©NamdevKLD
Most of us watch training videos. We watch to see what interesting and crazy things those silly people have dreamed up when it comes to devastation to the human physique. All of us have watched martial arts training videos from other forms of martial arts, perhaps to learn, perhaps to mock. Much of what others do is similar, after all, in the end there are only so many ways a body can be moved or controlled. We are all built from the same mold and what works on me will most likely have a similar affect on someone else. There are exceptions to some of these rules, but mostly a broken neck will surely end the confrontation.
What I find funny is that we all watch the vid’s and come across things like the postures (kamae) and have ourselves a little giggle. Why not, they look silly, don’t they? Sometimes teetering on a precarious, off balance punch, sometimes doing things like standing with one leg in the air (thank you karate kid). We then say, sometimes out loud, “that is so f*ing unrealistic!”
I have been guilty of this in the past myself...even in my own martial art. Arrogance, thy name is absolute. Humility is a thing highly underrated in martial arts. After all, it is not part of a martial art’s nature for the participant to actually assume he doesn’t know everything. That’s one of those things that comes with age I guess.
A kamae, by the most primitive definition is a posture taken up by the martial arts student. It is best available to anyone who’s ever watched boxing, or MMA or better, martial arts movies. A boxer or MMA fighter’s ‘lead’ is what most of us call a kamae. We see that lead foot standing out before the other and the arms up in a defensive position and him rocking or moving on his feet, but always when his feet land, returning to this basic position. That’s what we think of as kamae. In movies of course, they take up a wide difference of kamae from Horse to Bruce Lee’s Dokko variations. And worse, they, the movie versions, will hold that kamae until the very moment of the attack and then flutter through a flurry of punch / kicks / throws and end back in that kamae. As if before the kicks and punches they were a still lake then the chaos of the fight and right back to the quiet body of water.
This is bullshit. Kamae maybe obvious when we stand still, but the reality is that we are always in kamae, every single second of every single waking moment. We are not stuffed animals, nor chiseled granite statues. We are flesh and blood, living, mechanical, transient beings. Our brains are fluttering from thought to thought, from position to point of fact. We change every single moment. It is our very nature to be change right down to how often hair regrows or how often skin is shed. We even have the ability to change the way we remember, to think, to ponder. How then, can such a thing ever be reflected as a stagnant statue of obvious position? Does a bird in flight ever stop being in kamae? His very wings are perfectly in place, doing exactly what they are meant to do with each stroke through the air. Animals have the luxury of mushin so they don’t get caught in the minutia of thought and worse, get trapped by standing still.
Now, does that mean you shouldn’t practice kamae? Hell no. In fact you should slow it all down to a point that it barely moves and you feel how your starting kamae moves you from position to position and you are in fact flowing through a whole series of different kamae until you decide to stop flowing through them.
A general sitting in the ranks of his advancing army is well aware of ‘kamae’. His moving army represents a shape, a position is space and time. He, hopefully, has build a strategy and is attempting to apply a series of tactics by using his armies ‘kamae’ to defeat the opponent. Now, in war, the general can see what his right flank is doing and what his center is doing. He can witness it from a larger, top down view, so that he himself does not get caught up in the fray. In other words, he can see enough of the big stuff, that the individual bullets or fists or knives moving so fast do not distract him from the whole of his strategy. If for example, he sees his left flank being overpowered and pushed back off the field, he can push his center forward turn his left to the right and hopefully pincher the opponent. Now as an individual, we should always see ourselves not trapped in the time it takes to fight, but instead, look at our own ‘kamae’ as way to move into better position and do the most devastation to the opponent without increasing the net harm we will receive. And remember, you will be hit.
My OODA loop is pretty slow, I admit it. So I use kamae as a way to create better defenses through the act of moving and evading and keeping my foot soldiers before the enemy so that when my ability to orient and act catch up, hopefully I have moved enough of my army into a position to act quickly and disrupt their OODA loop. Start looking at kamae as part of your holistic* necessity of your strategy.
*Makes me sad that the word Holistic has lost its true meaning, which is an idea that holds all the properties of a given system and must only be explainable by the combined, collective pieces and that no single piece can define or explain the behavior of the whole. “The whole is more than the sum of the parts”
Monday, May 10, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Learning to think with your senses
©NamdevKLD 2010
Human beings have five direct tangible senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But, of course, you knew this. Right now as you ‘read’ this your brain is processing each symbol and translating it to an understandable form, then stringing the connected symbols together until you have a perception of the meaning behind the word, the sentence, the paragraph. In the end, though, you are not thinking with your eyes. They are merely the receptive tool used by the brain to collect information about the outside world. The eyes themselves get little or no thought during the entire process of reading this. Of course my eyes aren’t being thought about as I read, you are thinking, that would just be crazy complicated for my brain (albeit super-brain) to keep track of so much at the same time. And you would be correct in your assumption. I don’t need to think about focusing or moving my eyes. These actions are controlled by other parts of my brain on a subconscious level. But these motions are flesh, neuron based actions. I’m not taking about the flesh and blood action of the brain. The motor of the brain. No. I'm referring to the mind. The complete, active mind. The full identity of the mind. The whole self.
I’m also not making some grand metaphysical leap that a million years of quiet meditation would just barely reveal. The senses don’t think*. They are senses, conduits for the mind into the tangible universe. What I’m talking about is taking steps into your awareness. To become a participant into your perceptions.
We tend to only care about the data being input. If my eyes see something move quickly I react. If my stove is hot and I touch it I pull away. If something is loud, I cover my ears. So many of my actions are in fact subconscious reactions when it comes to my senses.
As I’m listening to someone speak, my ears are not actively part of the conversation, because my mind is busy translating the verbal symbols and worse…the mind is already busy creating replies to what is heard. The enlightenment crowd would call this ‘normal’ living as unconscious living. That you are unaware of your true self or more importantly, your true self is not living in the moment.
There in lies the principle: learning to think with your senses so that when you are touching, listening, seeing, they are in a sense a direct connected extension of your mind at that moment. As a martial artist you should immediately see the potential for such open direct connection to your underlying consciousness.
I will give you an example. When working with an Uke you might find that you need to visually assess the position of his hands during a joint manipulation. You might then have to check your angle and your distance, and process the necessary time it will take you to move from point A to point B. These actions are all based off of one sense: Your sight. The other four are laying there asleep. What must be remembered is that the universe deals in absolutes. Energy not used to work as Kinetic energy is lying in wait as potential energy (assuming the absence of Entropy). For example, your sense of touch isn’t simply the act of feeling something surface and knowing if it is hard or soft, warm or cold. It is far more complicated than that. It tells you the relationship of the object in question, its orientation in space, its distance from you, and a multitude of other things your visual cortex can work out, but at a slower pace. And this is the crux: Each sense takes time to do a task that is not native to its purpose.
We have all done it. Held something in our hands that was unfamiliar to us and we were forced to take our eyes to the object and literally ‘feel’ it with our eyes. The mind is capable of processing the ‘feel’ of the object through the other sense, but it is not a native action and this takes a bit more reflective time.
As a martial artist, it behooves the individual to start to use the other senses for their native purposes. The process of doing so is really very simple and it only requires that you be aware of the learning process going on under the surface as you let the other senses do their thing. The first thing to do is slow way down. Babies are magical at this, as they learn to co-ordinate their actions, by learning to walk. A slow moving baby teetering on his feet is better balanced than a baby trying to run across the carpet when first discovering the ability to stand. We’ve all heard it before: Walk before you run.
Next and in conjunction to slowing down, use the sense from a correct distance. Touch is a clever occupier of space. Let it manage the distance for you. Imagine going to a car race and standing at the edge of the track and only being able to see the cars zip past your little section at two hundred miles an hour. You wouldn’t be able to even tell who was winning. Or, as we’ve all seen, having your ear right to the speaker at a concert. Whatever he’s hearing isn’t music. Nor would it be music if he was two miles away. Find, by slowing down and paying close attention to what the sense is telling you, the right distance. And lastly, when you have to trust another sense to objectify the findings of a more native sense, tell yourself your findings. This means, that you do not simply accept the findings. You mind is a clever animal, it will dismiss the native sense for the more tangible findings of the other sense, thus diminishing the importance of the native sense. For example, you pick up a rubber ball and normally you'd feel the texture of the rubber ball, and look at it, saying, 'oh that's how it looks'. Thus diminishing the value of the texture to a visual response so that the next time you see that texture it's connected to your eyes not your fingers. So if you feel that you need to look, say at a hand position relative to your own, tell yourself what you were feeling while you were connected to the hand: "I feel his fingers and they feel like they are pointed down toward the ground". Let the sense of feel be responsible for the entire action and the eyes were simply a witness to the act, not the primary sense for the whole outcome.
Lastly, we are visually based. It’s sad, but it’s pretty much our underlying reality. It takes a lot of training to undo this 80-20 rule (Eight percent of our input comes from our eyes). This is mostly because touch, smell, taste, aren’t really used, expect to tell is about pleasure and pain. You need to break yourself of that one and return those three senses back to a state of being part of your every day participation in this life. Start thinking with your hands as they type. Notice the texture of the keys, the distance to each keystroke, the pressure of your knuckles as you push down. Participate in the action not just the consequence.
*The senses don’t think. Interestingly enough, there is a theory that applies the idea that the whole body is part of the mind complex. Not simply the gray matter, but the entire nervous system, right down to the pain receptors in your toes, are part of the cognitive, interactive, mind.
Human beings have five direct tangible senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But, of course, you knew this. Right now as you ‘read’ this your brain is processing each symbol and translating it to an understandable form, then stringing the connected symbols together until you have a perception of the meaning behind the word, the sentence, the paragraph. In the end, though, you are not thinking with your eyes. They are merely the receptive tool used by the brain to collect information about the outside world. The eyes themselves get little or no thought during the entire process of reading this. Of course my eyes aren’t being thought about as I read, you are thinking, that would just be crazy complicated for my brain (albeit super-brain) to keep track of so much at the same time. And you would be correct in your assumption. I don’t need to think about focusing or moving my eyes. These actions are controlled by other parts of my brain on a subconscious level. But these motions are flesh, neuron based actions. I’m not taking about the flesh and blood action of the brain. The motor of the brain. No. I'm referring to the mind. The complete, active mind. The full identity of the mind. The whole self.
I’m also not making some grand metaphysical leap that a million years of quiet meditation would just barely reveal. The senses don’t think*. They are senses, conduits for the mind into the tangible universe. What I’m talking about is taking steps into your awareness. To become a participant into your perceptions.
We tend to only care about the data being input. If my eyes see something move quickly I react. If my stove is hot and I touch it I pull away. If something is loud, I cover my ears. So many of my actions are in fact subconscious reactions when it comes to my senses.
As I’m listening to someone speak, my ears are not actively part of the conversation, because my mind is busy translating the verbal symbols and worse…the mind is already busy creating replies to what is heard. The enlightenment crowd would call this ‘normal’ living as unconscious living. That you are unaware of your true self or more importantly, your true self is not living in the moment.
There in lies the principle: learning to think with your senses so that when you are touching, listening, seeing, they are in a sense a direct connected extension of your mind at that moment. As a martial artist you should immediately see the potential for such open direct connection to your underlying consciousness.
I will give you an example. When working with an Uke you might find that you need to visually assess the position of his hands during a joint manipulation. You might then have to check your angle and your distance, and process the necessary time it will take you to move from point A to point B. These actions are all based off of one sense: Your sight. The other four are laying there asleep. What must be remembered is that the universe deals in absolutes. Energy not used to work as Kinetic energy is lying in wait as potential energy (assuming the absence of Entropy). For example, your sense of touch isn’t simply the act of feeling something surface and knowing if it is hard or soft, warm or cold. It is far more complicated than that. It tells you the relationship of the object in question, its orientation in space, its distance from you, and a multitude of other things your visual cortex can work out, but at a slower pace. And this is the crux: Each sense takes time to do a task that is not native to its purpose.
We have all done it. Held something in our hands that was unfamiliar to us and we were forced to take our eyes to the object and literally ‘feel’ it with our eyes. The mind is capable of processing the ‘feel’ of the object through the other sense, but it is not a native action and this takes a bit more reflective time.
As a martial artist, it behooves the individual to start to use the other senses for their native purposes. The process of doing so is really very simple and it only requires that you be aware of the learning process going on under the surface as you let the other senses do their thing. The first thing to do is slow way down. Babies are magical at this, as they learn to co-ordinate their actions, by learning to walk. A slow moving baby teetering on his feet is better balanced than a baby trying to run across the carpet when first discovering the ability to stand. We’ve all heard it before: Walk before you run.
Next and in conjunction to slowing down, use the sense from a correct distance. Touch is a clever occupier of space. Let it manage the distance for you. Imagine going to a car race and standing at the edge of the track and only being able to see the cars zip past your little section at two hundred miles an hour. You wouldn’t be able to even tell who was winning. Or, as we’ve all seen, having your ear right to the speaker at a concert. Whatever he’s hearing isn’t music. Nor would it be music if he was two miles away. Find, by slowing down and paying close attention to what the sense is telling you, the right distance. And lastly, when you have to trust another sense to objectify the findings of a more native sense, tell yourself your findings. This means, that you do not simply accept the findings. You mind is a clever animal, it will dismiss the native sense for the more tangible findings of the other sense, thus diminishing the importance of the native sense. For example, you pick up a rubber ball and normally you'd feel the texture of the rubber ball, and look at it, saying, 'oh that's how it looks'. Thus diminishing the value of the texture to a visual response so that the next time you see that texture it's connected to your eyes not your fingers. So if you feel that you need to look, say at a hand position relative to your own, tell yourself what you were feeling while you were connected to the hand: "I feel his fingers and they feel like they are pointed down toward the ground". Let the sense of feel be responsible for the entire action and the eyes were simply a witness to the act, not the primary sense for the whole outcome.
Lastly, we are visually based. It’s sad, but it’s pretty much our underlying reality. It takes a lot of training to undo this 80-20 rule (Eight percent of our input comes from our eyes). This is mostly because touch, smell, taste, aren’t really used, expect to tell is about pleasure and pain. You need to break yourself of that one and return those three senses back to a state of being part of your every day participation in this life. Start thinking with your hands as they type. Notice the texture of the keys, the distance to each keystroke, the pressure of your knuckles as you push down. Participate in the action not just the consequence.
*The senses don’t think. Interestingly enough, there is a theory that applies the idea that the whole body is part of the mind complex. Not simply the gray matter, but the entire nervous system, right down to the pain receptors in your toes, are part of the cognitive, interactive, mind.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The sacred Warrior path
The new students are always looking for challenges, to have fun, to participate in the camaraderie of the adventure or to assume control of the helm and lead the ship into what waters they believe the whole expedition should be heading. Although it may seem like a good time for the teacher to participate in the movement of the students, to be fluid, to alter and adapt, I believe that the teacher should remain as focused on his own warrior craft as possible. That once the doors close and class begins, the teacher becomes serious about the craft. I see the possibility of a great disservice to both the student and the teacher if this basic tenet is not followed.
Omote
When a student begins to sand box or question or participates in below a standard of respect in the dojo he is being inauthentic to his desire to learn. His behavior, even in jest, diminishes his intention. It lowers his standard of attention, his ability to learn, and his intention of retaining information gleaned. At the same time it, inversely, increases his attachment to his ego, by self perpetuation of his internal self loving perfection, thus increasing his judgments of situations and skill sets that he may not fully understand. The more he is allowed to play around, the more possibility that he will simply not respect the teaching nor the time there and will in fact miss the real, deeper, point of the whole. The omote, that is, what is seen, for the student is the process of learning a martial art. For them, at this stage, discipline should almost be paramount.
The problem arises when you attempt to institute a strict ethical approach in a martial arts dojo. In another time or in another place, such reverence of the place and the teachings were made possible by the realization of what the undesired end could be: that is death. New students to the martial way were raised with the warrior intuitions and strict moral upbringing, coupled with the everyday experience of war and fighting that came with true self determination.* The current society is so designed to eliminate ultimate self determination by outlawing and the subtle undermining of personal growth. This isn’t a judgment, simply an observation of the facts. By removing the constant threats of old, our modern society has bred a child like adult, whom spends much of his early adult years playing like a child in his adult body. This translates into how the body is used, how it learns, what value it applies to those things it learns, and more importantly, the value-less-ness of those things it did not learn. For those things that get lost are hard fought to impress upon unwilling flesh later.
Those students that are sandboxing, asking a lot of what if questions, who struggle and fight back against techniques, are designed by our society to behave this way, and as a teacher, you should help them to see that they aren’t even really seeing themselves, not fully. Like looking into a series of foggy mirrors trying to find your one true reflection. The teacher’s job is not simply to offer a martial art. The art itself is a tool and nothing more. But his job is to help the student become a human being. A true, self determinate, independent, lover of life, defender of his ideals. The true teacher is a mirror breaker. Taking us back to our first image. That’s how important we are to the teacher, that he takes on the ‘karma’ of all those broken mirrors right along with us.
The problem is that the student whom practices these behaviors is not trying to rise to the teacher, but is instead trying to bring the teacher to his own level. A student of first year math has no right to take a course in algebra; his presence in the class would be disruptive. He’d be lost, question everything, and basically find no value in the whole proceeding. Is a white belt really much different? The difference is, we are suppose to have the patience and love for the beginner’s heart, to help nurture his unique nature and foster in him a true grown up human being. Can you see the conundrum this creates? Where in the student, by his nature, is drawing the whole downward and the teacher is attempting to elevate the situation. Of course in any closed system, black body radiation is very efficient. In other words, the teacher radiates at a black body, whom simply reflects with little absorption.
Ura
For the teacher, his desire to offer the student the best possible education in regards to his martial training can be all consuming. This leads to cases of getting to what if scenarios, jumping into the sand box to play with the students, and so forth. I cannot speak for all teachers, for some might find this method of teaching beneficial. Some styles, some purposes, some warrior creeds may in fact desire this approach. I can only reflect my limited viewpoint and the few notch hole observations I’ve made of this vast battlefield. It is my opinion that teachers should not sand-box, or fall prey to the ‘what if’. Unless, they fully intend to go 100% on the student. The teacher must always exhibit his intention to fully perform the techniques, the approaches, the desires of the school and most importantly: his own Warriorship. If at any time he softens, to allow for the student to postulate or play, then he is doing damage to his own identity. By giving room to others whom will take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
The teacher needs to remember that the student has signed on to learn, not just the throwing of fists into the air, but all the underlying, metaphysical, aspects of what is going on in the dojo. Where the Warriorship leads. I have a friend who teaches Yoga and it disheartens her when she finds students returning to her classes that haven’t realized that Yoga is a spiritual practice, that it’s not simply a place to become limber and socialize. That the yoga studio is a place of reverence, a kind of temple. It may not be a church to me, but it is a great spiritual path to her and I respect that and would assume that those entering her doors should quickly learn that there is a penance to be paid and homage to be adorned. The same is true for every Endeavour that a student undertakes. Whether that is martial arts or basket weaving. There is a seriousness, a meaning, a point to the adventure. Every step of our lives is … Our life and it should be serious. One of my favorite Hindi says is, “Before your birth, god inscribed upon you your allotted number of breathes. It is yours to decide how to use them.” I have a limited scope, a finite time. Why waste it with half truths and half-hearted foolishness?
It therefore is necessary for the teacher, in order to maintain his own path, to not engage in things that would bring him away from his identity. Sandboxing, what if, etc. leads the teacher into someone’s feign where most likely he will be flanked and crushed. Remain true to your strategies, stick to your tactics. Do not, never, let the student pull you down to his simple mathematics. It’s not your fault he doesn’t know Pythagoras and sometimes the only way to show him that there is more than addition and subtraction is to simply dump the entire system of Algebraic geometry on him and watch him squirm. It’s not mean, it’s not cruel. Often times our egos get in the way of ourselves. I disagree with ego killers, I submit that the ego is necessary for existence. That it is an intrinsic part of our being and that no matter how hard you try to destroy it, it will simply evolve to be the thing you called destroyed. I can’t think of a single person who can outthink himself, for you are only as smart as your own capacity. How can I fool my own thinking, let alone a part so fundamental that it has access to the whole of my mind? I believe that the folly of the ego is that it can become a monster, unchecked, without restraint. That is the creature of desire of wanton waste a warrior should beat with a stick until it dies (overly dramatic visualization intentionalized) .
The point is simple: The teacher at his core, should live up to his ethos, not offer the conversion of sacred ideas to bland passing phases in hopes that those who see can look past the obvious rape of the basic foundations of the idea and see the real meaning. In the end, the opposite is always true and the sacrifice is lost to history leaving only event as evidence of it’s every happening. From there the event takes on what ever meaning an individual requires it to, thus, the sacred is lost. Warriors protect their own sacred selves.
* - Our modern society is repulsed by war, so they seem to think, more so than our ancestors. We forget to realize that not to long ago a group of guys, a few thousand men, could seize an entire nation, simply because they wanted too. Those times aren’t dead. Selfish desires of power haven’t ended. In fact, they have increased as we have been vilified and stripped of our freedoms. A warrior ideal, that is, the realization of self-determination over social responsibility via guilt (nothing wrong with being socially responsible, but it should come from the enactment of the Golden Rule, not from fear of reprisal or scorn) his highly needed in our current world. We need real, excuse the brash statement, Jedi knights, whom are determined to place more than themselves, more than their gods, more than their governments at the center of all things. Truth seekers.
Omote
When a student begins to sand box or question or participates in below a standard of respect in the dojo he is being inauthentic to his desire to learn. His behavior, even in jest, diminishes his intention. It lowers his standard of attention, his ability to learn, and his intention of retaining information gleaned. At the same time it, inversely, increases his attachment to his ego, by self perpetuation of his internal self loving perfection, thus increasing his judgments of situations and skill sets that he may not fully understand. The more he is allowed to play around, the more possibility that he will simply not respect the teaching nor the time there and will in fact miss the real, deeper, point of the whole. The omote, that is, what is seen, for the student is the process of learning a martial art. For them, at this stage, discipline should almost be paramount.
The problem arises when you attempt to institute a strict ethical approach in a martial arts dojo. In another time or in another place, such reverence of the place and the teachings were made possible by the realization of what the undesired end could be: that is death. New students to the martial way were raised with the warrior intuitions and strict moral upbringing, coupled with the everyday experience of war and fighting that came with true self determination.* The current society is so designed to eliminate ultimate self determination by outlawing and the subtle undermining of personal growth. This isn’t a judgment, simply an observation of the facts. By removing the constant threats of old, our modern society has bred a child like adult, whom spends much of his early adult years playing like a child in his adult body. This translates into how the body is used, how it learns, what value it applies to those things it learns, and more importantly, the value-less-ness of those things it did not learn. For those things that get lost are hard fought to impress upon unwilling flesh later.
Those students that are sandboxing, asking a lot of what if questions, who struggle and fight back against techniques, are designed by our society to behave this way, and as a teacher, you should help them to see that they aren’t even really seeing themselves, not fully. Like looking into a series of foggy mirrors trying to find your one true reflection. The teacher’s job is not simply to offer a martial art. The art itself is a tool and nothing more. But his job is to help the student become a human being. A true, self determinate, independent, lover of life, defender of his ideals. The true teacher is a mirror breaker. Taking us back to our first image. That’s how important we are to the teacher, that he takes on the ‘karma’ of all those broken mirrors right along with us.
The problem is that the student whom practices these behaviors is not trying to rise to the teacher, but is instead trying to bring the teacher to his own level. A student of first year math has no right to take a course in algebra; his presence in the class would be disruptive. He’d be lost, question everything, and basically find no value in the whole proceeding. Is a white belt really much different? The difference is, we are suppose to have the patience and love for the beginner’s heart, to help nurture his unique nature and foster in him a true grown up human being. Can you see the conundrum this creates? Where in the student, by his nature, is drawing the whole downward and the teacher is attempting to elevate the situation. Of course in any closed system, black body radiation is very efficient. In other words, the teacher radiates at a black body, whom simply reflects with little absorption.
Ura
For the teacher, his desire to offer the student the best possible education in regards to his martial training can be all consuming. This leads to cases of getting to what if scenarios, jumping into the sand box to play with the students, and so forth. I cannot speak for all teachers, for some might find this method of teaching beneficial. Some styles, some purposes, some warrior creeds may in fact desire this approach. I can only reflect my limited viewpoint and the few notch hole observations I’ve made of this vast battlefield. It is my opinion that teachers should not sand-box, or fall prey to the ‘what if’. Unless, they fully intend to go 100% on the student. The teacher must always exhibit his intention to fully perform the techniques, the approaches, the desires of the school and most importantly: his own Warriorship. If at any time he softens, to allow for the student to postulate or play, then he is doing damage to his own identity. By giving room to others whom will take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
The teacher needs to remember that the student has signed on to learn, not just the throwing of fists into the air, but all the underlying, metaphysical, aspects of what is going on in the dojo. Where the Warriorship leads. I have a friend who teaches Yoga and it disheartens her when she finds students returning to her classes that haven’t realized that Yoga is a spiritual practice, that it’s not simply a place to become limber and socialize. That the yoga studio is a place of reverence, a kind of temple. It may not be a church to me, but it is a great spiritual path to her and I respect that and would assume that those entering her doors should quickly learn that there is a penance to be paid and homage to be adorned. The same is true for every Endeavour that a student undertakes. Whether that is martial arts or basket weaving. There is a seriousness, a meaning, a point to the adventure. Every step of our lives is … Our life and it should be serious. One of my favorite Hindi says is, “Before your birth, god inscribed upon you your allotted number of breathes. It is yours to decide how to use them.” I have a limited scope, a finite time. Why waste it with half truths and half-hearted foolishness?
It therefore is necessary for the teacher, in order to maintain his own path, to not engage in things that would bring him away from his identity. Sandboxing, what if, etc. leads the teacher into someone’s feign where most likely he will be flanked and crushed. Remain true to your strategies, stick to your tactics. Do not, never, let the student pull you down to his simple mathematics. It’s not your fault he doesn’t know Pythagoras and sometimes the only way to show him that there is more than addition and subtraction is to simply dump the entire system of Algebraic geometry on him and watch him squirm. It’s not mean, it’s not cruel. Often times our egos get in the way of ourselves. I disagree with ego killers, I submit that the ego is necessary for existence. That it is an intrinsic part of our being and that no matter how hard you try to destroy it, it will simply evolve to be the thing you called destroyed. I can’t think of a single person who can outthink himself, for you are only as smart as your own capacity. How can I fool my own thinking, let alone a part so fundamental that it has access to the whole of my mind? I believe that the folly of the ego is that it can become a monster, unchecked, without restraint. That is the creature of desire of wanton waste a warrior should beat with a stick until it dies (overly dramatic visualization intentionalized) .
The point is simple: The teacher at his core, should live up to his ethos, not offer the conversion of sacred ideas to bland passing phases in hopes that those who see can look past the obvious rape of the basic foundations of the idea and see the real meaning. In the end, the opposite is always true and the sacrifice is lost to history leaving only event as evidence of it’s every happening. From there the event takes on what ever meaning an individual requires it to, thus, the sacred is lost. Warriors protect their own sacred selves.
* - Our modern society is repulsed by war, so they seem to think, more so than our ancestors. We forget to realize that not to long ago a group of guys, a few thousand men, could seize an entire nation, simply because they wanted too. Those times aren’t dead. Selfish desires of power haven’t ended. In fact, they have increased as we have been vilified and stripped of our freedoms. A warrior ideal, that is, the realization of self-determination over social responsibility via guilt (nothing wrong with being socially responsible, but it should come from the enactment of the Golden Rule, not from fear of reprisal or scorn) his highly needed in our current world. We need real, excuse the brash statement, Jedi knights, whom are determined to place more than themselves, more than their gods, more than their governments at the center of all things. Truth seekers.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The iron wall starts here.
So often I’m assailed by the white robed bare foot community with their delicate words of ascension into the realms of the enlightened. They speak of it, these pajama wearing types as if it were getting on a hot air balloon ride. Where on a clean spring day one drifts effortlessly up into the open serene sky, with the world ever visible below. Where once in the soft gaze of heaven god appears in his ever manifest beauty and the whole of the universe is revealed.
Ridiculous.
The act of changing anything is a complex undertaking, like climbing mount Everest, or more probably, an out and out war. For the reality of those whom seek** the ultimate self one has the fight of a life on his hands: his two most opposing sides. Neither side can settle for a truce or arrange a cease fire. Neither could live with the other once the presence of one is recognized. How could the enlightened self live with the selfish ego? And how could the ego allow the open endless spirit put down so many of the carefully laid traps it spent years creating?
All great endeavors require the destruction (if that word is to negative for your delicate ears, then: re-invention by the dis assembly…) of previously created paradigms. We have to willingly assail the wall of the self in order to find the cracks. We must change the whole of our being in one swallow. This is never not a violent act. The only other option is to simply leave the self as it is and return to the cave to fade from the world.
Did the Buddha simple sit by a tree one afternoon after having a nice meal and some wine before bed and come to the conclusions he did? No. His war of the self took years and even when he thought he had it mastered, sitting there under the Bod-hi tree, he was attacked again by “Love / Death” and his many incarnations of the maya of life. Even then he had to fight and as the gods threw swords and spears from a million million million minions, the Buddha didn’t sit and take the wounds, he fought them off with his own devices. He was at war!
The point of my rant is simple. We are a species of re-creation. Each birth is a genesis into the universe. A starting over. With these origins some other thing must be sacrificed and even in the most violent ways, destroyed.
A samurai or a warrior’s spirit is not in his sacrifice, but in his overcoming. His death is a kind of rebirth to something not so obvious. His actions are in fact the cocoon of his metamorphosis, it is by way of his every action that he can even spin the silk by which he changes.
** There are few real seekers these days. Most of us (including myself) are satisfied with the fox of the ego whom is a cleverer being than your conscious mind could ever be. For the Fox accepts all faiths, all ideas, all values, all thoughts, all ways of approaching. it is clever enough to even accept those things that supposedly destroy it knowing full well that without the actual war against it, the actual usurping of the power from it, it will be like a character in Shakespeare, whispering just the right words into the ear at the right time and never fading from it's place. It has nothing to worry over, for it realizes that it must exist if we are to remain as we are today.
Ridiculous.
The act of changing anything is a complex undertaking, like climbing mount Everest, or more probably, an out and out war. For the reality of those whom seek** the ultimate self one has the fight of a life on his hands: his two most opposing sides. Neither side can settle for a truce or arrange a cease fire. Neither could live with the other once the presence of one is recognized. How could the enlightened self live with the selfish ego? And how could the ego allow the open endless spirit put down so many of the carefully laid traps it spent years creating?
All great endeavors require the destruction (if that word is to negative for your delicate ears, then: re-invention by the dis assembly…) of previously created paradigms. We have to willingly assail the wall of the self in order to find the cracks. We must change the whole of our being in one swallow. This is never not a violent act. The only other option is to simply leave the self as it is and return to the cave to fade from the world.
Did the Buddha simple sit by a tree one afternoon after having a nice meal and some wine before bed and come to the conclusions he did? No. His war of the self took years and even when he thought he had it mastered, sitting there under the Bod-hi tree, he was attacked again by “Love / Death” and his many incarnations of the maya of life. Even then he had to fight and as the gods threw swords and spears from a million million million minions, the Buddha didn’t sit and take the wounds, he fought them off with his own devices. He was at war!
The point of my rant is simple. We are a species of re-creation. Each birth is a genesis into the universe. A starting over. With these origins some other thing must be sacrificed and even in the most violent ways, destroyed.
A samurai or a warrior’s spirit is not in his sacrifice, but in his overcoming. His death is a kind of rebirth to something not so obvious. His actions are in fact the cocoon of his metamorphosis, it is by way of his every action that he can even spin the silk by which he changes.
** There are few real seekers these days. Most of us (including myself) are satisfied with the fox of the ego whom is a cleverer being than your conscious mind could ever be. For the Fox accepts all faiths, all ideas, all values, all thoughts, all ways of approaching. it is clever enough to even accept those things that supposedly destroy it knowing full well that without the actual war against it, the actual usurping of the power from it, it will be like a character in Shakespeare, whispering just the right words into the ear at the right time and never fading from it's place. It has nothing to worry over, for it realizes that it must exist if we are to remain as we are today.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Nature of the sword
In you am I
Sheathed you are a Dragon
where your fiery heart pounds.
Unleashed a Buddha.
Sheathed you are a Dragon
where your fiery heart pounds.
Unleashed a Buddha.
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