Monday Miyagi 022210
“If to enjoy the beauty of a single petal from a flower, the eye had to interpret the blendings of color…classify each shade to its respective primary…we would have time for nothing else. Instead, the eye perceives this assortment of colors as a single experience. So it is with our skills and disciplines. When fused, blended, subtly harmonized with one another, they become a single experience. The mind must not be encouraged to interpret or classify, for then it will have time for nothing else. And so it becomes appropriate then to allow the mind to arrive at decisions spontaneously. We must let it alone – trust it to work by itself. If the centipede, walking with its hundred legs, had to think out the sequence of moves — which leg after which — it would tremble where it stood, too distracted to continue. So it is with you. While you achieve great skills and disciplines, always remember that they are implements – accessories to be used by your creative ingenuity, to be employed without the burden of deliberation. At the highest plane, your response to attack would give the appearance of a random, almost accidental selection of skills — superior in execution, yet so removed from conscious thought that you, an instant later, might not remember exactly what you had done.”
Professor Gogen