I have made a big commitment to self-improvement. It is not due to any outside factors, but rather it was a dire situation that forced me to evolve. Feeling like something was missing in my life, I took my coworker’s suggestion and picked up a small book called Zen Guitar. The book was like a fine wine, satiating my palate with various memories and flavors. In the opening chapters, I was led to finding the way. Tao in Chinese, Dou or Michi in Japanese, “The Way” literally means pathway or road. The funny thing about finding the way is usually the harder you try, the better it hides.
Do you know that story of von Kleist, about the man who had a fight with a bear? And the bear could read his thoughts, so that the only way of hitting the bear was to do so not on purpose—because the bear would know in advance. So it’s the same in working with a Zen master
Alan Watts
Wanting to find the way, I chased Zen by moving to Japan and felt like I had strayed further than ever from my peace. I almost called quits and moved home. Despite being on the verge of leaving the country, I found zen. Life is similar to that bear story. The harder you try to force something, the better it evades your grasp. Since zen is something you don’t attain by effort, it comes as a pleasant surprise when it appears in your life. A book and a fellow American brought me to that place of deep contemplation once more.
Finding the Way to a Beginner’s Mind
Finding the humility to empty your cup is difficult, especially when things are going well. Conversely, after a large helping of humble pie, it gets easier to put aside what you think you know. I didn’t know I was capable of waking up at 6:00 AM to brush snow off of my woefully unfit-for-the-situation 180SX. Laughter was the last thing I thought would happen. Yet multiple times within the last week I found myself laughing and making jokes with friends as we shoveled white powder around.
Opposite my normal Filipino time, I arrived to work with double, triple, or even quadruple Lombardi time. That means I was at my desk ready to work thirty minutes to an hour early. The extra time enabled me to blog, read, or play around with music. It took a hard reset to get me to change my daily patterns, but it was like a deep part of me had woken up. The extra time I had in the morning allowed me to read a chapter in Zen guitar.
“Like this cup, you are full of your own ideas,” replied the master. “How
can I teach unless you first empty your cup?”
When we empty our cup, we agree to rid ourselves of the preconceptions
that block new learning. This is the attitude of the true beginner, the mind
required to know Zen Guitar.From here on out, drink and keep an empty cup. The moment you think you
Zen Guitar – Philip Toshio
know everything there is to know, you will have lost the way. The
beginner’s mind is the mind of wisdom
Finding the way to my Sound
Those words hit me in the heart. Furthermore, all I needed was a little push to spring into action. With my new neural patterns forming, I had more confidence in myself, my life, and the sounds I could make. Philip is never just talking about the guitar when he’s giving advice, that’s the beauty of the book. The song that is our life carries sounds that are uniquely our own. We just have to have the confidence to bring it out into the world. While managing to bring the beginner’s mindset into every new day of life.
After work had ended for the day, I sat in the music studio working out something that only I could make. It wasn’t the most original thing, the mixing isn’t the best, and so many areas could use work. It had been so long since I had sat down at my computer and hatched out a track. Even so, it was a song that could only be made then and there. Music was that creative energy that had to be found and rediscovered time and time again.
When Will I Get A Black Belt
My mind found its way to my childhood memories upon reading and reflection. In Tae Kwon Do, you get belts every time you’ve gained enough experience to hit another level. My mind was curious as to how that tradition even started. Therefore it hatched a fun hypothesis. Consequently, when I was a kid I read a story about a bird who picked up colors from its adventures until eventually, the bird was stained black at the end of his long journey. The real reason we go from white to black when mastering a martial art is because of what happens to a white belt if we wear it for long enough. Before we made a symbol of it, the belt would naturally change color out of repeated use.
Unlike modern martial arts, mastering music and life itself isn’t clearly presented in stages. Life is more like wearing a white belt we wear day after day. We pick up stains and colors until we have a well-used, worn, and black belt. Once we think we have it figured out things change. Like getting a new white belt we have to break it in. The time comes when we have to learn a new song or a new way of living. In order to become a great musician, I had to become a great listener first.
Finding the Way . . .Again
The next morning I made it my mission to really learn guitar. While I knew certain chord patterns and where particular notes were on a guitar it was time to really hunker down and study. I decided to really get to know one song, and the song I chose was a result of me tracing back to why I wanted to move to Japan in the first place.
Angel Beats had a special place in my heart. Likewise, anime in general changed the course of my life. The more I learn about the nature of the universe, the further I believe these fictional worlds aren’t fictional at all. Rather I believe them to be glimpses into other realities memories of past lives, and previews of future selves. Perhaps they are all currently happening and reoccurring and my understanding of time and true reality is too primitive to understand the nature of things. Perhaps I’m selectively choosing facts to create a reality where I can be, will be, or was a cute cat girl. That aside this song found its way into my soul.
It took a long time, but I’m finding the way back to this song. Memories of watching anime with my two college friends carried a warm feeling. This anime was already four years old when I watched it. . . “oh god all the anime music I like is old now”.
Finding the Way to Better Questions
Tony Robbins is a divisive self-help guru. His name might bring different reactions depending on who you ask. Despite this, there are gold nuggets buried in all his showmanship.
Ask better questions. The quality of your life depends on the quality of the questions you ask.
Tony Robbins
Getting to know a subject, really becoming an expert at it, often requires you to break things down.
How Am I Going To Get Good At Making Music?
That’s a really big question. It’s impossible to find the way if your scale is too big. My current job requires me to break down big abstract ideas into more simple things in order to build functional systems.
How Do I Get Good At Guitar?
This focus is getting better, one instrument in a sea of things that make a sound. Now we’re getting somewhere.
How Can I Play This Song?
What key is this song in? Once I know the key, what chords are they playing, and what notes did they use? Is that a I V IV iii chord progression? What does that key look like on the guitar neck? On the piano keyboard? Now, this is finding the way. There is knowing a song in reference to the ability to recognize this piece of music. In contrast to oh I love that song so much I can play it in four different ways. The real magic comes when you can diverge from the track just enough to sprinkle some personality over the top while keeping it recognizable.
Practice, Play, Find the Way
To practice, you need to play, but to play doesn’t necessarily mean to practice. Both are required to get good at something and like yin and yang, we must balance them. Alan Watts states that there is a reason we say that great artists and musicians play. Therefore they don’t work a guitar. Part of dawning that white belt is to be happy to just make a sound. I remembered when I got my first fender squire and I was happy just to strum the open strings all day. To play is to be curious about that sound, to lose the fear of sounding bad as you learn new things about sound. You can get all sorts of tones out of a guitar.
What guitar did they use, what amps, and where did they play? Did they strum those with a pick and what techniques did they use? What if I did this?
What if I did the opposite
Tim Ferris
Practice
Is the painful part of learning that is difficult no matter what you’re doing. Whether that be art, language learning, or music. As I learned with eSports mastering micromechanics opens up doors for you. It lets you play in new, free, more expressive ways. After you master certain skills and techniques the real play begins. It’s just getting past that hurdle which is so difficult. I want to live an extraordinary life, that sounds so difficult, so abstract and hard to handle. It’s as Lisa Nichols states, however. It’s just making one small extraordinary decision every day.
If I practice what I say, will I find the way?
You Make Mistakes along the way.
I chose this photo because it represents a large portion of my life. My feet and hands are numb after spending three hours in the snow rescuing my 180sx from my own dumb mistake. I called my Filipino friend and he rescued me. After some fun but spirited driving, I found myself understeering into a wall of snow. When I sent the image to my car friends we shared almost a mutual laugh. Unlike one of the “JDM” YouTubers out there I had my own real JDM moment.
That’s how you learn
Car Friend
Whether it’s guitar, music, art, or life making mistakes is a part of finding the way.
Much love ♥
LaidbackMarco
