Zen and the Martial Arts: Zazen as Physical Practice

Zen Master Kodo Sawaki (known affectionately as "Homeless Kodo") sitting Zazen*

Zen and the martial arts have a complex history. And it is one that is (a) almost completely misunderstood by all martial artists, especially practitioners of the Japanese martial arts who seem to talk about it the most but also seem to understand it the least, and (b) not even understood at all by the modern "zennist".**

In this short little post, I'm not going to get into all of the reasons both A and B above are true, but simply want to express how similar both Zen and the Japanese martial arts are, and maybe this will give a good reason for the budo-ka to take up zazen, and while I expect even less zennists to take up budo, it does help for him/her to understand the martial arts better.

Zazen is a physical practice. It's at least as much a physical practice as it is a mental one. I think this is vastly - and I do mean vastly - overlooked by most people, even practitioners of Buddhism, and, yes, even zennists themselves!

As a teenager, I knew this only because I was first taught to sit zazen while in the karate dojo of my youth. We would sit zazen for the last ten minutes of class. You may not think that is very long, but we were often covered in sweat from a hard hour and a half workout, and not only were we sweaty, but our muscles often ached (from head to toe nonetheless) in quite a bit of pain. On top of this, my sensei expected for our spines to remain in proper alignment for the entire 10 minutes of sitting. And then, even though he would talk about mushin or "no-mind", you knew it was a physical practice just from how painful it could often be. Now, in addition to the very physical nature of the brief sitting we karate-kas endured, we also intuited Zen to be a physical practice because it was seen as a very extension of the martial arts practice we had just trained in. In other words, it was part and parcel of all the physical training. It was of one whole as the rest of the class, not something just set aside for the very end of the training. It was physical training.

In Zen author Brad Warner's book "Don't be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master", Warner briefly discusses Dogen's "FUKANZAZENGI" or "The Universal Guide to the Standard Method of Zazen" (damn, wasn't that a mouthful), Warner has this to say about the physical nature of Zen:

One of the most important messages of this chapter is that zazen is a physical practice as much as it is a mental one. He (Dogen) calls it "the vigorous road of getting the body out." It seems that in Dogen's time, just like in ours, people thought meditation was something that happened with the mind and that what you did with your body while meditating was arbitrary or unimportant.

But Dogen spends much of this chapter describing in detail the physical practice of zazen and comparatively little what to do mentally. When I teach zazen I often tell people that it's kind of like a yoga class where there is only one posture and you hold it for a very long time.***

If practiced in this manner, it's easier to understand the physical nature of zazen!

*from the public domain on Wikipedia

**I'm using the term "zennist" instead of Buddhist because I think the practice of zazen is of a "universal" nature, and can be practiced by anyone regardless of belief (or lack therof).

***From chapter 2 of Warner's book "Don't be a Jerk" entitled "How to Sit Down and Shut Up"

High-Frequency Grease-the-Groove Training - The Intuitive Approach

In my essay “ Basic Lifting, Instinctive Training ,” I mentioned the approach to training that—in the words of the great Bradley Steiner—the “mature muscle man” should take. Steiner recommended that the seasoned lifter should know beforehand what exercises he would do in a workout, and what days he would train, but not use a pre-determined number of sets and reps for the workout. Rather, you should let how you feel once you begin your workout decide what you do in the training session. And, in my recent article “ Skill Training as Size Building ,” I wrote about the training perspective of approaching your lifting sessions as a skill to be developed rather than a “war” to be waged against your muscles—or a “battle” or an “onslaught” or whatever pseudo-military campaign term that modern bodybuilders like to use when discussing muscle-group training. I also suggested that one of the best ways to do this is to uti...

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan magazine. In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.” I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time . In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...

The 1-5 Program

Develop Mass and Power with This Unique Wave Loading Method In my recent article “ Skill Training as Size Building ,” I introduced the concept (on the blog, at least) of the “90% rule.” I believe it’s one of the most effective ways to make consistent gains in the gym, whether you’re after strength, strength with a size side-effect, or hypertrophy alone. Basically, the method involves doing the majority of your sets in a workout with 90% of a certain rep range. This doesn’t mean 90%, necessarily, of your 1-rep max, though it most certainly would if you were to do multiple sets of singles—as we will be doing in this program. In our previous article, the workout programs I suggested utilized 90% of one’s 5-rep max and 90% of a 10-rep maximum using “cluster sets.” If you want to know more about what those programs look like, then, please, read that article. Also, it wouldn’t hurt, if you haven’t done s...

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Search This Blog