A study in time, flexibility and initiative. [image: Inline image 1]
Martial Ats instructor Kam Yuen Kam Yuen on practice and thinking: http://youtu.be/_W_D_UsLqNs Most people, when they think of martial arts think of physical force and how it might be used to overwhelm opponents. In meeting the needs of practical people for a strong system of invincibility, "TM" is second to none. With the inner focus of meditation it is often possible to avoid not only violence but the kinds of self-defeat that arises out of our inability to manage the impact of stresses such as fatigue, fear, and pain. While you may never engage someone who intends to harm you physically, you won't be able to escape the stresses that follow in the wake of active living. Countless generations of martial artists in China, Japan, and India have been attracted to the concept of energy, inner stillness, and the certainty that goes with it. There have been many who have drawn deep spiritual lessons from a vocational relationship with danger; living with the knowledge that one may soon die may well induce the most profound self-examination of which humans are capable. According to Sensei Randal Bassett, "The path to self-power is more than a quest for bodily survival; it is the quest for identity and authentic free will." To the extent that a man lacks self-power, that is, to the extent that he cannot dictate the contents of his own mind, to that extent he will manufacture threats where none existed. Bassett notes that it is rare that human beings are overwhelmed by hopelessly powerful objective forces, and that in the vast majority of personal disasters it is we ourselves who prove to be our own undoing. If you are going to achieve consistent, meaningful results in your quest for self-culture, you are going to have to cultivate a series of specialized habits, for habits are the only things you can count on retaining in the face of strong resistance. Get the right mental habits, cultivate physical culture, and nothing can stop your progress toward enlightenment. The first and most basic of all martial arts psychological defenses is meditation, the object of which is to gain the skill necessary to remain calm in the face of threat; the result is an ability to keep attention from being broken in the face of heavy stress. The fundamental goal of such mental technique is to avoid the kinds of self-defeating actions that tend to occur once you lose a sharp awareness of essential objectives, a common pitfall of all high-pressure situations. "We have a way," observes Bassett, "of not realizing what is occurring within our own minds in moments of heavy stress; and this helps to explain why we so often tend to yield to irrational responses in the face of threat - responses that a knowledgeable opponent will use against us." In a sense we all meditate but we do this is a random fashion and not all systematically. Being able to meditate is a matter of forming a specialized habit, a mental mechanism that will work for you automatically and dependably even in adversity. Bassett also says, "Nothing is more self-defeating than to allow vanity to influence one's actions under heavy pressure, and one of the best ways to check such vanity is to never compete with anyone but yourself." According to Bassett, the idea that we as humans are "creatures who consciously control ourselves" is largely a myth. It might well be argued that we're characterized as much by our lack of control as by our control. Most people are able to exert full conscious control over their mind content for less than a fraction of a second during waking hours. In short, active attention yields to preoccupation. Difficulties begin when we can't control preoccupation, even when it is vitally important to do so. And yet, this is exactly what happens in threatening situations; at the moment when we need to bring forth our full conscious attention, and fix its brilliance upon one point, we have trouble doing so. There is nothing surprising in this, if preoccupation is viewed for what it is: a kind of first cousin of sleep - sleep being a form of total preoccupation within the realm of the unconscious. Shakya the Muni, the historical Buddha, was a master of the martial arts, and the founder of the dhyana scool in India - he testified countless times to the difficulty involved in gaining habit-level skill, or mindfulness. In many respects there is no greater threat than stress, and the resistance of your own mental inertia. In meditation self-defense, the will is considered to be a manifestation of strength or of wakefulness. In thinking that we possess powers of attention that we don't in fact have, we tend to overlook the actual mental capabilities that we do command. Bodhidharma, the founder of the chan school in China, a Master who apparently originated "kung fu" in his spare time, was emphatic in warning his students to avoid reliance upon concepts, mere words, and theological speculation. It is an almost innate propensity of the human mind to equate smallness with insignificance. This propensity induces us to believe that nothing of real value may be gained from learning to work with spans of attention whose duration tends to be quite small. Thus without realizing it, we come to overlook one of the most basic principles: The capacity to exert absolute attention at critical moments can succeed in turning even the span of a fraction of a second into an event of immense personal significance. Self defense is a study in time, for time is freedom, flexibility, and initiative. Work cited: 'Zen Karate' by Randall Bassett Warner Books, 1975 Paper. 238 p. Illustrated with 161 line drawings. General references: 'Zen Buddhism: A History, India & China' (Volume 1) by Heinrich Dumoulin Macmillan, 1988 'Barefoot Zen: The Shaolin Roots of Kung Fu and Karate' by Nathan Johnson Weiser, 2000 'The Bodhisattva Warriors: The Origin, Inner Philosophy, History and Symbolism of the Buddhist Martial Art Within India and China' by Shifu Nagaboshi Tomio Weiser, 1994 'The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts' by Meir Shahar Univ of Hawaii Press, 2008
