C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Thoughts on Lifting and Thoughts on Thoughts While Lifting      What do I think about when I think about lifting?  For one, just lifting in general.  I think about programs, workouts, regimens that work for me and work for others I’ve trained.  I think about the ones that didn’t work and why they didn’t work.  I suppose, more than anything else, I think about life.  I think about life when living and when lifting.  They’re inextricably bound for me, life and lifting.  My life, in many ways, is a life of lifting.      I suppose it would be different if I wasn’t a lifter.  There are those who lift.  Then there are those who are lifters.  The former do it for any myriad of reasons.  At least, I guess they do.  I’ve trained a lot of those who fit in that group.  I’ve trained with those that fit in it.  And I’d also surmise that a lot of folks who read my writing fall ...

The following was written spontaneously, that is, without planning or "thinking" about what I was going to write about, I sat down at my computer, and had a few musings at the back of my mind. The following is the result. Ramblings on Budo: More Budo "Minds" Not long ago, I wrote an essay on the different “minds” of budo, such as mushin , often called “no mind”, and shoshin , often referred to as “beginner’s mind.”  (I wrote a couple of essays on shoshin.)  But here, in this minor essay, I have in mind (pun intended) some other “minds” that, although they aren’t discussed outright in budo, they are encountered during practice.  And sometimes they are discussed outright in other Ways (such as the Way of Zen).   These include monkey mind, wild mind, centered mind, and big mind, to name just a smattering few. Monkey mind is a mind you’re, unfortunately, all-too-familiar with if you have ever tried to focus, even for just a brief period of time, on one solitary thing...

 Shoshin means "beginner's mind."   Mushin means "empty mind" or "no mind."  When I was a teenager, and trained in a very  traditional Isshin-Ryu  dojo, my sensei always referred to it as "no mind."  The "mu" in "mushin" is a negation .  It's most well-known use in Zen is in the koan "Joshu's dog," which is sometimes referred to simply as the "mu" koan.  (If you're unaware, a koan is a Japanese Zen term that can be a story, a statement, a dialogue between two zennists, or, often, a question.  Its purpose—no matter the form—is to induce "great doubt" or "don't know mind" in the practitioner, so it's primarily a practice , though it's sometimes used to test a student's "progress" on the path of awakening.) "Joshu's Dog" (design by C.S.) The koan "Joshu's Dog" goes something like this: Someone asked Joshu,"Does a dog...

Essays and Thoughts on the "Dokkodo" Part Two Accept Everything Just the Way it is Miyamoto Musashi kills a shark fish (Yamazame) in the mountains across the border of Echizen Province , by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (public domain) The very first "principle" of the Dokkodo is to "accept everything just the way it is."  But what does this mean for the warrior, and why did Musashi place so much emphasis on it?  For he must  have placed emphasis on it, otherwise it would not have been the first principle of his last work. Many years ago - as in MANY years ago; I was a teenager - my sensei told this anecdote one day at the end of class.   After a couple of hours of hard training, we sat down to do zazen.   This is paraphrasing, but he told us: “The glass is not half full.   And the glass is not half empty.   It simply is what it is.   Because if it’s half-full, then it’s ALSO half-empty, which means that it’s also neither half-full nor half-empty.   It ...