C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

  Mushin and Other Unique Aspects of Budo Zen Some Thoughts on Zen-Influenced Budo and the Differences Between Budo Zen and “Common” Zen Along with a Few Other Musings      I write quite a bit about Budo Zen and Zen Budo.  Budo Zen is Zen that is influenced by the principles of Budo and other principles found within martial ways in and outside of Japan (most commonly Korea and China).  Zen Budo is martial training that is influenced by the principles of Zen, as opposed to its more common influences.  It’s a popular thought in modern martial arts that the Japanese Budo is one thoroughly influenced by the ways of Zen, but that’s just not historically accurate.  Most martial ways, including those from Japan, have been influenced—assuming they are even influenced at all by philosophy—by Taoism and Confucianism, specifically Neo Confucianism, than they have been by Zen.  Within the Japanese martial arts, Shinto also had an overriding in...

Cultivating Internal Energy in the Hara for Budo Training      The other day, I was having a conversation with a dear friend of mine—I won’t get into the details, as they are beside the point for the sake of what I want to discuss here—when he said something that I just couldn’t get out of my head.  He said that sometimes, when making a decision, you just have to “trust your gut.”  It’s a common idiom that you may have heard as advice throughout your life.      My friend has no experience, and certainly no interest, in my lifelong passion for the traditional Japanese martial ways.  Like most of my family members, and the friends I have who I didn’t meet through martial arts training, he probably looks upon my passion for the Budo—and physical training in general—as nothing more than a curiosity and perhaps an odd peculiarity of my personality.  What he doesn’t know is that in traditional Budo one’s “gut instinct” can...

  A Freewheeling “Translation” of the Hagakure with Commentary for the Modern Martial Practitioner Book One: An Introduction to the Way of the Warrior      What follows is a somewhat experimental post that I hope to possibly turn into a book at some point down the road.  I thought I would use my blog to post over the coming months what will essentially be the first draft of the manuscript, in between my more regular lifting articles and my somewhat irregular Budo essays.  I want to discuss, primarily, the history, philosophy, and practice of the martial arts as they are practiced in the modern world.  To do this—the subjects will be free-ranging—I am going to use The Hagakure as a springboard.  The Hagakure in English means “In the Shadow of Leaves.”  It's a popular bushido text written by the 18th century samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo to the younger samurai Tashiro Tsuramoto.  It is a great text, and for many modern martial ar...