Tao encompasses everything.

(from pages 31-35)

2.  Writing is flow:

 

(coherence): "Nothing on earth is more gentle and yielding than water, yet nothing is stronger.  When it confronts a wall of stone, gentleness overcomes hardness; the power of water prevails" (verse 78).

 

We’ve often heard sports announcers talking about how an athlete can be "in the zone," a phrase that reflects the athlete’s complete absorption in an activity.  The intensity of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, or of Mia Hamm in the World Cup of soccer, or Brett Favre in the NFL playoffs is a palpable realization of this zone, of the flow of intensity and creativity.  Musicians too often seem to be in something of a trance as they play.  We see it in the jazz saxophonist’s contortions, the rock guitarist’s face, and the violinist’s rapture. In her book, Writing in Flow, Susan Perry explores this phenomenon we call a state of flow.  It seems, some people are blessed with a natural tendency to shift into flow almost at will, while some have never felt the stopping of time that characterizes the experience, while some few others live in an almost perpetual state of flow.  Artists and craftspeople seem to agree that flow is essential to creativity and productivity.  They often describe it as a trance-like experience where they begin working – painting, playing music, carving, building, and such – and they emerge an hour or many hours later with a sense that they have been submerged in some way.  Susan Perry writes, “Your sense of self is altered during flow . . . as if you’ve been participating in some bizarre ritual, as though your body’s been taken over by ‘something.’”  Pretty strange stuff, almost mystical, certainly mysterious.  Writing offers that place, that trance-like zone where it seems second nature to improvise and create, and where ideas and text blend in a flowing, ongoing stream. 

 

                                              This is the Tao.