Lessons From the Samurai: The Secret To Always Being At Your Best

By srmoody December 12, 2022 Leave a Comment

“For warriors in particular, if you calm your own mind and discern the inner minds of others, that may be called the foremost art of war.”
Shiba Yoshimasa (1349-1410)

As I emphasized in Wing Chun Mind (see sidebar), the brain is the most lethal weapon. Developing a capacity to remain calm in a potentially or actually violent situation is key. You can be jacked, have tremendous cardio, many years of high level training, and lots of combat experience, but if fear or anger blur your vision in a fight, you will lose 90% of your advantages. Fear and anger lead to impulsiveness and careless body structure. Good fighters stay in the pocket, even though the pocket is the scariest place to be. You have to be able to place yourself in danger carefully and trust your training to preserve you. Emotional fighters lean away from their opponents. They dart in and out to try and avoid getting hit, but not strategically, but driven by fear. Its like inexperienced soldiers, who spray and pray, too afraid to expose themselves long enough to line up their shots.

Here is an interesting article on how Samurai trained themselves to remain calm.

Lessons From The Samurai: The Secret To Always Being At Your Best by Eric Barker

Reading a few books by samurai there was one thing I saw repeated again and again and again that surprised me.

It has nothing to do with swords, fighting or strategy. Actually, quite the opposite when you think about it.

What did so many of history’s greatest warriors stress as key to success and optimal performance?

“Being calm.”

READ THE REST HERE

Samurai

Buddha: Desire and Frustration

By srmoody May 23, 2022 4 Comments

Here we have a statement of the Four Truths, which are not four principles, but merely one principle, with four statements asserted about it. The principle: desire for what will not be attained ends in frustration; therefore, to avoid frustration, avoid desiring what will not be attained. The four statements: (1) Unhappiness consists in frustration (dissatisfaction, anxiety). (2) It originates in desiring what will not be attained. (3) It ceases when one ceases to desire what will not be attained. (4) The method is to seek the middle way between wanting things to be more than they are or less than they are with respect to the way that they are. If this be Gotama’s doctrine, surely we are all followers of Gotoma, assenting to the truth of his principle, even if, unhappily, we fail to practice it to perfection.”
The Philosophy of the Buddha

So – basically – want what you have. Don’t desire what you cannot have. If you are injured, accept it. If you might die, accept it.

Awareness in fighting is about acceptance. Accepting what is allows us to not “gild the lily” but to be open to what is actually happening. If we are always resisting reality (“It’s not so bad!” or “This sucks!” or “I don’t believe it”) then we are in the habit of deceiving ourselves and this colors over into fighting. How do we enter a fight calmly and just respond to what happens (not what we imagine to be happening, colored by fear and anxiety).

In Buddhism, they talk of clinging to an outcome. This is clinging. How do we not concern ourselves with the outcome of the fight but stay in the moment and respond to what is happening now, without anxiety over what might happen (injury, death)?

In discussions of Zen in the context of sword fighting, they talk of being on the razor’s edge, or the edge of the sword. Death is on either side and the warrior has equanimity. To die is simply to return to the “all.” Can we find that place, on the edge of the sword, and stay there, all the time?

In Band of Brothers, the HBO show about World War II and the paratroopers who jumped behind enemy lines at D-Day, there is one Lieutenant who amazes all the troops with his bravery. He doesn’t seem to fear death. At one point, there is an enemy machine gun set up by a farmhouse controlling a field of fire they need to cross. Everyone is pinned down, under cover. The Lieutenant jogs across the field of fire like he’s jogging down a suburban street in peacetime and flanks the machine gun. Later, a soldier name Blythe confesses to the officer how afraid he is and how this is debilitating him.

“Blythe,” the Lieutenant says,”the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead.”

[Read more…]

Sound Boxing is Directed by the Waist

By srmoody April 25, 2022 Leave a Comment

Excerpts from Chinese Boxing by Robert W. Smith.

“The waist is the foundation of all bodily movement … To fight with arms or legs independently of the waist is the mark of the perpetual beginner.”
“Sound boxing is rooted in the feet, sprouts in the legs, is directed by the waist, and functions through the fingers.”

“In Tai Chi, according to Cheng Man Ch’ing, ‘mastery’ comes by ‘quiet minding’ and ‘investing in loss.’ And with time.”

“To achieve success, you must relax everything.”

Cheng Man Ch’ing said, when an outsider scoffed: “One must be kind to blind men.”

Robert W. Smith (December 27, 1926 – July 1, 2011) was an American martial artist and writer, most noted for his prodigious output of books and articles about the Asian martial arts and their masters. Smith’s writing was an important factor in the spread of Asian martial arts such as judo, karate, and taijiquan into the postwar United States.