unlearning

"To pursue learning one increases daily.
To pursue Tao one decreases daily.
To decrease and again to decrease,
Until one arrives at not doing.
Not doing and yet nothing is not done."
--Tao Te Ching (tr. Ellen Chen)

Bob Dylan once sang "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift." After all that education it's time to consider the Tao shift.

By shifting one's p.o.v. from the accumulation of knowledge -- most of which seems pointless in the long run -- to dispense with useless mental baggage, one gets down to what is essential: Nothing.

A well-known adage of Zen is "when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep." To which I might add, "when overwhelmed, do nothing."