Tag Archives: zen karate

Entering the Mind of No Mind

One thing karate does is enable a person to enter the mind of no mind. The method of karate enables this as a pretty distinct fact. Unfortunately, society has destroyed true karate at a relatively fast rate, and so you should pay attention to this article, and implement the principles in your karate training.

Mind of no mind is also called, in Japanese, mushin no shin. While held up as mystical in the orient, it is actually pretty straightforward, but it does require a person to become somewhat enlightened. The real key here is to see things as they are, not as one wants them to be, or as they have been in the past, but as they are now.

zen karate

A perfect circle has no corners

 

The key to mind of no mind is to isolate the now, to actually exist wholly in the moment. Thus, when the punch is thrown, or the kick is launched, or the sword whistles through the air, you perceive it actually happening, and time actually slows down. Although, what is really happening is that you are becoming calm enough, being outside your mind, and seeing time as it really is, as it really happens.

There are a few things you need to isolate and cultivate this ability to see time as it happens. One of the most important things is to experience CBM, or Coordinated Body Motion. CBM is when you move all body parts at the same time, and stop them all at the same time.

Another necessary item is correct body alignment. The parts of the body must be lined up so that they are in the correct order, and this must be done with full CBM. This is something that should be built into all forms practice, and is necessary within forms practice to achieve mind of no mind, and enlightenment.

The real key here is that forms are a method to enable the individual to control his body. This is heightened, and quite different from something like ballet or gymnastics because the pieces of the form must be used to control another individual. Thus, the secret of mushin no shin, and enlightenment in the martial arts, is not to destroy, but to control.

To not destroy, although that ability is necessary, but to control. If you destroy, the game is over, and where is the enlightenment in that? And this is why Gichin Funakoshi did not hold freestyle, specifically of the tournament variety, up as part of the True Way.

To control will eventually separate the individual from his mind and body, and thus enable him to see the universe, and time, and life, as it really is. The truth is that things aren’t what they seem, they are but a shadow, and your mind obscures this shadow tremendously, and obscures methods for shedding the shadow and leaving the mind. And the truth is that this potential is within the martial arts, one of the four ways of enlightenment, but in todays tournament infested mind it is as good as lost, unless you read and apply the principles detailed in articles such as this.

Great Mental Space is Available With Karate!

With Karate, every work out is a prayer.

Let’s talk about what a work out really does.
I mean,
I keep telling you to work out,
and you know you get stronger and faster,
more smarter,
and people even like you more,
but…
why?
So let’s talk about EXACTLY what happens in a work out.

with karate

Learning Karate Changes Even Bullies



The human body is a motor,
and the human mind is like a radio transmitter.
I know,
sounds weird,
but it’s true.

At first,
you are working out
and the motor gets stronger,
faster,
and so on,
and that’s all good.

Somewhere along the line
the radio transmitter,
the mind,
starts to lose static.
All the chatter and bushwah
going on in the mind
gets less and less.

Mostly,
this is hard to perceive,
it’s not like muscles,
where a month later
you notice that you are stronger.
With the mind,
it’s like a year or two later,
you just feel better,
are calmer,
hold your own in conversations better,
and that sort of thing.

Now,
when you do a form,
or a technique,
you are deliberately trying
to get rid of distractions.
You want to do the move without extras.
You want to do only the move.
You want to be pure in motion
without thought.

The purpose of the form is to get rid of thought,
so that only that single thought
that creates the motion
is manifest.

Read that again.
The purpose of a form is to get rid of useless thought,
and manifest only that thought
which initiated the action.

The beginner has to move his feet,
his body lurches behind,
he’s not sure which muscles he’s using
and halfway through the move
he starts daydreaming.

Well,
maybe not daydreaming,
but he is not holding on to the single thought
which created the move.

For myself,
I used to get SO-O-O frustrated
because there was so much happening in my mind
when I did even a simple step and punch move.

But,
as time progressed,
and the step and punch moves accumulated
my mind stopped chattering
and I started focusing
on only one thing,
on only the move I was doing.

Have a thought and make it happen.
That’s what the whole procedure is…
have a thought and make it happen.

Now,
after some twenty or thirty years
your mind gets fair calm
and you actually start to see what the other guy is doing.

I know it sounds funny,
twenty or thirty years,
and who would want to take that long,
but take it from me,
when you start seeing what the other guy is doing…
BEFORE HE DOES IT
it is worth a hundred years of forms.
Even a thousand.
There is simply nothing like leaving the mind
and all its bushwah chatter,
and entering into
A GREAT SPACE.

That is the only way I can describe it.
When the mind disappears,
becomes so small it is negligible,
it is like you are in a great space.
You have so much room,
so much time.

When somebody starts to move,
you have the time and space
to yawn, create a counter,
and implement it.
You have Great Space.

Now,
what I have described here
is exactly what happens
when you do forms for some thirty years.

You start with a mental radio transmitter
that is rusty and clogged with static.
By forcing yourself to focus,
to concentrate on one thing,
the chatter goes away,
the static goes away,
and you become able to actually have a thought
and make it work.
And,
you start to see other people,
and you actually perceive their thoughts,
and you have this Great Space
in which to act.

Life becomes a big, empty jewel,
sparkling with happenings,
and you feel this incredible compassion for people
and you realize the truth of brotherhood.
Not politics,
or some bushwah belief system,
but the actuality
of perceiving your fellow man
on the deepest level,
where he lives,
in his soul.
Or…
to perceive the soul that he is.

Now,
do you understand why
I want you to learn faster?
Why I want you to accumulate this wisdom
in a year or so,
as opposed to thirty years?

I want you to clear out the radio transmitter that is your mind.
I want people to experience the Great Space
that is their true reality.

I want the orifices that are politicians
and petty dictators,
and bad bosses,
and nagging wives,
and snapping and snarling mad dogs…
TO KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!

Pardon my French,
Swearing is the mark of an untrained mind,
but I really wanted to make my point.

So,
do you like Karate?
Here’s an URL
to help you grow faster,
get smarter quicker,
and connect with the truth
of yourself and your fellow man.

http://www.monstermartialarts.com/Matrix_Karate.html

Do you like Kung Fu?
Check out the Shaolin Butterfly
on the Monster Martial Arts site.

Maybe you’re one of these mystical whiz kids,
take a gander at
Butterfly Pa Kua Chang
at the Monster.

Or weapons or chi building or…
whatever you want,
whatever it takes to get you to take the next step,
to put aside the ancient and slower methods.

Do you understand?
The planet is undergoing a meltdown,
and you are needed.
You are needed to take up arms,
so that you may put down the inner beast
that is in yourself
and in everybody.
And it is a simple matter of
doing what you love.
Doing the martial arts.
Making yourself focus on one thought.
Making yourself stronger and smarter.
Making yourself into a spiritual entity
that can bring peace to the self
and the world.

With Karate we can actually create a better and more harmonious world.

 

Zen Karate and the Mind of No Mind

Zen Karate, Easy to Do…Too Easy

I love the concept of Zen Karate, having a mind of no mind, but not many people really understand what it is.

zen karate

Zen is like saying knowledge. having no mind, that is like being focused on one thing, to the exclusion of all else.

The phrase the Japanese came up with to describe this is mushin no shin, or ‘Mind of no mind.’

Really, it is you, the spirit, looking out at the world, dealing with the world, without having a mind to get in the way.

Sounds odd, eh?

But what is the mind?

What are you?

You are awareness.

The mind is…not.

I’ll let you cogitate on what exactly the mind is, but while you’re doing that, let me tell you a story.

I was doing a kung fu exercise with a fellow one time. We were both heavy into karate, but our instructor taught us this thing called sticky hands, and something interesting happened that day.

 

We were standing, face to face, our arms entwined, and I decided to equalize my awareness, to be equaly aware of both sides of the body.

I fed my awareness out my arms, being careful to put exactly the same amount of awareness into each arm. As I reached the fingers I suddenly popped out of my body.

I was sitting there, my awareness like a lighthouse beacon shining down on my partner.

He, of course, felt it.

He tried to move, but he couldn’t, I had taken control of his body.

Problem, I had taken so much control I couldn’t move. We were stuck in exercise, unable to have motion, a vast energy pouring through me.

Finally, I got scared, and i snapped. I punched my partner in the chest. The hand flew out, he flew back and hit the wall, and POP, I was back in my body.

“What the hell did you do?” He exclaimed, rubbing his chest. He later told me he had never been hit that hard in his life. But I knew that. I had hit him from outside the body, and with more energy than the body is capable of containing.

That was just one of the times I experienced the state of ‘no motion, of not having a mind in and through the martial arts.

Interestingly, I will say that in this specific instance it was a combination of karate forms training, and the softness of the kung fu exercise, that enabled me to do it.

Through one or the other I would not have reached it, but through both…yes.

That is one of the problems of the martial arts, they have become compartmented, rueld by true believers, and people lack the ability to put them together. Putting them together is one of the benefits of Matrixing. Matrixing enables one to combine arts logically and quickly. There is no other technology in the world that can do that.

Anyway, that is just one of the experieces I have had of Zen Karate and the mind of no mind.