posting on slacking

It should well be the case that this particular blog has infrequent posts. I do come up with ideas throughout my day for posts related to laid back views on life - but often I just don't get around to writing them or just forget entirely.

But, stuff will get posted here, on and off.

Musicians can't plan

Ask a good musician, DJ, Bongo player or composer how they have made a life of music and it will never be planned out affair. None of them tell you how they left school with a 5 year plan and an Excel spreadsheet, instead they felt it and let it flow.

If you sit with the plan to make a song it will be stale and lifeless. If you find yourself in a mood where the music, rhythm or melody simply emerge then you're on the right path.

Where a Sergeant Major and his strict plans leave a random path of bloodshed. A musician, from the heart, produces an free-flowing creative path that echoes goodness for the many.

3 in the morning

Do you know the Chuang Tzu story where the monkey keeper wins over the monkeys by changing the offer of 2 nuts in the morning and 3 at night (which they disagreed with) to 3 in the morning and 2 at night? He wins by adapting at no loss.

Two machines were out of order at work today. When the technician finally arrived, late, not rushing, not fussed by the boss shouting at him, he fixed one machine almost by slapping the side of it. He then said how he did not fix what was not broken and always did the least possible to make things work.

He then found a number of errors on the 2nd machine and when the young operator said in a worried voice "Is it user error?" the technician replied "No (smile) not user error, but certainly not user competence"

At these words the young operator was greatly relieved and walked away happy.

Non-Planning

I once sat in a bar and proclaimed

"The less you try the easier life is"

and I was met with a few "have you heard this guy" kind of comments. But for the one person who showed interest I continued on how the more things just happen on their own when you don't try to make them happen.

Some people are forever making plans and sometimes they come off, sometimes they don't but for me my plans never go wrong as I don't make them. I dislike being asked about plans, the future, how I will do something, and so on. When pushed for a plan I normally say "let's see" as more often than not new circumstances pop up and the plan makes itself.

This is the path of the slacker.

Making a Difference

All the problems in the world arise from someone attempting to fix something that was not in fact broken. Faulty perception leads to their desire to fix nature, which leads to imbalance.

Being anti-this is to be pro-that. Pro-this is anti that. Anti or pro something is the very nature of the war they wish to stop. Conflict comes as they set up their desire vs the supposed reality.

Only in embracing conflict as a whole and seeing what it is made of can you in fact quash it by the root.

Non-Doing, Meditation and Slacking

I slack, therefore I am.

Sit on your ass in the US, your arse in the UK, your whatever-you-want-to-call-it in wherever-you-are and you'll be a slacker.

Sit back on your haunches in China, Japan, India, South East Asia or many other places and you are held in high esteem.

If you run around doing lots of stuff in the UK, USA, or other such nations they'll congratulate you for it. The same activity in India and they'll wonder who put a chilly up your whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Is it simply that it is much hotter in India and so sitting is more sensible, or is it because sitting is seen as achieving in one continent and lazy in another that this divide occurs? You could well argue that in a cold nation like England people were motivated by harsh conditions to build houses, develop, invent stuff, get drunk and pick fights (both in the pub and over the globe) and that in India people were more able to sit out under the warm starry night philosophising over just the right manner to sit still. But then what of China? There they have every weather condition from sun burn to snowstorm and sitting is a well held virtue.

How is this laziness justified? Well in a way it is not as why should you justify something you have no problem with? and in a way it is justified with such notions as Wu Wei and Zen.

Non-Doing

Wu Wei can be interpreted many ways even by the Chinese and so then we can interpret it in as many ways as we like. This is how such classic texts as the Taoist Tao Te Ching do so well in mass publication - they are open-ended and can be interpreted any-which-way by anyone open to read them. Wu Wei can be seen as pure slacking. It can also be philosopised over deeply to mean allowing the universe to do as it does and not interfering in that with your silly little head.

You're late for the bus, it pulls away - a straight runs after it, a slacker waits for the next one. Each person then claims their method brings about the intended future (getting to destination on time or meeting that stranger who later became your ex-wife) - both were in fact the only future there was ever going to be as - we don't do the universe. It does us. Which pats the slacker firmly on their back and justifies their late arrival to work that day.

Yes the slacker is right but by the same token, so is the straight. But it is the understanding of the vast infinity in flow, and being able to dance along with it that makes slacking the way and the objective.