I have picked up my sword again ...

 I have picked up my sword again ... literally and metaphorically. 

It's been few years since my last post and many things have changed. Many a times an inspiration - an urge to write came. But unfortunately me not being a professional writer, I have surrendered to the tyranny of the urgent and ignored the inspiration. I know a beautiful poem about inspiration with the essence that when she (inspiration) comes, she brings the flower buds (ideas) and while leaving she asks for those flower buds turned into bloomed flowers ... So, I have ignored my inspiration many times.

I picked up this book from a library sale many years ago about Tai Ji or Tai Chi by Master Chung Liang Al Huang. On the back cover page of this book it says "Life's learnings are ever-expanding circles, always starting from the Center within." I find it so true. I have accumulated many books over the years many of them on martial arts, philosophy and technical subjects. I may have read some of them end to end at some point of time. But many a times with an event in life, arises a thought in mind, which reminds me of something that I have read in these books. I go back to the book and find the paragraph or pages with the new understanding only to find how it confirms with what I had read earlier. Life moves in ever-expanding circles always starting from the Center within. One comes back to the same point, only with a deeper and broader understanding.

Easy Is Right!

"Easy is right! Begin right and you are easy. Continue easy, and you are right. The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that going is easy." Chuang Tzu

Sounds paradoxical? It makes sense if you look deeper - like a Taoist.

Tao is the way. If you are following the way, your life is easy. So if you begin right - follow the way, your life is easy. Simple example is swimming in the direction the river flows, you hardly have to make any effort - just stay afloat and river carries you. But if you swim against the current, have to make tremendous effort. So begin right and life is easy. Continue easy and you are right. As long as you are going in the direction river is flowing, you are able to continue with ease - which proves that you are going in the right direction. Once you are going in right direction and continuing with ease, you may as well let go off the thoughts about going in right direction and continuing with ease because river is going to take you there and you can enjoy the ride without thinking about going right and being easy. We feel the resistance in our daily lives for various reasons, but one thing is for sure - we have not begun our journeys right. Otherwise going would be easy. We carry the burden of unnecessary things and feel bogged down. So, we have to introspect, get rid of unnecessary burden - begin right and life would be easy. As long as we don't gather unnecessary things again to bog us down - continue easy and we are on right way. Once we have learnt to begin right and continue easy - let our feeling be our guide. The moment we feel uneasy, we should know that we are deviating from the right way and get rid of any baggage that is trying to tag along. So once we have mastered the technique, we can let go off the thoughts about being right and going easy and enjoy the journey.

Language and Spirituality

Following was the post from my very close friend and my thoughts on it. I mentioned to him that this needs to be looked at its core and we will have a discussion on my blog page, so here it is ... 

Post from my friend:

 "Vedas explains - Non-intelligent Humans are similar to animals - Eating, Mating, Sleeping, Defending - (आहार-निद्रा-भय-मैथुनं)
But in today's world (Kaliyuga) - Humans suffer more than animals -
1. Animals don't die of starvation because of artificial shortages created by their own species.
2. Animals don't have to take pills to get sleep (Insomnia/Diabetics/Cholesterol etc)
3. Animals don't suffer heartbreak(s)!
4. Animals don't feel stressed because of overwork or loneliness. (No stress management courses!)
5. Animals don't have addictions (who doesn't know smoking & Drinking is injurious).
6. Animals don't commit suicide!
7. Humans are not afraid of animals attacking them anymore but they are more feared of other humans attacking them (Terrorists, Guns in wrong hands!)
This is because Higher intelligence is used for lower pleasures!!! Wake up, wake up!!! There is a choice to be made! Every day is a new beginning!"

My thoughts:

First of all let me make it clear that when I said that this should be looked at its core which means as per me going to the origin before the advent of any spoken or written language. The language (any language for that matter) is one of the greatest inventions of mankind which helps connecting people and at the same time it disconnects people spiritually. Sounds pretty paradoxical but let me explain. 

With the advent of language, people started coining words for objects - nouns and actions - verbs and adjectives - explaining properties of nouns etc. And with that the world was defined clearly - for example red means this color and blue means that color and shades of myriads of colors - and those who could not recognize the differences were also given names - color blinds etc. Coming back to the point with advent of language the world was divided into millions of fragments and each fragment was given a name. This means this and not that. Probably you see where I am going now ... before the language was born, the universe was one and with language we created gods and demons, heaven and hell, higher and lower, black and white - myriads of distinctions ... And this is what is going against the spirituality. Spirituality is seeing everything together as one whole and if we want to experience that we have to go back to our roots - become as raw as we were before the language came into the picture. I am not saying that we should reject all the material advances that we have made with help of language but train ourselves not to let language meddle in our spiritual growth or rather re-discovering our spirituality. 

You must have heard from many spiritual masters like Osho and J. Krishnamurti that mind muddles your experience. I agree with them and the way I see it is that mind is growth of language. Mind is not a physical entity - it is just a collection of thoughts and what are these thoughts? Thoughts are always thought in language. When one sees some thing a thought immediately pops up in mind - "Oh this is good or bad for me" etc. There is an external stimulus and there is always a word or a sentence popping - this is what mind is. If  one does not let that happen - although deliberately initially, eventually it will happen on its own accord, which will reduce the domination of mind and one will be able to turn off the mind when not needed. We will be able to see and feel the blueness of sky without word blue popping and redness of rose without word red popping and freshness of sea breeze without any words popping. This is what no mind is and this will connect us back to the universe ... and feel the oneness. This is what the spirituality is as per me ...

As for the points mentioned by my friend above, one can see as soon as one drops the language even momentarily, all those disappear as in spirituality there are no means to divide the universe into this and that and the after effects that lead should vanish too ...

Rediscovering me ...

A usual Saturday morning in December. Outside is cold and gray. Although it's mid-December, we haven't had much snow yet. Life goes from weekday chores to weekend chores and back again. Work and family take big chunk of my time. I hardly have any time on weekdays. I haven't had a chance to keep up with my blog in while. I hope to start writing regularly again. Days seem to pass so fast, after a while it feels as if I didn't live at all. I have vivid memories from my childhood. If I close my eyes, I could see those events as if I am watching a movie. But now I have difficulty recalling even what happened last week. We live in the age of disconnection. We are disconnected with life. It is quite strange. We are getting more and more connected electronically everyday but disconnecting with the life itself. Some time back, I was listening to Canadian radio and the host talked about what he observed while he was walking on a street. He saw that there were men walking and talking, but they were not talking to each other. They all were talking on their cell phones.

Yesterday's Bokken class was challenging. It is always challenging physically - because the master always comes up with a new workout. Yesterday we practiced Bokken techniques most of the time. Generally we do hand techniques and then Bokken techniques. But yesterday was last class of the year, so it was focused on Bokken techniques. After coming home, my right hand was feeling so heavy, as if I had done several sets of bicep curls. But it was good feeling. At the end of the class, we meditate. We sit in seiza - Japanese sitting posture and master calls - 'Mokuso'. We sit with eyes half closed, gaze focused on nose tip, breathing deep. While we sit, master sometimes walks among us with lit incense stick. It creates very soothing and serene experience.

It's night now. Day has gone in usual frenzy and now I have some time to sit by my self. Wife is watching a movie on netflix, kids playing in their rooms and here I am typing my thoughts. After all we had some snow today. Day went by in dropping and picking older son for his ACT class, a trip to K-mart for wife's shopping and then dinner at a Thai restaurant and some chores laundry and house cleaning. I didn't have chance to workout or do bokken practice today. Earlier, I used to be agitated if I didn't workout as planned. But now I have trained myself not to be affected if I am not able to workout as planned. It's one step towards unfettered mind. It may sound weird because most people would want to discipline themselves to workout every day, but I had to discipline myself not to be agitated if I did not workout one day. Good habits are better than bad habits, but one should not become slave of good habits either. A man should act out of pure awareness and not compelled by habits. And that's my journey towards unfettered mind, where mind is not muddied by unnecessary thoughts and pure awareness shines through ...

Bokken practice is same as running ...

Yes, Bokken practice is same as running in terms of breathing patterns. I discovered that while my yesterday's work out. As the master was telling bokken practice is same as running is same as sitting down in meditation in Friday's class.

I was running on treadmill with an elevation level. I started following same breathing pattern as I did in the Friday's class while doing bokken practice. And what a surprise, running became as easy as that at no elevation level.

I had read something in connection with this in the book "Zen and the art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel. Eugen Herrigel went to Japan to learn about Zen and picked up archery as the sport to learn the application of Zen. In his initial attempts, he mentions about how difficult it was to even stretch the string and put the arrow on the bow the way it is expected in the Zen art of archery. Within few shots, Herrigel would feel exhausted. His master explains to him that Herrigel has to develop the right breathing pattern. I couldn't make sense of it then but after this experience of mine, I can tell that it is 100% true.

So the master was telling ... Bokken practice is same as running is same as sitting down and meditating. Another aspect is that all should be instinctive and intuitive rather than driven out of intellect. We have learned to do everything through the intellect and it has suppressed our instinctive and intuitive behavior. Yes, it is true that we have to learn everything through the intellect, but then we have to do it so many times over and over again that it is removed from intellect or mind and becomes instinctive and intuitive. Mind you it is not mechanical or habitual. There should be an awareness behind it. The behavior has to come out only when needed and not otherwise. That's what no mind is. No conscious thought. A mind trying to become empty mind is not an empty mind because there is a thought of making mind empty.

To conclude this post, there is a Zen story. A man practiced archery for 20 years. He became master archer with 100% perfect aim. His master called him and said now give up the archery. Forget everything about it. The man followed it literally. Another twenty years passed.He forgot everything about archery even the word 'bow'. The master called on him again. Pleased with students progress, the master said, "When you go out, there will be birds in the sky. If you drop them in your mind, the birds will drop." The man went out. There were birds in the sky. He dropped them from his mind and the birds dropped ...

Sword practice and running ...

Yesterday I practiced with bokken (Japanese wooden sword used for practice instead of using Katana, the metal sword) for the first time. We did all the regular rigorous workout before and then the master said we can participate in bokken practice with others. Few of us didn't have bokkens of our own, but the master had brought some and let us use. So we stood there with bokkens in our hand, took the stance. Japanese sword is held with both the hands most of the times. The first lesson was to raise the sword above head and bring it down straight to the level of hara (navel). We were supposed to repeat this over and over again. Within few strokes, my hands started feeling heavy, my back started feeling the strain. Then I started exhaling breath with each stroke as I brought down the sword. I started exhaling with loud "shoo" sound. I got into rhythm of it and what a surprise, I stopped feeling all strain and pain. It became easy as breeze. Then master was counting loud in Japanese and at the end of each round there was a loud cry. The whole experience was sort of transcendental as I started getting the feeling of runner's high same as what I get while running. I think breathing was the key ...

The master was explaining ... how sitting in meditation is same as running is same as sword practice ... Zazen! At least I can say running is same as sword practice because I almost got the same runner's high in both the activities. I think breathing is the connecting factor ...

Other than that it was a sad day at class. We have lot of Japanese folks in our class. The earthquake and tsunamis devastated Japan. My master unfortunately lost few friends. We prayed for them and ended the class.

"The Centipede's Dilemma"

A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch
Considering how to run.


-- Anonymous

We were practising a pattern, everyone seemed to do well after doing it number of times. Then master changed the orientation of class i.e. earlier we were starting facing the mirror and he asked us to start facing the wall. And in very first attempt after changing the orientation, many of us missed. So as one can see any small thing can become a conscious thought in mind, which can throw us off. Which is exactly what above poem is saying. Until centipede was unaware of complexity of moving it's legs without interfering with each other, everything was fine but the moment a thought was introduced about how to consciously do it, everything went haywire.

In martial arts, we are supposed to learn through head and then forget, which means the technique should be so much assimilated in the body that there should be practically no need for applying brain - it should become instinctive.