Discipline and Freedom

Speaker 2
no that's that's i think a really good intuition i think there's you know um and that sort of connects with the part of the passes that you cited there about the importance of limitation how limitation can be fruitful i mean there's so many examples that one can give but a really obvious one would be you know learning to play piano yeah um you know that that requires a real sort of focusing and in a way limitation when you can think very concretely to become a good piano player um you need to sacrifice um time that might be spent playing video games or or of course something else and actually um devoted to this so there's a certain limitation that's being put on you um but the the um the fruit of actually being faithful to that and doing it properly is a profound freedom you become capable of of playing music and then also in a certain sense enjoying music more and i mean it's it's in a way a whole world opens up and and and you see that it's precisely the fruit of having you know restricted yourself and and and conformed yourself this task that suddenly you've got this freedom it's very different from somebody who's never practiced and sits at a piano you might say that person is totally free playing the piano because you know there's no limits you know you can hang on any key you want you know but but obviously there's a certain sense in which that person has no freedom yes you know it's it's it's uh it's a kind of uh limitlessness that's formless and just pure chaos yeah actually that's so fast because
Speaker 1
the longer they have subdued or submitted themselves to this restriction right the training itself the repetition the reps more freedom the more competence they develop and the ability to make to play and make it look effortless right i think i i don't this quote's probably way off but nichay said something to the effect like you in order for one to be a master they first have to subject themselves to something for a long time that's right
Speaker 2
something to that effect i don't recall the exact quote but that's a that's a sentiment that he expresses yeah uh it also sort of drives with uh
Speaker 1
i like musashi a lot the philosophy i wasn't to before getting into um neo-platonic western philosophy was eastern philosophy so musashi's a old warrior sage and he just said the way we're like the dao right the way is in training so that everything we do in life is we're constantly training for the next thing and so you get to choose or you know what you are subduing yourself to i guess and that is what you develop freedom in paradoxically right
Speaker 2
yeah notice that notice that's a freedom that's one through reality you know um uh conforming to the demands of reality is what you know it's exactly free there it's for it's totally the opposite of just um um abstractly multiplying options yes i mean in a way the options grow but they grow out of yes
Speaker 1
focus yeah well this yeah you're sacrificing options obviously to the training but then you're cultivating later and greater maybe not greater i don't know different options basically right you yeah you didn't get a video games but you're much better at piano
Speaker 2
yeah that's right but i would say there is a certain great i mean um uh you know this here's another line from playdow the beautiful beautiful things are difficult i mean it's very small and there is something about the kinds of options to use that language they can grow out of training out of discipline out of self-sacrifice and these kinds of things they are greater there's a depth to them there's a kind of quality to them that that um can't be had other ways yes
Speaker 1
they're more well more costly perhaps i mean yeah so they're from a
Speaker 2
rare

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