Budo Ramblings and Musings

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 to the exclusion of all other things.  Sit in zazen.  Focus on your breathing, and count each exhale.  Breathe in.  Then out.  One.  Breathe in.  Then out.  Two.  In.  Out.  Three.  You are unlikely to even make it to the small number of five before your mind is lost in a myriad of thoughts, seemingly of its own making.  One thought.  Then another.  Then a thought completely unrelated, or so it seems to you, to the first two thoughts.  They come and go.  One after the other.  Your mind jumps from thought to thought to thought, the same manner in which a monkey jumps from branch to branch, never settling on one for even a brief period before jumping off to another; constantly leaping from branch to branch.

You don’t have to meditate, of course, to encounter monkey mind.  As a budoka, you encounter it every time you enter the dojo to train.  Every time that you’re in the middle of a form in class, only to look to your budoka to the left, and to discover that she is in a different part of the form.  You look around the class.  Everyone else is where she is at; everyone except for you.  Monkey mind.  If you pay attention, if you practice awareness (of being aware that you’re aware), you’ll see just how much of a monkey your mind truly is!

Monkey mind can be tamed through the use of other minds, such as centered mind, but don’t try to get rid of your monkey mind, which isn’t possible to do in the first place.  Monkey mind will always be a monkey.  That’s how it is with wild animals.  You can tame them, but however tame the monkey may be, it will never be a domesticated animal.  The “tame” wild animal is still that.  Wild.

Wild mind is a mind all its own.  Wild mind could be called everything mind.  We try to settle our minds down, but you can’t settle that which can’t be settled.  We lament then that we can’t settle this wild mind of ours.  We tell ourselves, “it’s no use; I have nothing but a monkey mind.”  But this is also not true.  That’s just our insidious ego, our false self telling us that we can’t be wild mind because we’re nothing, in the end, but monkey mind, after all.  Don’t listen to the lies of the ego!  Wild mind contains monkey mind.  Wild mind contains centered mind.  And wild mind contains all the other minds you may find along the budo path.  This is what also makes it nothing more than everything mind.

Everything mind is, therefore, nothing more than Big Mind itself.  Big Mind is vast, beyond vast you might say, so it’s also vast mind.  So vast that it’s measureless, and so it is measureless mind.  Being measureless means, to some extent, that it’s meaningless, so it’s also nothing.  Being nothing it is nothing mind.  And nothing mind, being nothing, is just Mind.  

The mind, being nothing but Mind, means that it is whatever it is in the moment.  Centered mind is Mind.  Wild mind is Mind.  Monkey mind is Mind.  And if all these moments of mind are nothing but, and could never be anything but, Mind, then all things are nothing but mind.  Mountains and rivers are Mind.  Barbells and makiwaras are Mind.  People you like and diskile are all Mind.  This and that is Mind.  All is mind.

Since All—and I do mean All—is nothing other than Mind itself, and can, for that very reason, be found in all things, it makes sense that by just pursuing one thing, all things can be known.  The microcosm, being a vessel of the macrocosm it comes from, means that it is a reflection, in some sense, of this macrocosmic whole.  And as the very reflection of the totality of all things, all things can be known by knowing one thing, and knowing it thoroughly.

Although the All may be contained in all things, and, thus, theoretically at least, can be known by knowing one thing thoroughly, through and through, I believe that some activities are better at expressing this perennial truth.  Budo is such a pursuit because of its physicality combined with its emphasis on awareness practices.  This is the reason that physical practices that have awareness and stillness practices built into their “systems” are popular choices as “mind/body” pursuits; practices such as Tai Chi, qigong, and yoga being common examples.

Budo (and other martial arts, Taekwondo and kung-fu being the most prevalent in America) are often touted as “mind/body” pursuits, as well, but I think this is more lip service than how they are generally practiced.  If most martial artists are honest with themselves, they will see that the martial arts are, in general, practiced more for “health and fitness” than as a real pursuit of mind/body integration.  If you ask the average martial artist what makes their martial art a “mind/body” practice, they are likely to give you rote, “pre-made” answers that they heard from others, such as fellow classmates and their own teacher, rather than an answer based on their actual lived experience.  Even their classmates and teachers may not have an answer based on actual experience, but they too are just repeating what they heard, or what is commonly thought of to be accurate in the popular culture’s understanding of martial arts as an aid to mind, body, and spirit cultivation.  In other words, their experience of the “spiritual” aspects of budo are influenced less by their encounter with a real teacher of real martial arts, and more with what they’ve learned from Netflix and Facebook.

To know the answer for one’s self is to have encountered the truth of it.  Even if you aren’t able to put it into words just yet, because you yourself may not understand what it is that has been experienced, the more you encounter it, the more its truth begins to cement itself as a permanent part of your somatic reality, and then you can put it into words.  It becomes a felt experience, and its truth reveals itself to you the more that you submit to it, without thinking about it, during moments of practice.  When you think about it—and you will think about it—do so outside of practice, when you have moments of quiet reflection, where you can ponder, think, and ruminate over your experiences in the dojo.

It could be—and I do mean this quite sincerely—that you will never be able to put into words the profundity of your experience.  That’s fine.  Perfectly fine.  But you will know.  And the important thing is that you will know that you know.  You know it because you have lived it so long that it’s become your everyday experience.  This is “settled mind”—anshin—sometimes it’s also translated as “peaceful heart.”  That’s the thing with “shin” in budo.  It can be translated as mind or as heart.  So all these minds I’ve been writing about are also hearts.  Heart/minds we could say.

Anshin.  Peaceful mind.  Settled heart.  Peaceful and settled heart/mind.

Shoshin.  Beginner’s mind.  Pure heart.  Pure mind of a beginner committed to practice.  (The heart commits.)  (Here is also where we might speak of “beginner’s heart.”  If you have ever been in love, just think back to how your heart felt when first you fell in love.  That is beginner’s heart.)

And so monkey mind is wild heart.  And wild mind is monkey heart.  And Big Mind, the ALL that is ALL, is nothing more than Vast Heart, Big Heart, Measureless Heart.

And all of these minds and hearts can be found in the simple practice of budo.  Nothing less is needed.  Nothing more, either.  Just budo.