C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

     I have been a little late this week in getting any posts out.  This is because I have been at work on an article for a bodybuilding magazine, and because I have been at work on the following essay.  The following essay is dear and near to me.  I hope that you find solace and support in whatever ways it might offer. Integral Life Practice Simplified Part One: Cultivating Spirit      Ultimately, religion and spirituality should be about practice, not about belief.   One reason that many people in the West turned toward Eastern religions—and then toward Integral philosophy/spirituality—is because they were upset with the way Christianity was/is practiced in our country.   Christianity was/is too often practiced as a way of believing as opposed to a way of being .   (And, of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.   Contemplative Christianity is still one of the best ways in existence.)   However, it seems to me that too many Integral practitioners—because of their interest in

     For those of you who are interested, here is a link to Iron Man  magazine's free page for some of my articles.  These are all recent articles.  The two favorites—which I am basing on the amount of e-mail I receive regarding them—are probably the "High-Frequency Focus Training" and the "Mass Construction" piece.      Check it out here:  http://www.ironmanmagazine.com/site/?author=24      If you want to read (almost) all of my articles for Iron Man— which probably number in the hundreds; I really can't remember all that I've written for them—then be sure and get a subscription to the magazine.  Subscribers can access a lot  of the back issues for free on their website.

     Enlightenment is nothing more than lifting weights and drinking my protein shake.  Why?  Because life as it is  is utterly perfect.      You can approach life as a way of being , or you can approach life as a way of believing—and sometime your belief might be that "there are no beliefs."  Sorry, that's still a belief.      In an earlier post (see April's posts), I discussed the great Zen master Kosho Uchiyama, and what I called the 4th way.  (For more details, once again, read the post.)  Basically, Uchiyama said that there are three ways that most people live their lives: they search for some kind of philosophical "truth", they put their belief in a deity (what I refer to as "the mythic sky god") that they believe will take care of them like some kind of butler in the sky if they only do as He/She pleases, or they decide that life is meaningless, so why not go ahead and have all the fun you want (or why not go ahead and sleep with all the wom

     The following blog post was originally an article that I had written for "Taekwondo Times Magazine"  a year or so ago.  Although it deals with martial arts, it should also be of interest to those of you who visit here for reasons relating to Integral practice, Buddhism (it has plenty of Buddhist stuff in it), or both.  (By the way, I would love to write more martial arts-oriented stuff on this site, but only if I think there's interest in it.  After all, I'm kind of covering a broad range as it is.) The Path of the Spiritual Martial Artist 4 Keys for Cultivating Inner Peace, Improving Your Martial Arts, and Becoming a Better Human Being      For centuries, the path of martial arts and spirituality have gone hand in hand.   In recent years, however, as various martial arts have made their way to the west and become more and more popular, the spiritual side of the martial arts has declined.      Martial arts as a spiritual path have been replaced by martial art

     Okay, first things friggin' first: Depending on why you visit this blog will probably determine your reaction to the title of this post.  If you come here looking for training advice, and wonder why in the world I also ramble/talk/discuss/inform about spiritual matters—especially nondual, integral spirituality—then you probably just read the title of this post and said, "What the ----?!"      If this is your reaction, then go back and read my previous posts dealing with integral, spirituality, and (what I call) Awakened Training.  Also, go to Wikipedia—or some other such thing that is similar—and find out for yourself what in the name of Buddha a Bodhisattva is.  And... it wouldn't hurt to visit Integral Options (a blog that I recommend wholeheartedly because I read it daily)—you can find the link under my "links" section.  (Integral Options is good because it has a mixture of psychology, spirituality [mainly Buddhist], philosophy, and health/fitness.)

      For this installment of my semi-ongoing series dealing with H-L-M training, it's time to turn my strength-inducing beacon of light on a subject near and dear to a lot of men's hearts: how to gain muscle mass.  (For those of you who are not that familiar with H-L-M training, go back and read some of my previous posts first - and make sure that you read my Dragon Door article on the subject; that way, you can have all the details hammered out before venturing into what I'm going to share here.)      First off, understand that H-L-M training is naturally a great way to gain muscle mass.  Full-body workouts (and I think that, overall, H-L-M training is the best full-body workout you can do) act as a muscle-inducing "trigger" (for lack of  a better word).  There's just something about training all of your muscle groups in the same session that makes you gain muscle faster than split routines.  (Before some of you start crying foul at this point, realize tha

     For those of us who both meditate seriously and take physical training serious, the below article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (a Theravadin monk from the Thai Forest Tradition) can be very helpful when trying to establish a disciplined meditation practice.      By the way, I would also recommend spending some time at the website "Access to Insight" (where you can read the complete article) and read some more of Thanissaro's pieces.  They are down to earth, and helpful (especially so?) for us Integral practitioners, reminding us that some of the basics—such as a following the precepts—are as important as ever. Strength Training for the Mind byThanissaro Bhikkhu© 2007–2009      Meditation is the most useful skill you can master. It can bring the mind to the end of suffering, something no other skill can do. But it's also the most subtle and demanding skill there is. It requires all the mental qualities ordinarily involved in mastering a physical skill — mindfulness and a