Professor at Large: The Cornell Years

Because that’s how tortoise-mind thinking works—it’s curious, open-minded, follows its nose.

No meeting is possible without reciprocal affection. If the Work seeks to enter into a man’s understanding, it would be unable to do so if there’s nothing reciprocal coming from the man. Real conjunction with the Work needs affection before it can happen. Affection is that which opens while non-affection shuts.

On the other hand, tortoise mind works best in complex, ill-defined situations when we are not quite sure what sort of an answer we are after, where it’s not clear how many factors are involved, where we may not have all the information, and where it’s hard or impossible to measure the factors.

Tao: The Watercourse Way, by Alan Watts.

But I have never known what I want to do. All I know is that I want to do the next project. Do you see what I mean?

SMITH: So do you find it any easier to be creative now? CLEESE: Well, I know how to facilitate it now. It’s all about creating a space. Space is exactly the right word. That means you have to create boundaries—of time and of space. So first, you have to find a place where you can just be quiet. If you’ve got an office with a secretary, you say to t

time at all to confront the real issues. If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called “responsibilities” accumulate to fill them up… . We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time. Even simply to get up in the morning, there is so much to do: open the wi

So you also need to make sure that your tortoise enclosure is one in which your ego, and everyone else’s, feels safe, in which it’s absolutely clear that everyone in the room is treating what everyone else says, or doesn’t say, with friendly, uncritical curiosity.

more realistic. You say, “I tell you what—instead of changing society, I’ll just be nice to a dozen people instead.” Because that’s achievable.