Page 76 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

Our relationship was a rocky one, and we ended up fight ing for two da ys
straight until I left, exasperated, heartbr oken , worki ng my way ba ck around

war-torn Croatia to Hungary so I coul d fly home. I fini shed On the Road in the
middle of the Austrian night, sheets of rain poundi ng down on an old train as
it groaned into the darkness, a drunk Rus sian sno ring across the car from me,
mixing with the laughs of gypsy chi ldr en in the compar tment next do or. My

emotional state was bizarre. I had jus t lost the World Cham pi ons hi p and the
love of my young life, and I hadn’t slept in six day s, but I was more alive tha n
ever before.
Three weeks later, I was standing on a Brazilian street corner the da y be fore

representing the U.S. in the World Under 21 Cham pi ons hi ps , and sudde nl y
Kiti was in front of me, smiling, looki ng int o my eyes. We laughe d and our
adventures continued. S uch was my life.
After finishing On the Road, I began reading The Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s

fantastic story centering on the Beat Generation’s relations hi p to Zen
Buddhism. I believe this was my first real expo sur e to a (albei t rathe r eccent ric)
vision of Buddhist thought. I loved the hed oni stic int ernal jour ne ys and
rebellious wisdom of Gary Snyder. I yearned to retreat into the mount ains and

live with the birds. Instead I went to the Sham bhal a Center in do wnt own
Manhattan and studied meditation. I tried to chi ll myself out , sitting cross
legged on the floor, focusing on my breath. I had moments of peace, but for the
most part I was boiling with a hunger to leave everythi ng beh ind.

That’s when I took off to live in Slovenia, and it was in my Eur ope an
wanderings that I found the Tao Te Chi ng—an ancient Chi ne se text of
naturalist musings, believed to be written by the hermetic sage La otse (also
known as Lao Tsu) in the 6th centur y B.C.E. I described earlier how during these

years my relationship to chess becam e increasingl y int rospe ctive and
decreasingly competitive. A large factor in thi s movement was my de epe ni ng
connection to Taoist philosophy.
Studying the Tao Te Ching, I felt like I was unear thi ng everythi ng I sens ed

but could not yet put into words. I yearned to “blunt my shar pnes s,” to tempe r
my ambitions and make a movement away from the material. I Laotse’s focus
was inward, on the underlying essence as oppo sed to the externa l
manifestations. The Tao Te Ching’s wisdo m cent ers on releasing obs truc tions to

our natural insight, seeing false cons truct s for what they are and leaving the m
behind. This made sense to me aesthet ically, as I was already inv olved with my