CN: Can you elaborate on being centred as you mentioned before we started the interview?
JP:What you see in these joined families, where there are artisans, masters, and the new ones who are going to get into it, you see that what is essentially encouraged is to see what is happening and to make a sense of it yourself. You have to find your own centre. Your physical activity, the way you hit and the way you strike has to come out, not from a disturbed centre, but from a coherent centre. It is best illustrated with the potter. You cannot throw on the wheel unless you are centred and you cannot get centred unless you throw. It is like riding the cycle, you keep falling until you find a common centre with the cycle and then suddenly you are riding it. All riders have this. Even the horse riders have it. Unless you find a common centre with the horse, you will never be comfortable. I think you have this in every field when you become 'one' with your...
CN: So what is the centre?
JP: In artisan sense it is very real and very physical. You become conscious that where your energies are flowing out from. When you make a hit, and you will be hitting the whole day, you cannot be wasteful and spill your energies. It always has to be in a particular way when you hit and the movement back has to be in a particular way and then you take a rest in a particular way. It all comes from one same centre. Otherwise you become a nervous wreck and you get so tired that you are unfit for the next day. The only way you can keep coming back, day after day on something, is if you actually know how your body is working. And that your hammer beats are actually making sense, that you are not in one object hitting it 20 times and in the next 24 times. That you are not wasteful.
