C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Achieve Fantastic Results in Martial Arts by Utilizing the Maxims of the Founder of Matsubayashi-Ryu Karate Do: A “Modern” Application Shoshin Nagamine seated in Zazen (Zen Meditation). One of the earliest books that I bought as a young karate-ka was Shoshin Nagamine’s “The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do.”  For those of you that don’t know—or only “know” because of the title of this essay—Shoshin Nagamine was the founder of an “offshoot” of Shorin-Ryu karate that he called Matsubayashi-Ryu .  But most modern martial artists probably know him—if they even know him at all—from the aforementioned book.  As I said, I bought this book when I was probably 11 or 12 years old (which means in the early to mid 1980s) at a store called “Bookland”—that’s right, kids, once-upon-a-time there were these things called “malls” that actually had relatively small bookstores inside of them.  (The other one in our local mall was called “Walden Books.”)  By the way, I at the time had never heard of—nor had

Entering Deeply into Practice Bodhidharma (a.k.a. Da Mo), first patriarch of Zen*       “ While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life.  The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas.  In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture.  Do not think about anything.  Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything.  Then eventually you will resume your own true nature.  That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself. ” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind      In a past blog entry on Zen, martial arts, and building muscle mass, I made a brief mention of entering deeply into practice .  But what does this mean, to “enter deeply into practice”?  First, and for some odd reason this seems to be a point that practitioners are apt to miss, it means that you must have a daily practice that you

     T o practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant.       -Zen Master Taisen Deshimaru Korean Zen Martial Artist      This is the first in what will be a series of entries on “Zen combat”, as well as a basic explanation of what the term actually means here at Integral Strength.     The term comes from a book of the same name by the historian Jay Gluck, first published in 1963.  For early Karate-ka in North America, the book was exceptional reading, and it still remains so until this day.  For some reason, it hasn’t always remained in print, despite the fact that - unlike the entirely useless and pretty much awful book “Zen in the Martial Arts” by Joe Hyams, which has, for some odd reason, remained a seminal favorite - Gluck actually knew something about Zen and the martial arts.  Not to fault Hyams entirely, I suppose, since almost all martial artists I’ve come into contact with