C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

 Every week, I receive emails from folks who count their calories, know the exact percentage of macronutrients they are consuming, weigh their food, and train with apps full of charts, graphs, and whatever other things  those apps track.  They also keep meticulous journals, and can tell you the exact repetition tempo performed for all of their machine work at the gym.  I only mention this because just yesterday - while I was relaxing at home, drinking a Coors light, and grilling out for Juneteenth - I checked my email, only to see that I had received an email from a reader who explained to me he is having trouble getting "psyched up" for his workouts - despite taking a pre-workout pill, wearing his state-of-the-art lycra pants and mesh "cooling" tank top, along with his brand new, brand name workout shoes.  So he wanted to know what I did pre-workout to prepare for my training sessions, and what I wear.  I told him I try to remember to wear some shorts, and...

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 ...

Essays and Thoughts on The Dokkodo Part One C.S.'s Note: I hope you enjoy the essays that follow in this series.  These essays are really the seed of a book idea I've had brewing for some time.  I have been apprehensive in starting it as a book, seeing the odd "niche" that it abides in might find it hard for it to get picked up by a publisher.  But niche as it MAY be, I finally decided that it would work best as a series of essays on Integral Strength, and we'll just see what happens from here. Contemporaneous painting of Musashi from the Edo Period (courtesy Wikimedia)       Terao Maganojo gazed at the dojo ahead of him.  Over the past decade - when he retired from one of his many successful duels - he always came here to refine his technique, to improve his speed, to perfect his timing, and to learn the history of the sword school in which he practiced.  But most of all, he came to spend time at the foot of his master.      ...