Postcards from Ulysses

The Tango Principle is clearly illustrated in the story of Cook Ting told by Chuang-tzu:

    The king's cook was cutting up an ox.
    Out went a hand, down went a shoulder,
    he planted a foot, he pressed with a knee,
    the ox fell apart with a whisper,
    the bright cleaver murmured
    like a gentle breeze.
    Rhythm!  Timing!
    Like a sacred dance,
    like ancient music.
    
    "Good work!" the king exclaimed. "Your method is faultless!"
    "Method?" said the cook, laying aside his shining cleaver,
    "What I follow is beyond all method.
    
    "When I first began to cut up oxen
    I would see before me the whole ox, all in one mass.
    
    "After three years I no longer saw this mass.
    I saw the distinctions.
    
    "But now, I see nothing with the eye.  
    My whole being apprehends.
    My senses are idle.  The spirit is free
    to work, without a plan, following its own intelligence
    guided by the secret opening, the hidden space,
    my cleaver finds its own way.  I cut through no joint, chop no bone.
    
    "A good cook needs a new chopper once a year---he CUTS.
    A poor cook needs a new chopper once a month---he HACKS.
    
    "There are spaces in the joints; the blade is thin and keen:
    when this thinness finds that space, there is all the room you need!
    It goes like the wind!
    
    "True, there are sometimes tough joints.  I feel them coming, I slow down,
    I watch closely, hold back, barely move the blade.  And whump!
    The part falls away, landing like a clump of earth.  Then I withdraw the blade,
    I stand still and let the joy of the work sink in.  
    I clean the blade and put it away."
    
    The king shouted, "This is it!  My cook has shown me how to live my life!"  

    It is interesting that this lesson in living given by the cook contains a great emphasis on rhythm and timing, with an explicit reference to music and dance.  There is also a good deal of indirect advice on leading and following.  A leader who hacks his way through the dance cannot get the pieces of the dance to fall easily into place.  The follower who hacks can never find the spaciousness resting in the joints of the dance.  Neither will receive the blessings that come when the most refined joys of the dance sink deeply into one’s marrow.  
    The most surprising coincidence between these two stories revealed itself in a workshop I took some time ago with Susana Miller, a well known teacher of Argentine Tango.  In the middle of the workshop, with no prior reference to anything even vaguely Taoist, she told a story that seamlessly fit with a point she was trying to make.  She said, “One time a great dancer said to me, ‘Miller, take a look at my shoes.’  And I said, ‘Yes, what about them?’  ‘How old do you think they are?’  I looked at them, and they looked very new.  So I said, ‘I don’t know, maybe a couple of months.’  He said, ‘Try a couple of years!’”  The best dancers have steps that are balanced and grounded, and yet so light you think they must be angels.  They move in their shoes the way Cook Ting moved with his cleaver.  They cut right through the flesh and bone of tango without becoming dull.  Some dancers never get past the surface, even though their shoes wear out with their efforts.(1)
    Chuang-tzu wanted to tell us vitalizing things, secrets about how to live passionately and peacefully.  He chose some fabulous metaphors to do so: butterflies, cooks, fish, and birds dance their way through his poetic prose.  Since Chuang-tzu’s day we have learned a thing or two about how to make such metaphors come to life.  When you read about Cook Ting, you don’t get much insight into the psychological and physiological requirements for doing what he does.  By what means does this mysterious cook operate?  How could one adapt it to the boardroom or the classroom, to the artist’s studio or the yoga studio?  How indeed can we even adapt it to our own kitchen?  
    The Alexander Technique offers pragmatic answers to these questions.  From the Alexander Technique we get the Tango Principle itself: it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.  Cook Ting would agree.  To DO tango is to HACK.  Only when we follow non-doing will we step like angels.      The Technique then goes further by showing us the psychological and physiological skills required for living and dancing like Cook Ting.  We only succeed in Tango and in life because of these skills.  Even when we hack, the hacking has tiny elements of these fundamental skills.  They are so powerful that they still get the job done.  The problem is that our knife gets dull and the work lacks beauty for us and for those watching.  In tango and in life, we are the knife and we are the work.  Why wear ourselves to dullness?  Why not allow our experience to be beautiful?
    Cook Ting's advice on dealing with tough joints is particularly important in tango and in life.  Any resistance we encounter in life tempts us to DO, to hack, to tense, to react, to become fearful.  The means disappear in our anxiety for the ends, the goal, the idea, the thing we desire.  Cook Ting reminds us that non-dong is not for special occasions.  It is the only way anything ever happens.  So when we encounter resistance, we need to slow down.  We know we will try to DO, but this doing will only interfere.  We will succeed only in spite of the doing.  But if we slow down, we will have more beauty, peace, and joy in the movement. 
    When a follower begins to hesitate, don’t hack.  When you start to go off balance, don’t hack.  When you are trying to learn a new step, don’t hack.  Slow down.  There is plenty of space.  You can breathe.  You can let the blade of mindfulness slip effortlessly through this joint.  The dance will always dance itself if you let it. 
    Something wonderful about the process is that what counts as a tough joint will change over time.  The joint that slows you today will seem like nothing tomorrow.  Your leading or your following becomes more powerful because you allow more and more non-doing to enter it.  And the same is true in daily life.  What used to set you off now seems a trifle.  You can deal with this stimulus and that stimulus without the same of stress, tension, reaction, and fear.  More and more, life becomes “like a sacred dance, like ancient music.”

Note:

1. It is important to consider the implications for sustainability.  What does it mean on a wider scale when our tango walk stops grating against the world?  It means we can walk in this world without leaving a trace, with steps that touch the earth so intimately that we make everything more real.
    Humanity's footsteps have such a mindless quality that the shoes of our existence have worn thin.  Our feet are blistered, we stagger and stumble.  Yet, we walk so mindlessly we fail to notice, or we notice a little but manage to ignore the scale of the problem.  If we could truly begin to follow Cook Ting's advice in our walk, we could make steps toward a more sustainable world.  We can look at any situation and ask how heavy our steps have fallen there.  What has our ego kicked and trampled?  Where have we tripped?  What is the quality of our walk right now?  Can we just LET?
    By turning our attention to our steps at every moment, we practice tango in the most profound way.  Good dancing tranlsates into sustainable living, and sustainable living translates into good dancing.  To live well is just to dance our lives with the lightest, most connected steps.  A sustainable future depends on our practice of tango.
    You can read about the idea of not leaving a trace in many books on Zen.  Chuang-tzu gets at it from another angle by discussing what it means to be hidden in the universe.  I also like the way the idea appears in Native American spiritual traditions.  The matter is put plainly in the song "Mother Earth" by Arvel Bird & One Nation.  They were nominated for "Best Song Single" in the 2007 Native American Music Awards.  You can hear the song (and cast your vote for your favorites) on the  NAMA  voting site or go to the band's website.

Post Script:

I recently came across the following anecdote from Joan Halifax Roshi (you can find it in One Bird One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories by Sean Murphy):

"One day when I was walking down a canyon path, I realized I was making a literal impression upon the Earth.  I stopped and turned around to look at my footprints and they were even and smooth, a kind of script in the dust.  That was on Thursaday.  On Friday, I hurried to the office on the central part of the land and halfway there I caught myself, stopped and turned around to look at my tracks.  There was a different message on the Earth.  It was then that I saw how completely each step that we take is a message of alienation or awareness to Earth."
 

 

 

Nickolas Knightly is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique offering private and group lessons, workshops, and lectures on the Technique.  He specializes in working with artists, dancers, spiritual practitioners, NGO's, and sustainable businesses.  He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Click HERE to go to the main website for more information.