Flow...............................

He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating.  The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done.  Sunk without purpose in what he is doing, he is brought face to face with that moment when the work, hovering before him in ideal lines, realizes itself ass if of its own accord.  As the steps and postures in archery, so here in modified form other preparations have the same meaning.  And only where this does not apply, as for instance with religious dancers and actors, are the self-recollection and self-immersion practiced before they reach the stage.
     As in the case of archery, there can be no question but that these arts are ceremonies.  More clearly that the teacher could express in words, they tell the pupil that the right frame of mind for the artist is only reached when the preparing and the creating, the technical and the artistic, the material and the spiritual, the project and the object, flow together without a break.

-Eugen Herrigel,  Zen in the Art of Archery

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