The specific nature of the discipline is not important

 Mason Currey

Working on the copyedits for my new book last week, I had to check some facts in David Revill’s 2012 biography of the composer John Cage, and I was reminded that Cage—typically—came at this from a totally different angle. Revill writes:

Cage points out that discipline comes from the same root as “disciple”; one gives oneself up, administers one’s life from the core of one’s being so it may follow a path. “Discipline is giving yourself rather than expecting things to give themselves to you,” in the formulation of Cage. “Disciplines are important as disciplines. The specific nature of the discipline is not as important as the discipline itself.” He proposes, “the question is not what should I do or how to do it but how one achieves the state of being disciplined—learn true discipline to give oneself up.”