, washed up against my own life - or self. Shipwrecked, my mind and spirit completely blunted and exhausted by trying or trying to try. I always seem to lose the way, the light, rightness, lost and lonely, i loose connection and get washed out into the world and its mentalities,- if our lives our 'broken', we should fix them by doing xyz, rather than just, let-being. My mind feels relieved having let go, let go of trying again and coming to accept my life the way it is, having trust in the inevitable change that is life - that i don't have to do everything or fix everything myself. Thank you again.
I am really glad this was of help to you.
I have blunted my tool endlessly (and still do) on anger and frustration. I have a hate/love relationship with most things human. Especially language. It took me so long to find some resonance in the available. I held on to my knowing but was unable to express this how. The way. I have known for a long time the thinking without words, and then dulling my tool in the attempts to explain it to find others who knew. Finding bits and pieces, people who seemed to understand parts but turned out soon to be no where near the full embodied practice of the preach. Finding McGilchrists book was a revelation. Reading about how the right hemisphere way has no arguments was liberating. Now I better understood why I couldn’t find the words.
But Caroline, you are something else. You had the kind of conversation I imagined having with Iain, as opposed to the many, many intellectual diversions he has with clever academics, who got bits and pieces but never seemed to get the core. And here in these honest writings and in your voice I find a teacher. Thank you.