Flavio's notes & aphorisms
A Feather Touch
When I first learned how to swing a kettlebell, Pete told me not to grasp it tightly. “Feather touch, hold it lightly” he said, “you hold the weight of the world on your shoulders”. I would repeat to myself “feather touch” every time I started anew. I reckon that this applies to more than just holding a kettlebell — Alan Watts speaks of a mind that isn’t sticky. A mind that isn’t sticky is a mind that reflects reality as it presents itself, without hankering for this or that.
One of the things that I realized when studying Daoism and Zen is that, at first blush, they appear to be anarchical. But when you inspect their practices more closely, you realize that they require some discipline to attain, and yet, they cannot be attained by those who wish to attain. The mind that wishes to attain, to grasp, to hold, o crystallize, is the ego and its strict borders, its enforced duality. That’s a mind that stubbornly refuses to mirror reality, but that wishes to impose its own grandiose projects on it. More distraction, more plans, more illusions, as Being hurtles towards Death. But if it is a process, isn’t Being actually Becoming? What is the significance of dying, and why should it matter so much, unless the ego wishes to perpetuate itself into the future?
I have to let go of certainty, but even more importantly, of the desire for certainty. Dwelling in doubt seems to me akin to dwelling in chaos, but something can certainly be fashioned out of this chaos.
And the idea that either this is ultimately a tragedy, or it is a comedy. I incline more towards the latter.
Humans are indeed frightful beings.
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.