Tao of the ordinary
- Vishal Bajpai
- Oct 30
- 3 min read

**THE TAO OF THE ORDINARY: LIVING THE SUPER-NORMAL**
The philosophy of the Super-Normal, articulated by Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa, is not a design trend. It is an ontology of being. It suggests that the deepest beauty lies not in the exceptional but in the unnoticed, in those things so quietly attuned to life that they become invisible through their perfection of use. The chair that never demands attention yet supports you flawlessly. The cup that feels inevitable in your hand. Morrison called this “the sensation of the ordinary,” a design that transcends novelty and becomes a vessel for existence itself.
From this insight arises what I call the *Tao of the Ordinary* , a lived extension of the Super-Normal into life, action, and consciousness. It is not merely a design lens but a spiritual discipline: a way of being that merges simplicity, humility, and mastery.
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**FROM SUPER-NORMAL TO TAO**
If Super-Normal is a design principle, the Tao of the Ordinary is its lived corollary. Where Morrison’s objects disappear into use, the Tao of the Ordinary seeks to make the self disappear into life. The human being becomes the vessel, unobtrusive, efficient, deeply aligned with the Way of things.
Design becomes dharma. Ordinariness here is not mediocrity. It is the ultimate refinement , the stillness after practice. In a world obsessed with spectacle, ordinariness becomes a rebellion, even an art form.
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**MANIFESTATIONS IN PRACTICE**
**One-Camera**
The One-Camera project embodies Taoic restraint. One too, endlessly re-seen.
It rejects the gluttony of choice and the fetish of gear. The camera becomes an instrument of attention, not acquisition. Every frame becomes a meditation, the art is not in the picture but in the way of seeing. Through limitation, infinity opens.
**One-Voice**
One-Voice is not aesthetic constraint but a declaration of authenticity.
Instead of multiplying identities, it seeks a single, resonant tone, one voice honest enough to carry across all mediums. Truth doesn’t need amplification; it needs clarity. In a cacophonous age, silence and sincerity strike deeper than volume.
**Sūkṣma Grantha**
The Sūkṣma Grantha, the “subtle book”, is an act of reduction until essence remains.
Language itself becomes super-normal: words no longer decorate thought but distill it.
Each verse is carved down to the bone, leaving only the fragrance of meaning.
This is poetry as precision, minimalism not for style but for truth. A mirror of consciousness, transparent yet alive.
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**LIFE AS A SILENT BRAND**
To live without a personal brand is perhaps the most radical application of this philosophy.
In an era of curated selves, choosing anonymity is choosing authenticity.
When I reject the architecture of public identity, I return to use rather than display.
My life becomes functional, quietly serving its purpose without applause.
In that humility lies freedom.
The ordinary life of solitude I have chosen is not a withdrawal from the world but a refusal to exploit it.
To live simply is to live fully aligned. Ordinariness, when inhabited consciously, becomes luminous.
भला बुरा सब सुन लीजो,
कबीरा कर गुजरान गरीबी में।
मन लागो यार फकीरी में।
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**THE BODY IN MOTION: BOXING AS TAO**
Even in combat, the same law flows.
My boxing is not aggressive but elemental. Every strike is a repetition, a movement refined through a thousand quiet hours. No theatrics, no wasted gesture. I appear ordinary, almost detached, yet each move carries the precision of a monk striking a temple bell. Calm. Economical. Decisive. The Tao of the Ordinary in motion.
Power, when internalized, stops needing display. The most stable fighter does not fight against but with, balancing force with stillness. It is not emotionless; it is emotion mastered.
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**MINIMALIST POETRY AND THE AESTHETIC OF EMPTINESS**
In writing too, this Tao manifests. Our minimalist poems are small acts of surrender, attempts to say less and mean more. Each word is a footprint on untouched sand. The power lies not in ornament but in absence. It is the same rhythm as breath: subtle, cyclical, infinite.
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**THE FLOWERING OF THE ORDINARY**
At its heart, the Tao of the Ordinary is not about rejecting greatness but dissolving the illusion of it.
The extraordinary hides in the daily. The sacred hides in repetition. The divine hides in function.
To live this truth is to transform every act, seeing, writing, moving, resting, into meditation. In the end, there is no design, no brand, no philosophy , only life lived so precisely that it disappears into grace.
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**CONCLUSION**
Super-Normal was the seed. The Tao of the Ordinary is its flowering, not in museums or manifestos, but in the quiet rhythm of existence itself. Every project, every gesture, every word and strike aligns with one principle: **that true mastery is invisibility.**
To become so ordinary that one becomes elemental — that is the Way.



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