Unending Self-Discovery

To the winged warrior the stick becomes as a Samurai sword, and the sky becomes a practice. Each flight is new. And the more we fly, the more we discover. What is not needed falls away, and your inner art of airmanship becomes masterful.

Reading all the pages here will not make you a better pilot, and certainly will not explain what Zen or peak performance psychology is about. However, if you put the thoughts into action, over time, you will fly more surely. You will begin to see how full of discovery flying can be, and how fully learning one thing can then be positively applied to other areas of your life.

Psychologists now routinely refer to three kinds of work orientation: a job, a career, and a calling (Wrzesniewski, et al., 1997). A job is something you do just for the money. Your real life is all away from the job. I've had jobs like stocking supermarket shelves and selling cars. A career is something more. People who see themselves as having a career have a deeper personal investment in their work, and mark their achievements not only through pay, but with prestige and promotions. They invest more into their work than the uninterested job holder, and see themselves as getting more in return. It is a distinction only you make; selling cars or stocking supermarket shelves both could be careers.

The happiest people see themselves as having a calling. It's a passionate commitment to the work for its own sake. The effort they expend becomes its own reward. The calling is what they are, not just what they do. When asked what makes a good pilot, the general in charge of accident prevention for the USAF, J. D. 'Smokey' Caldara, said, "Flying safely is a way of life—a creed."

The origin of the word calling is religious. You are called to do God's work, and it is the root of the word vocation. Maybe someone with a calling conjures images of artists living by the sea or doctors working in Africa. But hearing and heding a calling is a solid fact of the human condition. You can view your work as drudgery, or as a method to advance in your spritual life. Your choice. Or you can start to see the greater whole. Entry-level street cleaners make our world beautiful, airline pilots bring families together and make global business a reality. It's your choice how you view your work. A mundane job to do, or a way of life. By making airmanship your creed, by really paying attention, by making your efforts meaningful, the inner rewards will come.

For me to find this again, I needed to understand again the importance and ultimate responsibility of my position as an airline captain. From an attitude of just driving the bus, to acknowledging the awesome responsibility placed in me by trusting passengers. I transport soldiers on leave, TV stars, honeymooners, and parents on the way to show baby to the new grandparents for the first time. Several years ago, when I felt trapped in a routine job, I needed to awaken to the endless opportunities for growth by learning to fly at a higher level. I love flying. I have found my calling.

The most successful basketball coach of all time, Phil Jackson, wrote in his book Sacred Hoops that,

Most rookies arrive in the NBA thinking that what will make them happy is having unlimited freedom to strut their egos on national TV. But that approach to the game is an inherently empty experience. What makes basketball so exhilarating is the joy of losing yourself completely in the dance, even if it's just for one beautiful transcendent moment.

When I read this I thought of all the airline pilots that went to flight school dreaming about making millions of dollars flying on autopilot to exotic foreign cities twice a month while being served first-class meals by pretty flight attendants. After a while, it becomes Phil's inherently empty experience. The joy of flying is in the flying. You must actively engage to find the magic. You will eventually have complete clarity seeing what is yours to do, then readily surrender to just doing it.

You might have heard the phrase 'Right Stuff' used to describe superior pilot skills. It was coined by author Tom Wolfe in his landmark book of the beginning of the astronaut program. It is often now used as a shorthand for a natural pilot. But that is simplistic. Apollo 7 astronaut and Marine Corps fighter pilot Walter Cunningham said the original use came as close as anything to describing what sets flying apart as an art, as a science, as a way of living:

The main thing to know about an astronaut, if you want to understand his psychology, is not that he's going into space but that he is a flyer and has been in that game for 15 or 20 years. It's like a huge and very complex pyramid, miles high, and the idea is to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you are one of the elected and anointed ones that have the right stuff.

The right stuff is not bravery in the simple sense; it is bravery in the most sophisticated sense. Any fool can put his hide on the line and throw his life away in the process. The idea is to be able to put your hide on the line—and then to have the moxie, the reflexes, the talent, the experience, to pull it back in at the last yawning moment—and then to be able to go out again the next day and do it all over again—and, in its best expression, to be able to do it in some cause, in some calling that means something. (Cunningham, 1977)

Some people who study expertise use three broad levels of performance; novice, journeyman, and expert. Most training research has focused on the transition from novice to proficient journeyman, but of course Sam was interested in how people continue to move up to become expert. A detailed account of performance levels developed by professors Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus at the University of California, Berkeley is maybe the description most widely cited in academic papers. It uses a well defined five level phenomenological model of skill acquisition: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, and finally expertise (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 2005). What's the difference between the highest two levels? The professors wrote that:

The proficient performer, immersed in the world of skillful activity, sees what needs to be done, but decides how to do it. The expert not only sees what needs to be achieved; thanks to a vast repertoire of situational discriminations, he or she also sees immediately how to achieve the goal. Thus, the ability to make more subtle and refined discriminations is what distinguishes the expert from the proficient performer. . . .

The chess Grandmaster experiences a compelling sense of the issue and the best move. Excellent chess players can play at the rate of 5 to 10 seconds a move and even faster without any serious degradation in performance. At this speed they must depend almost entirely on intuition and hardly at all on analysis and comparison of alternatives. . . . The expert driver not only feels in the seat of his pants when speed is the issue; he knows how to perform the appropriate action without calculating and comparing alternatives. On the off-ramp, his foot simply lifts off the accelerator and applies the appropriate pressure to the brake. What must be done, simply is done. (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 2005.)

This Dreyfus and Dreyfus five level model was used by Patricia Benner in her seminal book From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. She analyzed actual patient care experiences as described by 1,200 skilled nurses, then produced a manual on practical mastery in the real world that the American Journal of Nursing recognized as a 'book of the year' when it was released in 1984. It has since been cited thousands of times by other researchers and kept in print for two decades. Patricia found that:

Expert performers no longer rely on analytic principles (rules, guidelines, maxims) to connect their understanding of the situation to an appropriate action. The expert, with an enormous background of experience, has an intuitive grasp of each situation and zeros in on the accurate region of the problem without wasteful consideration of a large range of unfruitful, alternative diagnoses and solutions. The performer is no longer aware of features and rules, and his or her performance becomes fluid and flexible and highly proficient. (Benner, 1984)

Bringing the focus back to flying, a NATO military aircrew training paper on airmanship believed there are three meaningfully different levels that can be distinguished (Ebbage & Spencer, 2003). Basic Airmanship is essential comppetence. It requires a solid foundation of aeronautical knowledge and skills, and results in textbook performance. With additional motivation, knowledge and experience, you can reach Superior Airmanship. Here, pilots do more than simply follow standard operating procedures. They use foresight to anticipate problems and use higher-order skills such as situation assessment, judgment and
problem solving to take a proactive rather than a reactive approach to situation management. The highest level is Outstanding Airmanship. It is the desire to achieve excellence in all aspects of performance. At this level pilots are dedicated to self-improvement and have a genuine desire to perform optimally at all times. It is continuous striving for airmanship excellence, and manifests itself in outstanding performance.

In his excellent book Redefining Airmanship Tony Kern uses a similar model, but with four levels of pilot skill. The first level is safety, which by definition is reached by every private pilot or primary flight training graduate. Safe enough to be let loose alone into the sky. The second level is effectiveness, which must be reached by a commercial pilot for a line check, a military pilot for mission qualification, or for sport pilots it is the ability to handle cross-county flying in a range of weather. Kern says that, "Many flyers see little reason to develop additional skills beyond this effectiveness level. Motivation to develop beyond this level must come from within." Elsewhere, Kern has stated this "good enough" zone is characterized by "the crushing grip of mediocrity" (Kern. 2009).

For those that continue to study and practice and think, a third skill level is achieved. They can fly efficiently, saving fuel or time or effort. It is more skill than is required, but it is the major stepping stone to mastery. It is where our art of flying starts to be seen. After adding and adding, you now start to pare down. Eliminate the unnecessary. Do only what is rightly required. Almost correct the first time, followed by a small correction and then peace. Downwind to base to final becomes one gently decelerating smooth curve like the sun setting.

Dr Kern identifies a forth skill level by precision approaching perfection. Few aviators ever reach this level. It is the inner art of airmanship. Master of the wing. Authority without domination. You must seek perfection as "a continuing motivation for personal improvement." You exceed the skill levels, you top the motivation pyramid. By not flying two knots too fast, by sitting peacefully in the flow, ready for the zone, in complete control but relaxed looking at the clouds, you have made airmanship an inner art. And speaking again of art, Master painter and sculptor Michelangelo knew about this. He said, "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." So you keep attending to what some consider tiny trifling bits of details. In time, this practice of insight and discipline transforms you. Every cockpit has a window to the world, but more importantly it offers some a view into the human condition. The cockpit is a vehicle for discovering we can do what we once could not even imagine. The cockpit transports us into the unknown.

Sam said the Japanese would recognize the highest level of airmanship as Shibumi, which he said is effortless perfection. You can't work that hard all at once he said. It takes time, you have to learn and forget, you have to internalize and let your habits make you. Flying becomes a path to perfect harmony in motion.

When asked what makes a good pilot, philosopher of flight Richard Bach once answered, "Four things: Judgment, judgment, judgment and the ability to see the air the way a river-rat sees the water." For good judgment you must consider all the facts, and apply rules and values without cheating or letting your ego be larger than the sky. Keep making effort to learn all you can, and to just do what is right. As a safety warrior, you take pride in choosing the right path. As a Samurai held his code of conduct—the Bushido—above all else, you must hold your proud aeronautical honor code above all else. Do not allow the powerful forces of management, ego, saving face, looking good, being cool, getting there on time, or whatever cloud your clear decision making skills.

You are the pilot-in-command. Of the airplane, of yourself.

Captain John Rosenberg is a check airman at Delta Air Lines and chair of the National Professional Standards Committee of the Air Line Pilots Association. At a 2010 NTSB conference he defined aviation professionalism as a "dedication to striving for mastery." Russ Bartlet, when he was Blue Angel #1, the team's leader, made it clear when he said, "we have to seek perfection in the maneuvers. As simple as that." Simon Meade, when he was the RAF Red Arrow aerobatic team Squadron Leader, laid it out in black and white: "if we don't strive for perfection from the very start, what do we strive for?" They are not alone in this attitude. At 16 years old John Rands was flying gliders, by 21 he was a RAF fighter pilot in the powerful Lightning interceptor, then he flew three years in the Red Arrows. Following a tour back in the fleet on the Harrier, he returned to the team to fly jet one using the coveted call sign Red Leader. With over two thousand Red Arrow sorties in his logbook, he wrote in his 1999 book Reds what happens after every flight: "We watch the video of our performance as soon as we can after the show, picking out the areas for improvement. There is always something to work on."

Maybe the best cellist the world has ever known was Spaniard Pablo Casals. He had a long lifetime of practice and playing, At four years old Casals could play the violin, piano and flute. At six he played the violin well enough to perform a solo in public. He spent 13 years practicing Bach's six cello suites every day before he performed them in public. He won awards around the world. And at age 93 he was asked why he still practised three hours a day. The master replied: "I'm beginning to see some improvement."

Jeremy Sloane, USAF Thunderbird pilot, said in 2006 that, "no matter how precise we fly, there is always room for improvement." John Saccomando, USN Blue Angel pilot, said in 2004 that, "It's really a never ending process. We're never completely going to reach that level of perfection." Neil Armstrong, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut, moon walker and at age 75 still an active glider pilot, said in a CBS TV interview that he works for, "self satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, trying to do a little better than you think you possibly can."

Abilities now start to touch aspirations. Mario Andretti, the 'Driver of the Century' according to the Associated Press and RACER magazine, won races in Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR, midget cars, sprint cars, stock cars and drag racing. Did he rest on his laurels? No. Instead he was always on a mission, "striving to the next level." Debby Rihn-Harvey, who has over 25,000 hours aloft as a Southwest Airlines B737 captain, unlimited aerobatics champion and flight instructor put it this way:

It is you against perfection, not against anyone else. I've never flown a perfect flight in 25 years. . . . I feel too many people are so mechanical when they learn to fly, and if I can make them feel as if they are one with the airplane I feel as if I've done a service and given back to aviation some of what it has given me.

As you continue to learn, continue to practice, the mechanical feeling will start to disappear. Your awkward old self will get out the way of your smooth pilot self. You naturally come to treat the cockpit with respect as a learning place, a dojo. You are flying just to fly. You are soaking up new experiences on every flight. You are concentrating on every task, bring right mindness to bear. You work on areas you know are weak, whether it is the electrical system or CRM or letting your eye and hands fly the approach while your mind is a monitor. Let both sides of the brain go flying. Although you are nothing special, you sometimes have a 'white moment' where you get in the zone when hand-flying. Then you may often feel that your 'no-mind' flying is a fully engaged flow state. It gets better from here. It gets harmonious, unified, and effortless.

This point of starting to see the full potential is where I was when I lost contact with Sam. He talked to me of being a mirror. He talked of all the words and all the techniques falling away. Of becoming a sky where clouds and mountains are just clouds and mountains.

If you work hard to get to this stage, you have been changed. You are not an amateur, a hacker, or a dilettante. You are a master. A true safety warrior. The process will have changed you. You know now what only warriors and artists who have invested their whole selves into a practice can know. The world of the painter is not the world of the art critic. The world of the pilot is not the world of the passenger.

Despite the huge amount of time it takes to get to this stage, it takes more. We all know the slightly unsettling feeling of not flying for a while and then getting back into the cockpit. We lose 'the edge.' We quickly lose proficiency. Elite level flying is a use-it or lose-it skill. Just like the physical changes in brain structure with practice in an activity can be seen by neuroscientists, the effects of stopping have been mapped. A university group studied the increase in the area of the occipital lobe (a region associated with the perception of motion) over time as their participants learnt to juggle (Dragansski, et al., 2004). More than the increase, it's worthy of note that when the juggling stopped within months the occipital lobe has lost about half of its pervious increase in size. Not staying current in a motor skill has a real physical effect we can see in the brain.

Sam loved the imagery of snow falling on trees. Christmas card stuff. So much heavy snow that stiff old oaks will eventually crack under the weight. However the flexible willow will bend and bend and bend. And then at some point the snow will simply slide off and the willow springs back up. Alive. It does it all without thought. Blending with nature. Accepting the changing, changeless river. You know who you are as an individual and simultaneously are invisibly, yet palpably, connected with the All. In this state, your creative power is limitless. Sam babbled sometimes of oceans of air, of not feeling or knowing, but somehow letting the plane kiss the concrete. Not only were the passengers unaware of when they touched the ground, so was the pilot.

I told Sam of such a landing I had experienced in the ATR. It felt great. I asked him what I should do after flowing into the zone for a landing where the flight attendant's call up to say the passengers are clapping. He looked at me like I was stupid, and said, "the after landing checklist."

E `a`a `ia makou e ho`okele hou, `A`ohe halawai ma`o oa aku. This is a Hawaiian chant from those astounding Polynesian sailers who in tiny boats long ago navigated thousands of miles of (to us) seemingly empty Pacific ocean. It means "we are challenged to sail once again, no horizon is too distant." The human race has survived and thrived all over the planet because we learnt the life and death secrets of mastery of sky, wind, and self. And as the chant shows, we have long known there is no real end to this inner journey of mastery.

Mōhiotanga, Mātauranga, Māramatanga. These are three Māori terms for different types of knowledge, and their differences show these New Zealand natives had a keen appreciation of human understanding. Mōhiotanga is the internalized knowing we are born with. It's how leaves turn to the sun or babies suckle a mother's breast. In the nature/nurture dichotomy it is nature. On the other hand, Mātauranga is nurture, the knowledge that is transferred from others via instructions or training. What is intriguing is Māramatanga. This third word for knowing can be translated as illumination. It is connected with the many degrees of understanding (mārama), it occurs after an internal reaction or fusion of the other two kinds of knowledge through insight or training. Māramatanga is the knowledge of the expert, way beyond instinct, beyond the best books. Māramatanga is only created within us by deliberative practice. It is the knowledge of the inner arts.

Tihē mauriora
Ki Te Whaiao
Ki Te Ao Mārama!

The breath and vital energy of life
To the Dawnlight
To the World of Light of Illumination!

Kata Oh Manna Dey, Kata Oh Kwey Ta was a favorite phrase of Matsuo Basho, and directly translates as learn form then exceed. The Japanese are not the only people to understand this idea. An Italian saying puts it this way, Impara l'arte, e mettila da parte, which means learn the art, then put it aside. The idea here is learn the rules so well that you can forget them. They are part of you. The master artist has learnt the rules of color and perspective and shadow so well she just paints what she sees in her eyes and her heart. The master pilot has learnt aerodynamics and flight control systems so well he just joins the downwind and lands. We are flying into special realms of space and time through total absorption in the work.

Nina Ananiashvili is an incredible prima ballerina who was a soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet and guest performer with the New York City Ballet. Sickly as an infant, her parents enrolled the toddler in figure skating lessons in an effort to improve her health. She thrived. At age six she started practicing ballet. At ten she was accepted into the Moscow Choreographic Institute. She practiced ballet five hours a day, six days a week. As an adult, she continued to practice every day. It is hard to imagine that much practice. Literally a lifetime of learning. But like all true master craftsmen she grow past the teachings and the practice. In a filmed interview she said about performing, "when the time comes I forget what I've learned. I dance between the notes."

Sterling Moss, Legendary British motor racing champion put it this way, "you have to be part of the car. It's no longer that you're in a car and doing something with it, that's why I refer to this as a complete entity. If things are right, it is complete."  (Manso, 1969.)  Pilot and author William Langewiesche described a proven master pilot this way, "He did not sit in airplanes so much as put them on. He flew them in a profoundly integrated way, as an expression of himself. He lived through them." (Langewiesche, 2009.) That pilot, by the way, was Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger who landed a powerless A320 in the Hudson river. Wolf Hirth, the German gliding pioneer and one of the founders of Schempp-Hirth sailplanes wrote in that one of his commands for pilots was, "He must gradually become one with his plane as if the wings were his own." (Hirth, 1952.)

Be the plane. One with the wing.

I showed my sort-of-finished notes about Inner Flying to F. E. Potts, a true master pilot who wrote the book F. E. Potts' Guide To Bush Flying. He was kind enough to write me back:

Flying is an inward journey, and a thinking person's game. With a guy like me, where flying was merged into the arctic environment and I was more at home at the controls of my planes than anywhere else, it does reach a depth that isn't found in more mundane flying. The computer hackers find it is necessary to fall into "hack mode" on touching the keyboard if one is to reach the highest levels, and much the same is true with the best pilots. As one settles behind the controls all else should fall away and there should only be the present moment and its smooth integration into the past and future of the flight as one flow.

I never speak of Zen or anything like that in reference to flying, because it should be unnecessary to reach outside your self into other realms. There is a certain pleasure in settling behind the controls of a bush plane (say, a Super Cub), lifting off a rough gravel bar, and flying just a few feet above the trees and river bottoms to some remote area where one can land and get out and wander around without another human within hundreds of miles of where you are at. In the end, it is the contentment, the silence, and the inner peace that come with the life of a wilderness bush pilot that are its best reward.

So it was this letter, received after Sam had left, that showed me that when the plane and pilot become one, when you are the mirror reflecting the nature of the sky and the machine—at that time the Twelve Flights and all the other thoughts of arête and psychology will also fall away. And I shall be back again in the cockpit. Turning switches. Checking gauges. Flying airplanes.

Katte, kabuto no o o shime yo. This is a Samurai battle cry that can be translated as 'after victory, tighten your helmet cords.' You may have won this battle, but be prepared for the next. And the next. For the battle with the sky, and the ego, is never ending.

Enjoy the journey. Work in the eternal now. Play with the perpetual pursuit of piloting perfection. One with the wing. Flying from A to B and all inner points in-between.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

— Hippocrates

Each one of my flights lays the foundation for a better flight tomorrow.

— Leo and Ricky Brigliadori

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.

— Pat Riley

Many people have the ambition to succeed; they may even have a special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves.

— John Stevenson

Airmanship requires that every pilot personally accept the responsibility and determination to strive for perfection on every flight.

— Frederick Hansen

Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

— Bruce Lee

Bush Flying, like all forms of flying, is a matter of details. And no detail is too small not to be important. There is an old saying that a flight is not over until the airplane is parked and properly tied down. Nowhere is this more true than in the bush, where help is unavailable. This is the reason the pro takes such care of seemingly minor details, and, in these details, survives.

— F. E. Potts

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything I did, everything I achieved, can be traced back to the way I approached the fundamentals. . . . You can't skip fundamentals if you want to be the best.

— Michael Jordan

To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

As a skier, when you race, you are never gonna have a perfect run. You don't even have a perfect section, or a perfect turn. But what's every athlete out there doing, still, over and over? They're pursuing it: they're trying, anyway. That's what I've been doing for 25 years.

— Bode Miller

I don’t want to use the word perfect, because nothing is perfect. I strive for excellence.

— Barbara Streisand

The bottom-line reason why I played golf, I wanted to be the best at what I could do. . . . There is no way that anybody is ever going to be 100% at at. Nobody ever has and nobody ever will. I am motivated to get as close as I can to perfection.

— Jack Nicklaus

You can never really get to the end of music. It's an eternal journey. You think you know a lot, but the more you find out, the more you realize you don't know anything. It's a constant source of curiosity and search. And wonder.

— Sting

I don't think I have reached a plateau. I have just reached the level where I am today. But I need to go above it.

— David Beckham

Every situation, every moment, provides the opportunity for self-growth and development of your character.

— David K. Reynolds

The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development.

— Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

By devotion to one's own particular duty, everyone can attain perfection.

— Krishna

The Way is not far from man; if we take the Way as something superhuman, beyond man, this is not the real way.

— Confucius

I just remember feeling at a certain point in the piece as though everything disappeared—myself included.

— Jeffrey Kahane

I may be flying a complicated airplane, rushing through space, but in this cabin I'm surrounded by simplicity and thoughts set free of time. How detached the intimate things around me seem from the great world down below. How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. That ground—seconds away—thousands of miles away. This air, stirring mildly around me. That air, rushing by with the speed of a tornado, an inch beyond. These minute details in my cockpit. The grandeur of the world outside. The nearness of death. The longness of life.

— Charles A. Lindbergh

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

— Ursula K. LeGuin

Do not entertain hopes for realization, but practice all your life.

— Milarepa

Discipline is based on pride, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of the goal or the fear of failure.

— Gary Ryan Blair

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

— Jean Cocteau

A man who has attained mastery of an art reveals it in his every action.

— Samurai maxim

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

— Charlie Parker

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself

— Miles Davis

Ah, mastery . . .  what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills . . . and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.

— Gail Sheehy

Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. "Childlikeness" has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfullness. When this is attained, man thinks, yet he does not think. He thinks like the showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean.

— Daisetz T. Suzuki

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

— Frédéric Chopin

You must work very hard to become a natural golfer.

— Gary Player

Know yourself and play within yourself. I want to be the best and take things to a new level—to be creative, to do the undone, to show the unseen.

— Deion Sanders

The inner being is what takes you to another level.

— Greg Norman

Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently.

— Beryl Markham

Doing work which has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the natural cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe.  'Ordinary' work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment.

— Fritjof Capra

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

— Sun Tzu

You have to eat your technique. Digest it. Eliminate it so it's a part of yourself, it's in your blood, but you're not concerned with it anymore.

— Tom Robbins

There is freedom from desire and sorrow at the end of the way. The awakened one is free from all fetters and goes beyond life and death. Like a swan that rises from the lake, with her thoughts at peace, she moves onward, never looking back. The one who understands the unreality of all things, and who has laid up no store, that one’s track is unseen, as of birds in the air. Like a bird in the air, she takes an invisible course, wanting nothing, storing nothing, knowing the emptiness of all things.

— The Dhammapada

Let you mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views—then the world will be governed.

— Zhuangzi

Although the sea was my greatest enemy, it was also my greatest ally. I know intellectually that the sea is indifferent, but her richness allowed me to survive.

— Steve Callahan

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

— Aldous Huxley

There is no enlightenment outside of everyday life.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

We die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

— Dag Hammarskjöld

No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself.

— Tilopa

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The secret principle of all disciplines is that by training, training falls away. By forgetting about training and sloughing off your own mind, you will be all the more unaware of your self, and the place you thus come to is the perfection of the Way.

— Yagyu

The mind of a perfect man is like a mirror. It grasps nothing. It expects nothing. It reflects but does not hold. Therefore, the perfect man can act without effort.

— Zhuangzi

The final state of any discipline is where you forget what you have learned, discard your mind, and accomplish whatever you set out to do without being aware of it yourself. You begin by learning and reach the point where learning does not exist.

— Heiho Kaden Sho

My last flight with Sam