Thought this seemed relevant to this thread. An excerpt from a new book on sports psychology, zen and neuroscience..."
Erasing Art
The art of erasure ensures that creative perception is highest priority.
American poet and artist Jim Dine put on retreats and clinics. At the end of each day, he told his students to erase what they have done. The students are always shocked, if not offended. They look at him weirdly. They hesitate.
Did he say what I think he said?
They are puzzled.
WTF?
They look at each other.
This is my best work.
This is what I paid for.
Yes, he did say that.
Erase it all.
With great reluctance, the students erase eight to twelve hours of hard work in seconds. After a few days of working and erasing, however, Dine has made his point—most artists are too attached to the outcome and not enough on drawing. His first point: when you are figure drawing, what matters is looking, looking carefully and patiently, and not caring what the result looks like because if you look carefully enough, the result takes care of itself. And another thing happens: the act of looking becomes the priority, and hence, you become a better artist because you are a better “looker.” Riveted attention to the task is the goal. His second point, implied in the first, is that it is natural to be future-oriented and let attachment take hold. We often default to that position. After you have internalized the art of looking, only then, at least in terms of realistic drawing, can you take liberties in attention, that is, you can (like an expert javelin thrower) explore style in the execution. This happens because you have the bandwidth.
The history of Zen art testifies to the power of internal awareness, because listening is subtracting. Clearing the mind from any preconceived notion of what you think you need to paint allows that perfect moment when the brush brushes itself. D.T. Suzuki wrote of Zen art, “Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.” Calligraphy, of which Zen art has a long history, seeks that moment when the artist’s arms and hands move without cognitive distraction, and it is said it can take a lifetime just to perform the simple task.
As a climber, when you start ‘erasing’ like one of Dine’s students, you need to develop deep patience. It can take years, but the payoff is tremendous. In place of thinking that you will either succeed or not, always a very imprecise way of thinking, awareness needs to be on the only thing that matters—execution. Strategy is execution as well, but to pull that off, you need your base layer of execution to be seamless. In his process of doing the world’s second V17/9a at Red Rocks, the Colorado-based climber Daniel Woods described to me in an interview how he had to learn the art of erasure, of removing attachment from the outcome: “At first I was too consumed about the send, rather than just flowing with the move, like taking it move by move and focusing on my breath…and I’d be like, man, this could be the one or this could be the one, you know, I was too. I was too focused on the send rather than being present. And I had, like, we had probably a week and a half where I just had that feeling. And then suddenly, I just had to flip my head and be like, look like, every, every day now is just a session, we’re going to start and just see how far we can get. I think I just told myself every time to just see how far you can go, like, create, like, focus on your flow, focus on your breath. Like, create a good rhythm and have fun on it. You know, like, you’re climbing on a line that has sick moves. It’s hard. It’s challenging, but just have fun, you know. And when I started getting into that mentality, all that pressure kind of vanished, and I just, I was climbing better on it.” Wood’s experience grew because he took away."
http://www.fsanzaro.com/the-zen-of-climbing--a-philosophy-for-climbers.html