Translated by Jacques Chwat, 1988
…Peter Brook talked to me about the "principium of the beginner" found among the Samurai. (The same example is used by some Zen masters.) When a Samurai has mastered all the skills and has, to all appearances, arrived at the optimum of practical or, let us say, "technical" knowledge, he must let it all go, discard everything and behave as a beginner. It is said that if he is unable to discard a warrior's knowledge, if he cannot become a foolish child — an animal or a force of nature — then he will be killed. To confront the "opponent" like the Unknown, to remember that this battle may be the last (and hence the only battle). To forget all skill, to be completely without skill, to be almost as in a dream: only then, when the warrior is able to not be busy with the thought of victory, does he have a chance…
In seeking a natural state we have two possibilities. The first is by means of training, later abolished, just as in the art of the Samurai, beginning with conscious mastery, on to almost unconscious mastery, then on to the principle of a conditioned reflex, and finally, mastery of the warrior's skills. But at the point that he becomes a real warrior he must forego everything.
The second possibility is through untaming. From the moment of our birth we are conditioned, tamed, in everything: how to see, how to hear, how to be, how to eat, how to drink, what is what, what is possible, what impossible. But this second possibility (of untaming the tamed) is very difficult.
When I visited the Peking Opera just before the Cultural Revolution, I saw their classic production of "The Monkey King" where the same role was played one day by a father, the next day by his son. All the elements of the role were identical because in that theater everything is codified — the signs are all the same. I didn't see any difference. Yet I noticed that the public was enchanted by the father's playing the first day and much less enthusiastic with the son's playing the following day. I asked about this and was told, "It is because the son perspires under his arms while somersaulting." In other words, the son was still at a stage where his training was visible, while the father — who undoubtedly trained daily — had evidently forgotten all about training during the performance. This is an example of the first possibility. By means or training (or technique used in the classical Greek sense where techne means art), the father exemplifies the attainment of freedom through technique…
In a Catholic culture there clearly exists yet a third possibility, the "state of grace" (unpredictable as it may be). A man is about to cross an abyss. He approaches the edge, sees that the abyss is enormous and that there is a tree trunk, a thin tree trunk, connecting both sides. He looks into the abyss, hesitates, then retreats. Then he sees a blind man with a cane who approaches the trunk, touching it all the while with his cane, walking across the fallen trunk unaware that there is an abyss. Can we seek a "state of grace?"
When we speak of the art of the beginner we speak of beginning, beginnings. What does it mean to be in the beginning? Does it mean to look for historical beginnings, to look for something that once was? Can we ask how performance began, how it originated, how it developed? Yes, we can ask. But that is not what I am talking about, because in thinking of beginnings we often think of children, but in sentimental terms (forgetting the child's ruthlessness, egotism, cruelty), rather than the other, extraordinary side of the child which lives in beginnings: for the child everything happens for the first time. The forest he enters is his first forest. Yet for us, conditioned as we are, our intellectual computer is so programmed that every forest — even one that we enter for the first time — is the same, and we repeat to ourselves, "This is a forest" despite the fact that even the same forest changes constantly..
…
Goal orientation is the difficult problem. What is necessary is work, effort, determination — the purposefulness of the work: making for the center, cutting through a passage. But purposefulness and goal-orientation are two different things. What is goal-orientation? We have been conditioned by goal-oriented thinking, first to have some conception or plan, then to make efforts for its realization. Then what is causal orientation? Essentially, the existence of certain causes, perhaps like seeds, that we are able to discover, then either encourage or discourage. Rather than prepare a blueprint, in terms of its effect, prepare a range of opportunities — from the seed. Goal-orientation, which may turn out to be useful when applied to certain spheres of life, is simply a mistake in others, or in certain cases, even a disaster.i Nineteenth-century physics is said to be mechanistic in character: they imagined that it would be possible to construct an ideal model. Today, however, when we enter a world of either micro or macro dimensions we find ourselves in an "organic world" — precisely the same term used by Stanislavsky: organic. The contemporary physicists said, "It is as if I saw two trees, or three, or even five trees. They are a manifestation of the same phenomena, yet each one is different. Each physical phenomenon has its own 'individuality' and is different. It is organic and not mechanistic." Where does the difference lie? The "Organic" springs from a seed within which exists a "cause" which is allowed to be acted out. It is something that comes, as it were, from the roots, and is permitted to exist — not something springing from some conceptual model and duplicated blueprints going toward some final point…
© 1978 jerzy grotowski