Hozho - A Comprehensive Navajo Conception of Beauty

Comprehensive Beauty - Hozho

It is usually translated into English as “beauty,” though also as “health” or “balance,” “harmony,” “goodness.” It means all these things and more. It refers above all to the world when it is flourishing; it refers to the community, flourishing in the world; it refers to things we make, which flourish and play a role in the flourishing of other things; and it refers to ourselves, flourishing as makers, as people inhabiting a community that inhabits a world. It is a word for the oneness of all things when they are joined together in a wholesome state. (1)

The above quote describing the Navajo term Hozho is drawn from the final chapter of Crispin Sartwell's 'Six Names of Beauty. Gray Witherspoon, author of Language and Art in the Navajo Universe, is also quoted making this important point regarding the concept:

"It is not an abstractable quality of things or a fragment of experiences; it is the normal pattern of nature and the most desirable form of experience.” (2)

It is this connection between a 'wholesome state' of 'flourishing' and 'the normal pattern of nature' that makes  the Hozho concept ideal to explore the intersection of 'the true', 'the good', and 'the beautiful'. Sartwell refers to this intersection as an 'integration of values', and a 'cross-cultural truth' which he grounds on the recognition that we are all embedded within an integrated system, a system in which we are inter-connected with each other in inter-connected environments. I would argue that any coherent conception of a system requires some degree of integration, and like turtles, its systems all the way down ( and all the way up ).

When beauty is defined as the normal pattern of nature this suggests there is also an abnormal pattern, or a way of acting against the normal pattern, a way of acting against nature. There is also an important argument that needs to be addressed against the idea that nature itself is beauty. As Sartwell points out

we cannot quite say that every single thing in the universe is beautiful, without ‘beauty’ losing whatever meaning it had. But a beautiful thing can have unbeautiful parts, and it may be that the cosmos as a system or even as a mere concatenation is beautiful, though many parts of it are not. (3)

Another way to address this argument is to point out that a thing may be beautiful or ugly depending upon the context in which it is viewed or in light of the whole of which it is a part. I find it very interesting that in the Navajo language the meaning of a word can flip to its opposite with a change in context. With is in mind,

 beauty and ugliness could be conceived as.........a center in which opposites are overcome as opposites or emerge into harmony. (4)

This denotes a great deal of over-lap between Hozho and ancient Chinese philosophical ideas. Sartwell points out similarities with the aesthetics of Confucianism. I am thinking more directly about how this last idea meshes with the thought of  Zhuangzi:

When “this” and “that”—right and wrong—are no longer coupled as opposites—that is called the Course as Axis, the axis of all courses. When this axis finds its place in the center, it responds to all the endless things it confronts, thwarted by none. For it has an endless supply of “rights,” and an endless supply of “wrongs.” (5)

and also with the first 3 ideas I mentioned in my initial post:

1.   things that seem different have ways in which they are the same
2.    things that seem the same have ways in which they are different
3.   receptive exploration of these relations may yield a position that responds non-coercively

On the off chance that anyone might be interested in thoroughly exploring these 3 ideas from the context of Chinese philosophy I can recommend  two excellent books by Brook Ziporyn. Yes, if you think I'm getting overly philosophically wordy on the concepts wrapped up in these 3 ideas here is well over 700 pages devoted just to them 😏💭 :

1. Ironies of Oneness and Difference in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li
2. Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and its Antecedents

Sartwell, Crispin. Six Names of Beauty (p. 98-101). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Wabi-sabi - Finding Beauty in Humility and Imperfection

I wanted to make my little experimental re-entry into blog posts authentic by writing about my current immersions informed of course through my longer-term interests and investments . At this moment I am immersed in my running practice, and finding new ways to feel connected to the beauty the of world I am a part of. Currently Crispin Sartwell has been serving as a source of inspiration in this process. This post will draw on the 5th chapter of his  'Six Names of Beauty' which explores  beauty from the complex hard to translate  Japanese concept  wabi-sabi.

Wabi-Sabi - Humility, Imperfection

This is going to need some elaboration. Here is list of some of the terms Sartwell associates with the two aspects:

 Wabi -poverty, rough, humble, bare, imperfect, asymmetric. world affirming

Wabi as an aesthetic is a connection to the world in its imperfection, a way of seeing imperfection as itself embodying beauty (1)

Sabi - loneliness, solitude, stillness, meditative depression

Sabi is a quality of stillness and solitude, a melancholy that is one of the basic human responses to and sources of beauty. (2)

Thus, wabi-sabi is an aesthetic of poverty and loneliness, imperfection and austerity, affirmation and melancholy. Wabi-sabi is the beauty of the withered, weathered, tarnished, scarred, intimate, coarse, earthly, evanescent, tentative, ephemeral. As Leonard Koren says: “the closer things get to nonexistence, the more exquisite and evocative they become.” (3)

In the chapter the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony is discussed in the context of a radical change in the tradition spurred by the reknown sixteenth century tea master Sen no Rikyu. The ceremony which had previously been practiced by the wealthy with the finest most expensive porcelain bowls came instead to be characterized by a spare, unadorned aesthetic. It's symbol would become the the Kizaemon tea bowl. Here is Sartwell quoting Japanese philosopher Soetsu Yanagi describing the Kizaemon:

The clay has been dug from the hill at the back of the house; the glaze was made with the ash from the hearth; the potter’s wheel was irregular…. The work had been fast; the turning was rough, done with dirty hands; the throwing slipshod; the glaze had run over the foot.” But, he adds, the Kizaemon tea bowl is plain, unagitated, uncalculated, harmless, straightforward, natural, innocent, humble, modest. “More than anything else,” writes Yanagi, “this pot is healthy. Made for a purpose. Made to do work.” (4)

Paradoxically the symbol of the ordinary would be honored so as to become priceless. The symbol was elevated for its lack of self-consciousness yet this abstract fixation would render the Kizaemon as an object of self-importance. Here is how Sartwell describes the dilemma:

Connoisseurs such as Rikyu and Yanagi long most for the quieting of self- consciousness, surely also the goal (or the goallessness) of Zen. But self- consciousness is at its most intense in persons of Yanagi’s stripe: an aesthete who continually submits his experiences to a canon of taste of his own articulation, and who regards himself as a repository of his culture. The self- consciousness of the aesthete is itself a form of pain or even disease: there is no release from the interior monologue that judges all things and thus sets one apart from all things. We might say of such people that they are tortured by taste. (5)

There is an adage from economics that also describes this curious yet pervasive process known as Goodhart's law:

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure (6)

In a broader context I see Goodhart's law in relation to social world as a mirror to how I see the law of thermodynamics (entropy ) acting in physical world; ubiquitous, all embracing, constantly eroding that which is coherent while simultaneously serving as its source. The law can be traced to 1975, but I would suggest the larger phenomenon - losing contact with the genuine through symbolic fixation - as that which the original Taoist philosophers aimed to correct.

Lucinda Williams -

Reading the section on wabi-sabi I immediately thought of the music of Lucinda Williams and specifically her later album 'Down There Where the Spirit Meets the Bone'. Although 'Six Names of Beauty' was written prior to 'Down There Where the Spirit Meets the Bone' Sartwell does mention her earlier album considered by many to be a masterpiece 'Car Wheels on a Gravel Road' as an example of wabi-sabi in reference to zen gravel gardens. By the time of this later album Williams voice is an embodiment of the gravel she previously sang about yet a stark beauty seeps out from the cracks in the pebbles.

 Compassion from 'Down There Where the Spirit Meets the Bone' - a poem written by her father

Nina Simone  -

No one could summon the sublime, meditative, melancholy, like Nina. Vulnerable, painful, yet life affirming beauty

Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair

Thelonious Monk -

Asymmetrical Beauty - Round Midnight

 The Enduring and Complex Beauty of a Tree

Trees are also a common object of beauty for Sartwell. There is a lovely discussion of the beauty of trees undressed of their leaves against a winter sky revealing an image of the underlying complexity laid bare. Also covered is the art of the Bonsai in which the medium of the art is life itself in microcosm:

A bonsai master shapes a tree with the utmost care, and, in fact, such a tree may be cultivated by generations of masters. And so it endures, though it also changes and grows at each moment of its existence. It is a living representation or capturing of life as well as an expression of the will to work with life and never against it, always moving with the “ki,” or flow of energy of the tree but also with the ideal of the master. (7)

 The Wabi-Sabi of Endurance Running

The concept of wabi-sabi is instructive to me as an aging endurance runner. In my first post in the series I painted a picture of what I hope to access in part through my running practice, and this picture imagined a convergence of what is true, good and beautiful. In my last post I described how beauty can emerge on a run, but the wabi-sabi concept better applies to the enduring process of the practice with all of its life constraining and life affirming realities.

As we have seen ( and heard ) the beauty of wabi-sabi resides partly in its simple, non-scheming, and unforced presentation of the real. Yet there is also a sense that hints at something deeper, something more complex lying behind the unadorned exterior that contributes much of the beauty. It is not that the wabi-sabi presentation intends to deceive, but instead that our conventional perceptive capacities are limited and superficially focused. One obvious way an endurance running practice fits this description lies in the way its physiological adaptations manifest. Compared to weight lifting for example the adaptations are to a large extent hidden. There is not much in the way of visible external enhancements, yet within the cardiovascular ( increased capillary density ) and central nervous ( hippocampal neuroplasticity ) systems new pathways and connections are among the adaptive creations. Even going down to the cellular level adaptions from running include more and higher quality mithochondria providing the power for a robust capacity to respond to world.

Power as a metaphor has far-reaching implications in western culture that are built upon a conception of humanity as separate from the natural environment. We define freedom in the sense of using our will to overcome the burdens that the natural world hurls our way. This idea of overcoming and controlling the world is in opposition to the concept of world affirmation I have been speaking to. If we are embedded in the world as part of the world we make ourselves the enemy by focusing our power on controlling it. This is power as force, power as coercion, and this explains our power symbols ( money, technology, big oil, militarism, bulky muscles, etc...). In my experience, I sense freedom not through forceful overcoming, but more often when I build capacities to accept the world as it is and work within it,  with and not against it.

What would it mean to embody 'the will to work with life and never against it', in the context of affirming and accepting without artifice what is true about the world.This is not an easy question to address. It might be easy to fall into the trap of Goodhart's law hypostatizing one side of the dilemma or the other. This could entail an affirmation of the will to endure, along with an unconscious denial of the inevitable physical decline. Such a move would not be world affirming, but instead creates a world separate from oneself and in need of overcoming. I see this this type of self affirmation as ultimately world denying. Running away from worldly truth is not a viable alternative, and an attempt to create your own truth purely out of will is sure to shorten the time one can experience the joys and benefits of endurance running. On the other hand affirming and accepting what is true in the world need not lead one to disengage from vigorous activity and become a couch potato. My plan is to adjust with the changes consistent with the way Lucinda Williams changed her music over time or with the way a deciduous tree adjusts to winter maintaining awareness of the beauty that I am embedded within.




1-5,7.  Sartwell, Crispin. Six Names of Beauty (pp. 83-89). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

 6.        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Repetition in Music and Running leading to Spiritual Experience

Six Names of Beauty

Crispins Sartwell’s lovely little book ‘Six Names of Beauty’ allows the reader to play with the idea of beauty from the perspectives of the language employed by six different cultures. Sartwell provides six names and definitions of beauty within these cultures put into context of the cultural practices, but then also applies those concepts to expressions of beauty outside each specific culture. Here are the six languages, names and definitions:

1.  English – Beauty  ‘the object of longing’
2.  Hebrew – Yapha ‘glow, bloom’
3.  Sanskrit – Sundara ‘holiness’
4. Greek -  To Kalon ‘idea, ideal’
5. Japanese – Wabi-Sabi ‘humility, imperfection’ 
6. Navajo – Hozho ‘health, harmony’

 Sanskrit – Sundara ‘holiness’ invoked through repetition in music

I was pleasantly surprised in reading the book to see a substantial section of the Sanskrit chapter devoted to exploring the relationship between repetition in music as a source bringing forth spiritual experience. I found much of this section really beautiful and I also feel a resonance with the concepts in connection with what could be described as spiritual running experiences. I am going to quote fairly extensively from this section.

All music makes use of repetition. The fugue structure, for instance, is a structure of growth within repetition. But the structure of reggae is extremely repetitive: as repetitive, probably, as any musical style that has ever existed.(1)

Sartwell who is a professional philosopher most known for his work in aesthetics, has also been a music critic, and an amateur musician himself ( harmonica ). Sartwell is an atheist, but denies that the mystery and enchantment we encounter in the world can be explained away purely through science and rationality. Spiritual experience can emerge from ordinary experience, and beauty can be found in unexpected places or through ordinary practices.  He mentions the fugue structure to show how growth or progress as abstract concepts can be related structurally to repetition, and also to point to the connection between Bach fugues and spiritual music. In the section Sartwell focuses mostly on reggae music and provides context through the cultural and spiritual roots ( Rastafarianism ), the musical form roots ( ska, rock-steady, “roots” reggae ), some of the greatest practitioners ( Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Augustus Pablo, Culture ), and their capacity to transmit spirituality through their music. To limit the scope of this post I am going to focus on how he deals with the idea of repetition, but I recommend reading the entire book.

…reggae consists essentially—the whole song, but also every song: the whole history of the style—of a single rhythm. In this sense it is a chant or mantra, which is thematized explicitly in the music.(2)

The chant is, first, a contemplative form in which concentration leads, ideally, to transcendence, and the form is restricted inversely as the dilation of experience it engenders. But it is also a “work” rhythm or a march or a dirge, something that shapes a social as well as existential unity. (3)

I really love this particular quote. Repetition begins with a contracted field of awareness, a focus on the aspect being repeated, yet as one aspect contracts another must expand. As a degree of mastery over the repetitions unfolds, the experience of existing gaps between the particular repeating aspects dissolves, and the separateness dissipates into a unity. At this point the initial contraction yields expansion or a dilation of experience surrounding the rhythmic repetitions which are felt but no longer in need of direction. I have experienced this process in various physical practices (basketball, Juggling, tai chi, and now running). Below Sartwell continues his take on this process:

…repetition over time is also a template for development, and each run-through takes on a different significance. (4)

…where the periods of repetition become very short as the overall structure of repetitions enlarges, each repetition becomes more predictable, and each thus becomes somewhat harder to invest with a distinct significance. It is at that point that the sound becomes a mantra, at which it begins to mesmerize, to tip you over the lip into something else.(5)

As every rhythm is a structure of repetition, repetition is itself the very principle of unity for beings who are condemned to live in time. (6)

What is spiritual in music is above all tempo: the structure of its development and return through time that becomes our own development and return. Thus music itself is an exemplar, an agent, and an element in union, showing its beauty. It is always a return, and always a sequence of returns. But when these returns are as emphatic as a heartbeat and almost as simple, we get the sensation of seeing the center of unification itself that we long for, and of coming to be, moving or dancing with it.(7)

Sometimes the world flows through you, and sometimes you flow through the world. Or: the sensorium is a zone of visitation, a zone of interpenetration. We possess the equipment to forget our separateness, that is, to recall our connections; we long for this. And each experience by which this purpose is accomplished is a powerful riddim.(8)

I don’t think I can improve or add to Sartwell’s description, but I will try to describe a running experience from last Saturday in my own words. The schedule for the run was to wake up 5:30 AM make an initial 5.25 mile run through the state park to meet up with running friends at 6:45 AM. From there the harder running would commence. I am only going to describe the first solo part of the run to keep the length down. I should note that every run has a different quality, some more effort intense, some more social, some easier commutes to work and back listening to music. Nearly all tend to result in some degree of intrinsic meaning and happiness.

A Spirited Run

I am fortunate to live in scenic Topanga Canyon, CA that includes a state park with mountain running trails and even pacific ocean overlooks. The park trail is just 3 miles from my house, but I drive there as the slim windy roads can be dangerous for a runner.

It is 6 AM and the sun is rising. The run begins the first ½ mile or so with a fairly steep grade climb maybe 200-250 feet of elevation. I can feel my body align itself to the angle of the grade and my heart accepts the work asked of it with little complaint. There is the slightest discomfort, enough to tell me I’m working, but not the claustrophobic feeling an inexperienced runner feels when the body is grasping for fuel. I briefly think back to the time 30 years earlier during an extended (4 year) illness when walking a flat street block was often a daunting task, but soon the chirping of the birds orients me to my surroundings.

As I reach the top of the first climb my endorphins are kicking in, and suddenly as I emerge from a covered section a glorious view opens to the canyon and distant mountains. There is a misty fog covering the canyon floor softening the rising sun. I’m at about maybe 1300 ft elevation and I can feel a sense of my smallness in relation to my surroundings. The part that feels smaller is my sense of separateness, and it is necessary for that part to decrease in order to feel part of the grander environment. While my separate sense of self has contracted, my connected sense of self has dilated. The trail winds like this from one side of the mountain to the other sometimes climbing sometimes dropping all the time becoming only more enchanting. There is a brief stretch where the trail opens to a vast view of both sides of the canyon. The sense is quite different from winning a child’s game of king of mountain. Instead I would describe the experience as one of ego-less receptive gratitude to the natural majesty that inter-fuses the situation or to re-quote Sartwell:

Sometimes the world flows through you, and sometimes you flow through the world.

Here, for a time, the flow seems to go in both directions unobstructed.

Whether one considers this to be a spiritual experience or something else of course brings us back to a process of abstract judgement. I'm not concerned with the label - Just looking forward to my next run in the Mountains.

The day of the run described above

1-8.   Sartwell, Crispin. Six Names of Beauty (p. 49-52). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

The Art of Running - Repetition & Progress Part I

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (1)   Not Really!

"It is not possible to step twice into the same river according to Heraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the same state. (Plutarch) (2)

In this post I am going to look into the concepts of repetition and progress, and explore how they might be related. Next I look at how both concepts are fundamental to an endurance running practice and how that might shed some light on the relationship between repetition and the sense of progress I am aiming for. The sense that is true to my experience.

In a separate post (  Repetition & Progress Part II ) which with the help of Crispin Sartwell's writing I will explore the aesthetic aspects of repetition and progress. I will also attempt to connect the ideas to endurance running as an aesthetic process full of aesthetic experiences.

 Repetition 

The definition of repetition I am going to employ is simply:

Repetition - When the same thing ( or same group of things ) occurs or is done over and over again . 

Repeating patterns are ubiquitous in the natural world. Without our ability to recognize repeating patterns in the world everything would just seem chaotic - there would be no concept of order. It almost goes without saying that when human beings repeat the same behaviors often enough eventually the behaviors become habitual.

What we do repetitively changes us.

This is why I think the top posted quote which is famously ( and perhaps falsely ) attributed to Einstein is ill formed.  I take it as a good example of how all kinds of confusion can ensue when language is taken literally, and is interpreted in the abstract, separate from its use .  If one were conducting an experiment in physics in which the initial conditions and experimental methods were tightly controlled, and if prior experiments had repeatedly demonstrated a direct causal effect then yes it would be pretty silly to expect a different result. If our actions in the world mimicked tightly controlled lab experiments then repetition and progress would be incompatible concepts as an unchanging result has no place in any sense of progress.

Life, however, is not a tightly controlled experiment - it is messy.

I see the Heraclitus quote as the more insightful of the two. Everything and every situation is in flux. When it comes to human beings and human behavior there is no such thing as a perfect replication. Habitual behavior changes us. There are untold mostly unconscious physiological adaptations that result from habitual behavior and these adaptations influence both the way the world moves through us and the way we move through it. One result of habitual behavior and the accompanying adaptations is the formation of intrinsic desires to continue the behavior. Sometimes the effects of those behaviors are positive; that is to say they changes us in a way we desire to be changed. Just as often they can lead to change in an undesirable direction or even to addictive behavior. Addictive behavior is an example in which intrinsic desires come into in conflict with rational desires and our expressed behavior becomes separated from our preferred behavior.  How do we establish habits which are likely to promote expressions that emanate from us - into the world - in response to the world - as we would prefer. This is a question about how we would like to change, or in a simple rephrasing, what does it mean to progress.

Progress 

Progress could be defined very simply as movement in a specified direction, without placing any evaluative judgement on the destination. This simple definition however doesn't get at the sense of progress I am interested in. Under the simple definition we can speak as coherently about the progression of a disease as we can about the progress of a vehicle towards its intended destination. Instead I am thinking of something more like this:

Elusive Progress

Progress -  Movement that takes one in the direction of being more regularly disposed to act in resonance with, and at the intersection of, what is true,  good, and beautiful.

In my first post in this series I mentioned how philosophy has been concerned with questions of the true, the good, and the beautiful. The type of progress I am interested depends upon setting an intentional course towards the difficult to define space where the true, the good, and the beautiful come together. The true is a reference to epistemology ( what we can know about the world ), the good is a reference to ethical values, and the beautiful concerns the field of aesthetics. Progress conceived of in this manner will be elusive to the grasp and will not lend itself to objective measurement through clearly defined goals. Progress in this sense may involve moving forward or retreating, gaining something or letting it go. Nevertheless, I think the elusive conception is the one worth aiming for.

How does one aim when the target is elusive?

One problem with setting and attempting to adhere to precisely defined goals is that the world we encounter is not predictable and is unconcerned with making itself amenable to our precise plans. Here I am partial to the Taoist concept of wu wei which recommends non-coercive spontaneous action in concert with the rolling worldly situations we find ourselves embedded in. Responding to these situations freely often involves releasing predetermined goals. This tends to present a continual challenge for me as I tend to have a competitive streak. What I have found however, is that the more skilled, the more experienced, or more expertised I become in a given area the less I need to cling to specific goals to make the type of progress I am concerned with. I think over time, as we refine our sense of what we value in the three domains I have been discussing, that sense begins to orient our actions and our dispositions toward their convergence. This is the Taoist sense of virtue (te).

General Ethical Framework

If I am going to relay a sense of how I see my endurance running practice fitting aesthetically into my lifestyle I am going to have to present a broad outline of my current ethical framework ( non dogmatically offered and always open to revision ).

A very simple bottom line is two pronged:

1. I hope to limit the amount of unnecessary suffering my actions inflict upon myself and others now and going forward 
2. I hope to enhance my capacity and encourage the capacities of others to live meaningfully in connection with what we each authentically see as true, good, and beautiful now and going forward

I think these intentions are straightforward enough in the abstract, but in the real world there will always be conflicts that render these intentions less than straight forward in their application. The long term consequences of our actions are often difficult to gauge. If we have more monetary resources than is needed for our own well being how should we think about donating to others (if those we don't know personally are in more need than those close to us ). How do we weigh our own prudential concerns and our own well-being against service towards others. Questions like these and many others suggest to me that any fixed rule bound approach to ethics is going to have trouble responding freely and accurately in an unforced fashion to the massively complex moral dilemmas we face.

So I tend to favor what is known as a virtue ethical approach. This concept involves cultivating capacities, trying to be fit ( cognitively, emotionally and physically ), trying to be reasonably informed, and reasonably skilled at evaluating the arguments of those more informed in a given subject. The hope is that by building a capacity for wisdom, compassion and ultimately virtuous action one can respond to their worldly situations in a degree of alignment with the two bottom lines.

Repetition and Endurance Running

 

Lets start with the basic bio-mechanical act of running. Before you have run twenty feet you have already completed a few repetitions of left-foot/right-foot (take-off and landings ), and left/right arm swings. Likely your heart-beat and breath are accelerating their typical repetitive cycles as well. Running is repetitive by nature. Each cadence cycle is a whole body-mind process much more complex than just arm and foot movements. The process requires a large degree of neuromuscular coordination and involves internal metabolic adaptions in search of holistic or systemic balance and alignment to the demands of the activity.

Zooming out a bit there are various types of endurance training runs that contain repetitive cycles. For example, a cruise interval run consists of repeated cycles of varying length (sometimes 1 mile, sometimes more) with rest periods in between. There are runs with a portion run at marathon racing pace, runs designed to have a fast finish. Shorter interval runs with interspersed rest periods are run at faster paces aimed to train speed and improve running form. Zooming out again there are the repetitive cycles of individual runs followed by the recovery between runs. It is after all, not during  a run, but instead in the recovery period after each run that the enduring physiological adaptations that lead to improved fitness take hold. Farther out still there are phases of training in the lead up to a race, a taper period where training is reduced before the race, with a longer recovery period after the race and then it all repeats again.

Vicious and Virtuous Cycles

Of course all of these running cycles have to be structured into our broader daily, weekly, and seasonal life cycles. I think the concept of a maintaining sustainable cycles is a useful way to think about repetition and its link to the concept of progress. Everyone I think is familiar with the term vicious cycle as a characterization for a process or dynamic in which contributing components feed off each other accelerating the process in an undesirable direction. Sustainable cycles on the other hand tend to maintain stability whereby the components of the system serve as checks and balances for each other when one aspect starts to take an upper hand. In contemporary physiology lingo these are known as negative feedback loops. I'm going to call them virtuous cycles when in addition to the property of sustainability they move us in the direction of my previously defined sense of progress. The more time one spends in a given practice the better one becomes at maintaining that practice as a virtuous and sustainable cycle. I used to apply a pretty rigorous scientific approach. I closely tracked many metrics on every run, measuring my heart-rate at rest each morning, and even whats known as heart-rate variability (here and here is an example of the detail I went into). I'm getting better at balancing my rest and activity, my competitive and aesthetic impulses by feel from experience, staying injury free and just generally being in tune with how running can assist my well-being.

Endurance Running Within a Lifestyle Aesthetically Aimed at Elusive Progress

Here are some of the ways I think my running practice fits in with this approach:

Physical, Emotional, and Cognitive Well-being - Research suggests strongly that regular cardiovascular is perhaps the best way to maintain. The added ethical component of being physically fit is that I hope to be less likely to be a financial burden on the health care system.

Running as part of my work commute - There are multiple benefits to structuring my run into my commute. One this that research shows the work commute to be a negative factor in well-being.
This can especially true commuting to work in the LA area where I work.  Instead the commute becomes pleasurable for me, and the routine ensures I get multiple periods of cardio vascular exercise each weekday. This also reduces my carbon imprint on the environment by reducing the miles I put on electric vehicle. A final benefit is no parking costs at UCLA where I work.

I think I have done enough writing for one post. I will just leave it with the acknowledgement that my life cycle is part of a much larger life cycle and that the sense of progress I am after includes my own decline within it.

On that note I think this chapter (41) from the Tao Te Ching is a nice corrective for our cultural emphasis on progress and growth.

When the wise study about the Tao,
they slog through its lessons with appropriate diligence.  
When the sort-of-wise hear about it, they grasp it and lose it. 
If they didn’t lose it, they couldn’t try to find it.
When the fool hears about the Tao, he laughs and laughs.
That is the Tao.
The Tao sees darkness as though it were light, sees retreat as progress,
knows that that the rough conceals the smooth, that the truth appears in fragments, purity within defilement, goodness as incoherence,  integrity in letting go,
simplicity in ramification.
A perfect square is a circle.  A perfect circle is boundless. 
A perfect note is enwrapped in the silence. The world has no form
Is the Tao hidden?  It forms and fills us.  It empties and releases us..(3)

Next week will be part two of Repetition and Progress with an emphasis on Beauty😎



1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-therapy/200907/the-definition-insanity-is
2. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/
3. Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 443-453). Chapter 41 crispy press. Kindle Edition.

The Art of Running as a Practice Embedded in the Art of Living a Good Life

Should I find the creative motivation I am planning to write a series of posts concerning the above topic.  Running has become an integral part of my lifestyle the effects of which I feel have been quite positive. Also, I think it will do me good to put my interest in philosophy to use and to do so might even improve my writing skills simultaneously. They may be to wordy or esoteric for social media, but can easily be ignored 😉

My approach will be fueled by a few key ideas

1.   things that seem different have ways in which they are the same
2.    things that seem the same have ways in which they are different
3.   receptive exploration of these relations may yield a position that responds non-coercively
4.   what makes any practice an art involves a process of interweaving ends and means

These are not original ideas. The first three have most clearly imprinted been on my consciousness by Zhuangzi and Lao Tzu. For example:

When “this” and “that”—right and wrong—are no longer coupled as opposites—that is called the Course as Axis, the axis of all courses. When this axis finds its place in the center, it responds to all the endless things it confronts, thwarted by none. For it has an endless supply of “rights,” and an endless supply of “wrongs.” (1)

  And

The emptiness at the heart of real power
Renders it impossible or pointless to resist.
Reside in this central stillness (2)

The fourth idea can be traced to John Dewey:

The difference between external and intrinsic operations runs through all the affairs of life. One student studies to pass an examination, to get promotion. To another, the means, the activity of learning, is completely one with the results of it. ... Means and ends coalesce. If we run over in mind a number of such cases, we quickly see that all cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic. This externality may even be regarded as a definition of the non-esthetic. (3)

The contemporary philosopher of aesthetics Crispin Sartwell from the standpoint of many traditions, cultures, and many great minds has wonderfully and systematically explored the questions related to the practice of living in connection with what philosophers call the true, the good, and the beautiful. Whatever I end up writing will be influenced by his work.

Sub-topics I may or may not explore could possibly include:

Repetition and Progress - Departure and Return - Purposeful Wandering?

Action and Rest – Aversion and Desire – Freedom and Constraint - Heart and Mind
Stress and Distress - Stability and Adaptation - Fulfillment and Self Emptying
Detachment and Engagement - Resilience and Fragility -   .....

Notes:

1.  Zhuangzi; Ziporyn, Brook. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Hackett Classics) (p. 12). Hackett Publishing. Kindle Edition.

2.  Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 366-368). crispy press. Kindle Edition.

3.  John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Putnam, 1934), 197-98