Mastery Vs Transcendence... No, they’re not the same.
But yes, they can be. Let’s have fun.

To honor my semantics professor, from an earlier life, who insisted “always start by defining your terms”… let’s do just that. This letter is off the cuff, and I’ll give you my definitions below. The narrative could obviously take other paths should definitions change.

Mastery: Deep refinement of a process, method, or skillset, generally the byproduct of hundreds of thousands of repetitions marked by meaningful standards of performance.

Transcendence: The escape or deviation from patterned thought and action, including those often refined by process, method, or skillset.

Both of these, interestingly enough, can be marked by performance (name your preferred domain) or presence (unfiltered experience of this fleeting moment).

To distinguish these in practical terms, I’ll give two examples - Zen tea for the former, and drowning in a river for the latter. I know… bear with me. After, we’ll explore where the two become one.

Gong Fu Cha (Kung Fu Tea) | On Mastery
Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. ― Dōgen

The tradition of tea pouring can be found across a few Asian countries. Japan is perhaps best known for Zen tea, but China has its own Zen traditions, and I personally love the term Kung Fu Tea. It also, conveniently, adds insight into the Zen arts from the name alone.

Gong Fu can be translated as deep skill. Though it’s most commonly applied to martial arts, it applies equally well to archery, flower arrangement, tea making, and deep skill of any kind. One could be have gong fu / kung fu as a mechanic, for example.

There are levels to this practice worth considering, starting with the making of the tea - the boiling of the water, the washing of the cups, the rinsing and then steeping of the tea, and finally, the serving. Each of these steps, under the tutelage of a master, is intricate and highly specified.

In the beginning, one ought to be able to make and serve a cup of tea. Let’s be honest, if that’s too much, you’re in the wrong place.

After that, expanding circles of depth mark the practice, from technique, to process, to artistic expression through the effortless application of the other two. Artistic expression is where things get interesting, for even in the training process, there is no space for personal expression.

In the beginning, self is subjugated to process or method.

How you breathe, the placement of your eyes, connection with the individual being served, etc, are all points of training and awareness. And, as you can imagine, something so simple yet expressed in remarkable complexity is tedious, to say the least. It’s hard work.

For the first 1,000 attempts, one might find joy in the process. This is before they know what they don’t know.

For the next 9,000 repetitions, there are reflexive experiences that oscillate between inner rebellion of rote process all the way to glimpses of deep presence and momentary connection.

Beyond 10,000 reps we can discuss mastery, at least in theory (though it may take much more). At some point techniques are so honed they’ve become internalized - as effortless as walking or breathing. Process becomes silent - the order and approach of steps go from external dictums to the only logical way to approach them, on a deeply personal level. And presence…

When forms become so deeply embedded, there is opportunity for transcendental experience through them. I’ll come back to this.

Elodie’s Near Death Experience | On Transcendence
Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality. - Stanislav Grof

A year ago I reunited with an old friend, and she shared a story that I hope she doesn’t mind being shared. It was profoundly shocking, yet enlightening.

Now, I don’t think she would describe her experience as transcendent, but it meets my definition above, and I think it’s a challenge in all the right ways. If there are errors in the story, they’re mine.

On a rafting trip, her guide directed her boat down the more aggressive of two possible paths at a fork. He was also relatively green, and didn’t have enough experience to navigate the river or help those aboard, should they tip.

And they did.

And when they did, Elodie found herself in a terrifying reality - bounced and pushed down by the rapids, and moments later, stuck. She tried to identify which way was up, which isn’t easy in dense foam, and she started to scramble and fight, swinging and thrashing toward the light, but…

She wasn’t moving.

And after these exertions, with no new air coming in, time slowed down, and her mind began see, sense, and process at lightning pace. Her foot was trapped between two branches, and pulling and fighting only served to cut her leg up and tighten the trap.

She had moments to intuit the only response - she needed to push, not pull, to create space for her foot to escape. And she did.

And when she surfaced she was alone. She made her way to shore, and walked back pained and bloodied.

In those few seconds between life and death, trapped in a situation that had no comparable life experience, Elodie lived an unscripted yet fully connected moment in time. She transcended the myriad responses that might have surfaced under less severe circumstance, and found a novel solution born wholly from immediate insight.

It wasn’t rehearsed, practiced, or prepared for. This is not the domain of skill, and not the consequence of mastery.

And experiences like this can be had through any number of novel experiences - birth of a child, traveling abroad, drug-induced, and on and on - not merely creative problem solving in the face of death.

When Two Become One
There is a third class of people who have the same experience as mystics and madmen but who live through it. They are the people who have what we call a genius for living. - "Lila: An Inquiry into Morals" by Robert Pirsig

Conscious repetition will eventually lead to the internalization of skill - that skill becomes a point of self expression, not merely the rote practice of an external method.

You become the skill.

And while its possible the performance of a master can appear from the outside to be mystical - when they are just that much better than their competition - these are often just a reflection of running better algorithms, i.e. having greater depth of skill and more comprehensive processes.

Michael Jordan and Conor McGreggor both appeared to have mystical abilities on occasion, when in fact they just outclassed those around them, not by a little, but by a lot.

There are occasions, however few and far between, where the master is not just performing their craft better, faster, smarter, stronger, but where their craft lives silently within, and in that silence their mind is liberated from the confines of conditioned thought, in similar manner to that of Elodie’s escape.

In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to transcendence of form is through form itself. - Adyashanti

These masters don’t surrender their sense of order, like madmen, or their intelligent and reliable frameworks, like the mystic. But because they’re running superior algorithms with extraordinary depth and competence, no effort is required to perform them.

In those moments of transcendence, the mind is immersed fully in the present, intuiting nuance and novelty, sensing the flux in real time, and adapting in harmonious relation to environment.

Be Weightless! And…

...And if the path of mastery with sprinkles of transcendence gets you happy in the podgies, you’re in good company. We have the process, the principles, the tools, and the support ready and waiting in The Weightlessness Process - The next 12-week cohort is just around the corner, book a free consult through the link!

Tom Fazio

The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.― Robert M. Pirsig, from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance