On 6/1/2014 8:09 PM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote:
Succinctly and beautifully written, Richard, thank you.
>
If you are going to achieve consistent, meaningful results in your quest
for defensive 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, practice meditation 2 x 20 and
nothing can stop your progress toward your goal./
According to my martial arts teacher, Sensei Randall Bassett, /"We have
a way 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 such threat - responses that a
knowledgeable opponent will use against us."/
The historical Buddha, Gotama, in his youth was a master of the martial
arts and 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 fatique and the resistance of your own
mental inertia and lethargy.
Work cited:
'Zen Karate'
By Randall Bassett
Warner Books, 1975
Paper. 238 p. Illustrated with 161 line drawings.
p. 146
>
On Sunday, June 1, 2014 12:52 PM, "'Richard J. Williams'
pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
wrote:
On 6/1/2014 9:49 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
<mailto:turquoi...@yahoo.com> [FairfieldLife] wrote:
For those of you who never studied martial arts, a white belt is the
rank you are given as a beginner.
>
A white belt is the belt you get when you buy a karate uniform. The
first class I attended was when my parents were stationed in Japan in
1959 in the USAF. What is important in martial arts isn't the clothing
you wear or your rank at a dojo - what is important is self control
which /begins in the mind/. An effective self defense is greatly a
function of our awareness of the surroundings in the outside world;
our ability to control the content of our mind under stress; and our
ability to remove ourselves as a "target" by our behavior and mindset.
Most instructors only give lip service to mental preparation such as
meditation and spend more time discussing physical tactics. Self
defense is as much mental as physical.
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