A central theme of the Tao Te Ching is that of wu wei, of nondoing.

I’ve written about it as a rather impractical idea. But that’s only if you interpret it literally, using what lawyers call the ‘plain meaning rule.’

But if you interpret it another way, it can also be taken to describe a state of effortless mastery. Stephen Mitchell put it most eloquently in the foreword to his translation.

“A good athlete can enter into a state of body-awareness  in which the right stroke, or the right movement happens by itself effortlessly…  the game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; …”

That’s great, but how do you get to that stage?

How do you get to the point where the notes play themselves, where you achieve a kind of oneness with what you do?

And this is where the Tao Te Ching falls short.

It fails to mention that effortless mastery comes at a price.

It talks about the effortlessness of water flowing to the sea, but water has to get to the mountains first before it can flow to the sea.

The Tao makes no mention of this fact.

(In the natural world, nature takes care of that. The sun evaporates the water from the sea and it condenses in the mountains to fall as rain. That’s a whole other subject altogether — using nature to work for you.)

It is in the last line of Chapter 28 that we get a glimpse of what effortlessness is all about in the Tao.

“A great tailor cuts little.”

The Tao here is referring to skill. Skill is what makes the difference between effortful and effortless. Because it requires a great deal of skill to know how to ‘cut little.’

Skills is at the heart of effortless nondoing.

If you have good skills, everything you do will seem effortless. Just watch a great player like John Williams and you will see how effortless he makes playing the guitar seem. He’s the tailor who cuts little.

But where does all that skill come from?

From a great deal of effort, years of patient practicing and experiencing.

The sentiments in the Tao are echoed by many other books on effortless mastery and living.

They all praise the concept and advocate a philosophy of effortlessness. But like the Tao, none of them mention the fact that effortless mastery comes at a price.

And that’s the irony of life, to achieve effortlessness, you have to be prepared to put in a great deal of effort.

That old law of no free lunch still holds true here.

Skills are crucial to everything we do.

How to ride a bike, how to cook a great dish, how to play guitar, all these require specific skills and knowledge.

Even a simple thing like dismantling an old lock, I found the hard way, requires skill.

On a recent trip to Malaysia, I had to replace an old lock that had jammed. No big deal, I thought, I’ve replaced quite a few locks in my life. But I’m used to American locks where all you have to do is unscrew the lock and the thing comes off automatically.

Not these Malaysian locks, there’re no screws to be seen. After tinkering with it for a while, I managed to get the cover plates off, but how do you get the rest of the darned thing off?

There was absolutely no way to get it off. In frustration, I violated my most sacrosanct principle, which is never to force. I took a hammer and literally beat that battered old lock through the hole.

It took a great deal of effort and I almost took the door off its hinges knocking the lock.

With the lock off, I went to the hardware store to get a new lock. Inside the box, I found detailed instructions on how to install the new lock and, to my dismay, instructions on how to remove the old one as well. All I needed to do, apparently, was take a small tool (which was  included in the box) and pry off a little pin holding the whole thing together.

That’s what I mean by skills and knowledge.

A little knowledge would have saved a great deal of grief and effort.

In a sense, my whole life has been centered around finding these skills and knowledge. I’ve written elsewhere about looking for that magic trick that enables me to do what I need to do in the simplest and easiest ways possible.

From acing exams to playing scales and tremolos on the guitar to interacting with my fellow human beings, my life has been a constant journey of searching for new ways to streamline my life and create a more optimal experience.

And I’ve found that there are basically four ways to acquire these skills and knowledge:

1. From constant practice and experimentation.
2. From watching others do the act.
3. From teachers.
4. From books.

One book I would recommend is the AOV for guitar, which is a book of skills on how to master different techniques on the classical guitar.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the AOV is about fundamentals, not techniques.

What’s the difference?

Techniques are the physical manifestations of fundamentals.

Think of building cars.

If you’re going to build a car, the technique would be the actual design of the car, and the principles, the considerations that drive that design, such as aerodynamics, fuel efficiency, etc.

Yes, you can come up with any design you want, but unless it follows the same basic principles of good car design – aerodynamics, efficiency etc – it probably won’t run very well.

The same is true of guitar playing or anything else we do, you can come up with the latest trends, innovate all kinds of new approaches, but if they go against the basic principles of economy and efficacy, they won’t be very effective.

And that’s what the principles in the AOV are about.

They’re the basic fundamentals that drive everything we do.

Use them to evaluate the efficacy of new techniques. Apply them to make sure that you optimize the use of your resources. And constantly monitor your body to make sure you do not forget them as you strive to develop your capabilities to the max.

There’s an old Chinese saying that goes: “If you go to the mountain often enough, you will meet the tiger.”

What that means is, if you only go once or twice, chances are, you’re probably not going to meet the tiger, but go more often, and the odds increases that you’re going to meet it one day.

In other words, if you go more often, you’re pushing your luck.

It’s a kind of folk wisdom that needs no scientific validation or empirical data. We just know it’s true.

I’ve found that the principle works in reverse too.

And it applies to guitar playing.

If you practice one hour or two hours a day, you’re probably not going to get that breakthrough you’re looking for. To increase your chances of getting that breakthrough, you’ll have to practice a lot more.

So if you really want to meet that tiger (and that breakthrough), you’ll have to keep on going up that mountain.

And if you go enough times, it’ll appear one day.

I’ve written about letting your fingers do the playing, about walking them.

There’s a trick to doing this.

Think of walking. What do you do when you walk?

You put one foot forward, you put it down, you lift it, and then you do it for the other foot, and you repeat the cycle and you do it again.

The main part of the process is putting the foot forward. The stepping part happens almost like an afterthought, it just completes the cycle.

That’s the same sensation when you walk your fingers.

When you pluck, you put the finger forward, you place it on the string and then you pluck. But the plucking happens almost like an afterthought. You don’t actively pluck, you just let it happen.

Try doing this in Villa Lobos’ Etude #1.

First, make sure your fingers and wrist are light and loose.

Start the exercise by touching the sixth string with your ‘p’ thumb, don’t try to pluck the string, just release it, then find the fourth string with the ‘i’ finger, touch the string, then release it. Don’t try to pluck it. Do it for the next finger in the sequence and the next after that.

The whole point is to touch each string, not to play it. If you do make a sound while releasing the string, that’s okay. Again, the point is not to consciously pluck the string but to find it.

Think again of walking. Focus on putting the next foot/finger forward. Let the stepping/plucking happen like an afterthought.

Remember to do it very lightly. Don’t exert any force. Lightly touch each string and move on to the next.

Maintain a continuous flow. Don’t stop and start between each movement. Even as you let go one string, the next finger is already moving forward.

Again, think of walking, when you walk, you walk in a continuous flow of motion, there’s no stopping and starting between each step. It’s the same sensation when you pluck.

This is only an exercise. When you play normally, you’ll have to focus on the plucking stage, that’s a given, but you’ll find that you’ll be able to exert very fine control over the amount of tension you want to put into each stroke.

This exercise will help you focus your actions on the pre-plucking stage. It’ll give your playing greater accuracy because it’ll focus your actions on finding the string rather than on plucking it. It’ll also result in natural economy enabling you to move faster. And it’ll also reinforce the feeling of moving your fingers at your fingertips, of isolating your plucking right at the fingertips.

And when you master it, it’ll create an automated engine in your fingers. You’ll feel as if your fingers are completely automated and all you have to do is walk them like you would walk a dog.

One final note, this is just one of several techniques I employ in the right hand.

It’s incredible relaxed and produces a very light fluid sound that’s ideal for moto perpetuo pieces like La Catedral or Etude #1, when you just want to create a wall of sound and you don’t want to emphasize individual notes.

I just posted a response to a comment on youtube.com where I tried to summarize my approach to playing guitar in one sentence.

The sentence was, ‘Keep your movements light and small and focus on the long line.’

This basically summarizes the AOV, particularly the point about keeping your movements small.

Moving in small movements is the old concept of economy.

It’s just common sense. If you move less, you have less distance to cover, if you have less distance to cover, you can get there faster.

It’s a concept that is universally recognized, from the martial arts (Bruce Lee the finest proponent of the concept) to the new model of business efficiency, Lean Six Sigma. The ‘lean’ in the latter means doing less.

On the guitar, applying the concept is relatively easy.

All you have to do is to focus all your movements at the fingertips.

(This is a point I covered in some detail in the AOV. The concept applies to the left hand too. When you fret notes with the left hand fingers, isolate the actions right at the fingertips. The sensation is almost as if there’s a little magnet at the fingertips that make them want to ‘stick’ to the fretboard.)

When you play, focus all your actions in the fingertips.

When I play, I feel as if all the action is concentrated in the fingertips and all I’m doing is just wiggling my fingers.

It almost feels as if I’m just walking my fingers across the strings.

The concept of economy is a simple one.

Yet it’s interesting to note that some guitar teachers actually teach techniques that run counter to it.

One such technique is that of playing from the knuckle, Playing from the knuckle is inefficient because it isolates the movement at a point far from the points of action (where the actual plucking is taking place.) When you focus your movements away from the points of action (your fingertips, that’s where the action is taking place), you lose precision and economy because it’s harder to control what’s going on at the points of action.

Think of reaching out for a cup. When you reach out to grab a cup, you reach out with your hand (fingertip equivalent), not your shoulder (knuckle equivalent).

The second technique is the emphasis on the follow-through after the string is plucked. I’m not sure of the rationale behind this, but it does have the effect of exaggerating the follow-through, resulting in unnecessary and excessive movement.

If you’re not used to playing at the fingertips, it may feel strange at first, almost as if you’re not playing, because the actions are so small.

But once you get used to it, playing the guitar becomes incredibly easy, you feel as if you don’t have to exert any effort and speed just happens, you don’t have to force it anymore.

You feel as if your fingers are completely independent, as if they have a life of their own, and all you have to do is walk them through the notes.

This article came out of a lunch conversation with Dr Sam Logsdon, Chair of the music department at TAMU/CC. Sam is one of those highly enlightened individuals who also happens to be an administrator. I am honored to have him as a colleague.

The tendency these days, in many corridors of authority, is to adopt the objective approach.

The emphasis is on facts, data and evaluations, supported by copious documentation.

Objectivity is fine. It’s a worthy goal, but in itself, it’s missing one crucial element of the human condition – magic.

What is this magic?

It’s the indefinable, the unquantifiable.

But is there anything that is unquantifiable? And if there’s such a thing, why do we need to factor it into the equation? After all, we’re living in an objective world, and dealing with science and hard facts, not superstition or voodoo.

The answer lies in the human body

According to science (and hard facts) the human body is made out of chemical ingredients, which, if sold across the counter, costs about $4.50.

If we agree that we should concern ourselves only with things that are quantifiable and measurable, then that leads us to an inescapable conclusion, that all of us are worth about $4.50.

Yes, I can hear the howls of indignation.

But what’s the missing component that makes us think we’re worth more than $4.50?

That’s the magic I’m talking about.

When you put together a bunch of chemicals costing $4.50 and get a human being, that’s magic.

That’s the magic that we’re missing in our obsession with hard facts, measurable data, evaluations and figures.

Some guitar teachers seem to think that all they need to do as a teacher is make sure the student follow all the ‘rules’ of good playing and he or she will automatically become a great player.

Some administrators seem to think that all they need to do is make sure everybody follow the rules of the organization and they’ll automatically have a great thriving organization.

By that same logic, if we want a human being, all we need to do is go to the store and purchase $4.50 worth of chemicals and we’ll have a human being too.

They’re forgetting one basic ingredient – magic.

It reminds me of what someone wrote some years back, that you can go to pretty much any college campus in the US and find a composition professor who will be able to write a better fugue than Beethoven, better in counterpoint, better in construction, better in overall technical mastery, but who would want to listen to it?

Logic is easy, magic is much more difficult.

My goal as a teacher has always been to help each student discover his or her own magic.

It’s not easy. It requires you to be extremely responsive, to recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the student, to allow for unusual configurations, positions, to go against conventional wisdom. The focus is not on imposing a fixed system on the student but to allow him or her to come up with their own system, one that’s optimized for their unique situation.

It would be much easier to prescribe some generic formulas on hand placement, correct finger motion, which joint to move (I think the general consensus is the knuckle) and how much follow-through to effect after a stroke and leave the student to deal with all that information.

But I’ve never been one to shrink away from a hard task.

I derive inspiration from the fact that this bag of $4.50 chemicals can still play a tune, write a blog, spend time eating lunch with a colleague on a beautiful fall day, and strike a polemical note on the direction our data-driven ‘objectivity-conscious’ society is taking.

It suggests to me that my real purpose in life is to work on magic, and to leave the logic to the paper pushers, the bureaucrats, because they don’t have a clue as to what this magic thing is all about.

And of course, not to forget to supply them with all the ‘data’ they need, after all, they need to have something to do, to justify their paychecks.

I’ve been teaching for a number of years and the longer I teach, the more I realize how hard it is.

How do you describe the sensation of a technique to one who hasn’t experienced it?

It’s like trying to describe a place to someone who’s never been there before.

Like trying to describe Houston to someone who hasn’t been there before, you can fall back on analogies and say, “Well, Houston is a bit like Dallas,” (assuming he or she knows Dallas) but that still doesn’t convey what the real Houston feels like.

To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, “How do you describe the cold to someone who’s warm?”

If you’re not careful, you might emphasize the wrong thing, miss an important detail, or miss the big picture altogether, like the seven blind men of Indostan.

Zen masters like to use the analogy of the finger pointing at the moon.

Don’t confuse the finger for the moon. Don’t confuse the directions for the destination.

That’s what directions and instructions are, just fingers pointing at the moon.

It’s why Lau Tzu had to start with a disclaimer in the Tao Te Ching.

“The Tao that can be described is not the Tao, the name that can be named is not the name.”

And then proceeded to describe the Tao and name all its eighty-one names.

Perhaps that’s what we teachers should do too, start with a disclaimer.

“What I’m teaching are just words, to understand the real thing, you’d have to experience it yourself.”

And then try to describe or explain it anyway.