C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Four Do Not, Under Any Circumstance, Depend on a Partial Feeling Sasaki Kojiro (right) engages Miyamoto Musashi on the shores of Ganryū Island (courtesy of Wikimedia). The 3rd maxim of Musashi's final masterwork is one of my favorites.  And, yes, I understand that in Zen you should not "pick and choose".  For instance, the 3rd patriarch of Zen is often quoted as having said, "the great Way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose... if you wish to see the Way then do not hold opinions for - or against - anything."  That quote aside, this one is still one of my favorites. On with the commentary... We rarely make poor decisions - in life, in the dojo, in the gym - when we are decisive.  Even then, if our decisive actions do  fail, we will not regret what has been done.  For in holding nothing back, we have nothing to regret! In his book No Fear Zen: Discovering Balance in an Unbalanced World , Rosh

  Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Three Do Not Seek Pleasure for its Own Sake Miyamoto Musashi in his prime, wielding two bokken; woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (courtesy of Wikimedia) The 2nd maxim of Musashi's Dokkodo  is "do not seek pleasure for its own sake."  When I first read the Dokkodo  many years ago, this one struck me as a little odd, or I probably thought it was too "outdated" - a maxim from ancient Japan that didn't apply to us today in the modern world.  But I couldn't have been more wrong. First off, don't try to make this maxim - or the others that follow - more or less than what they are.  Most of these - as with all teachings from a Wisdom Tradition - have both the "surface" meaning, and that which is "below the surface", so to speak. On it's "surface", this maxim is fairly simple and straightforward.  When you seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure alone , you WILL run in

You are lukewarm, and I shall spit you out. - Revelation  A couple of weeks ago, I published a post on the "one-lift-per-day" program, but I'm pretty sure that I ended up ranting about how most of the workout-world seems to prefer over-complicated and easy (a two-punch combination that is NEVER going to produce appreciable gains in, well, any-damn-thing) instead of simple but HARD workout programs !  And since the more I think about it, the less annoyed I get, and the more just plain baffled I become, I thought I'd write about some "simple NOT easy" workout tips/tricks/ideas or whatnot that YOU can put to use and achieve some awesome results. Bill Pearl understood that MASS was built with the basics and heavy-as-hell weights. You see, I'm baffled more than annoyed at this point because even though results don't come from "easy" programs (there IS an exception to this rule, but it entails VERY frequent workouts and more attention to detail,