this, from my beautiful wife deb, a longtime practicing Zen Buddhist:

"In its simplest form, Zen, as a religion, is
to 'pay attention', meaning 'pay attention to
the present moment'. So if you are paying
attention while filing lugs into intricate shapes,
that's Zen."

me, i'm a jewdist, so i make my own rules.
because i think about frames as well as make
them, my thought on this issue is that a frame
is a unit, a life form if you will. i see the
work going into making a lug, or refining a lug,
or adding adornment to a lug as part of the process
rather than 'the' process. in essence, for me,
all the energy spent on creating any one detail of
a frame should be spread to the making of it in
its entirety. the lugs are not the frame. the geometry
is not the frame. the alignment is not the frame.
the material is not the frame. the frame is the frame.

e-RICHIE

ps - this text originally lived here:
http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=classicrendezvous.10210.0505.eml