When you step back from that
mentality and simply design your XML and XSLT in such a way that there
is no need to climb up and down the tree to process the data then XSLT
is never complex.  It may take a little getting used to the style and
as such seem a bit complex but after you just "let go and let God" as
the saying goes then your mind adjusts and it simply makes sense.  It
seems to me that just about the time you find yourself having to write
complex code to make something work in XSLT is right about the time
you need to rethink things and realize you are doing things the hard
way (the procedural side of your brain if you will) and that there is
a much simpler approach that will work twice as efficient if you block
the procedural line of thinking and embrace the template-based
functional side of your brain

Totally agreeed. XSLT is easy in 95% of case and could be solved by "tempalte-based function". That's why we can develop
Tiger XSLT Mapper. That's why drag & drop can make most XML-XML case work. If you really want to manipulate the tree in other 5% of case, you can go directly to DOM where you have more control and preformance efficience.