Mind Training

  We train our mind constantly. Actually, we train our brain, in that the brain continually adapts to the environment it seeks to influence. This loop is permanent; there is no getting out of it. Good friends, good nutrition, awareness of our own intent, speaking kindly, all these can be represented as some point on the great circuit that loops out of our deepest being, through our world, and back again. To varying degrees any point on this loop can be altered, affecting the whole system over time.
   Generally speaking, when we decide to "consciously" change something, this is a function of the pre-frontal cortex, that tip of the iceberg that seems (to the self) to be whole of one's being. This is an illusion. For instance, we generally aren't all that aware of our body language, but body language effects how others experience us and react to us, phenomena which loops back into our inner world, creating a vibrant mix of conflict and harmony.
    Often our body language expresses our mixed feelings and outright conflict: imagine being polite to someone who has hurt you deeply. You are in conflict. They may or may not be aware of even hurting you, but may be reacting- even unawares- to the signals you broadcast via body language. These splits, so often within both parties in a conflict, have huge consequences.
     It is not unusual for there to be no clue to the existence of the conflict within ourselves. We must learn to look outward, to external indicators: how those we trust react, how those we don't trust react, and so on.
     There are other ways as well. For instance, in Shim Gum Do, the martial art I study, there are hundreds of forms. Each form is a beautifully composed sequence of sword techniques involving all parts of the body, that extend or work variations on previous techniques and anticipate later ones. It requires a lot of concentration to execute them competently. Eventually, as the cognitive and physical demands increase, the art requires long daily practice, as well as meditation and other modes of study to support it. But if I notice the quality of my experience while training- my focus, intensity, energy, pre-occupations, pain- this can point to something like a core experience that I can continually cultivate.
   I was in class with my teacher in Boston last week. It was the third evening in a row of hard training, and I spent the broiling hot day working in the gardens around the temple. The class was all fellow black belts, and requires endurance and total focus. "Peter! Mind train when you do it!", he shouts in his heavy Korean accent.
  What he meant was completely clear to me, but something else presented itself as well: if I am not totally focused, then I am practicing "not being totally focused". If while leaping through a form,  I am considering how vulnerable the injured tendon in my ankle will be upon landing, I have a split consciousness.
   At that moment, I am reinforcing the pattern of a split consciousness and will thereby maintain it under certain conditions. When those conditions arise, my consciousness will split.
   When I sit meditation, I generally begin by imagining and sensing myself executing the sword forms. What my teacher was insisting on- in response to my not being totally focused- was that I keep the meditation of the form I was practicing just a touch ahead of its physical execution.
    When carrying groceries, meditate on the act of carrying the grocery bags. When pumping gas, meditate on the act of pumping gas. So many of us can create that sort of non-split awareness only in times of high intensity, and often with a loss of other types of awareness along the way.
   Every moment is the practice of wholeness or fragmentation. Choose.

 Work practice. A key aspect to Zen training. But outside of a Zen context, what could it mean? Do young people need practice working? Well, sure. Especially with unemployment being so high among the young, figuring out the way in which strong effort relates to both one's own and others' well being and must be a good thing. There is some evidence that young people who work while in school, at the high school and undergraduate level, are at something of a disadvantage grade wise, but perhaps something equally valuable is gained.

  I am continually surprised at how little so many of our students have done over the course of their lives... no chores, no jobs... this can really create a strange mix of entitlement and disenfranchisement. Now that, friends, is a disadvantage.

  So when a TAS student learns how to clean a bathroom, a whole lot more than a fundamental part of a sanitary lifestyle is gained. One has to figure out why it is important, why we put such emphasis on it, why other students seem to enjoy working, and sometimes, one gets a sharply formed sense of conflict, between the complacent self and the self that wants to be part of things.

  "No work, no food". A fifteen hundred years ago, a cot and a couple of meals were ample compensation for a young man who merely had to fake meditating innumerable hours a day. The central government was collapsing and warlordism was rising. There was famine, bandits, and firm grip of poverty. How could a weary abbot ensure that his or her monks and nuns were on the path? 

  Work. Work shows what a person is made of. True, the Taoist ideal of wandering the world accepting only what comes and reaching for nothing else- very much like St. Francis- is quite different than working the monastic garden and charcoaling in the monastic woods. Yet it is its own sort of intense commitment, and we modern Americans, a little sloppy, confused, and resentful, need a chance to show others what we are made of. Ultimately, the purpose of work practice is just to work. But kids and beginners often need reasons beyond simply getting behind the toilet as clean as a fresh napkin. 

  There is a powerful connection to martial arts here as well: in a period of chaos and worry, a mountain redoubt crammed with easy going, yet deadly monks gives a little band of bandits pause. Zen has within it a powerful theme of self-reliance- so American, so Ralph Waldo Emerson- and an equally compelling theme of grace, in the sense that the world, if you are open to it, will provide all and only what you need. More than this is distraction and delusion.

   

Since Nikos Kazantzakis' sequel to the Odyssey is not available on kindle, and it is a huge book, I can't lug it with me. So it will be an Italian reader (my reading ability is in serious disrepair!), an italian dictionary, a monograph on Cecco Angiolieri (a sonnet writer who goaded and annoyed Dante), and whatever is on the kindle. One of the problems with martial arts is the outfit is so bulky...were it not for that, Kazantzakis would be all I would need.

Training and Meditation

 Last week, my sword practice was strong and focused, but the last few days have seen an interesting decline in my concentration. Is it important to understand the factors that contribute to shakier meditation? In some respects, certainly it is. For each of us there probably are optimum conditions for any activity, yet as most of know, there are inexplicable ups and downs that must be ridden out, accepted with generosity and used for deeper insight.
   Fortunately, I am headed up to Boston for evening classes at the Shim Gum Do temple this week. A teacher is important: he or she has vastly more experience in those ups and downs, and in the teaching itself. I feel enormously lucky to have such a masterful teacher in Chang Sik Kim, and want to spend as much time as I can in the presence of his teaching. My own teaching is grounded in my experience as a student, without it, my own students suffer.
   It is hard to believe that the school year ended only a week or so ago, it seems so irrevocably far away. It was a year where so many important elements seemed to come together, whether it be graduates who have spent 3 or 4 years at TAS and thus were essential in bringing the culture and folkways of the school to a new peak, or the steady commitment to the structure of the school day, or Stephanie's work in bringing the teacher evaluation and support system into being, or my finishing grad school...it was a big year.
   I will try to post from Boston on Thursday, but I tend to stay away from computers while up there. If I don't post, I will do so on Monday the 2nd.