C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

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 poi...

Martial Arts Training In the first part of this series, I had a brief overview on much of what I want to discuss for the remainder of these posts. For this post, I want to discuss on training as it relates almost specifically to the martial arts, although you will quickly notice that it can’t help but “spill out” into the other two. The Bushido of Training Several years back, I wrote a post that focused on “The Lifter’s Bushido.”  Here is the quote that I used then by the samurai Yamaoku Tesshu: “In order to learn about the Way, forget about self and awaken to the truth… Exerting self is a mistake… We should not say “myself” — in truth there is no such thing… When there is no thought of self, true Bushido develops.”  I have often thought of lifting as a form of Budo, and my gym as the dojo.  (This is one reason that I enjoy lifting at home, in my garage dungeon gym.  It is not commercial, and, therefore, becomes more of a dojo than anything comme...

"Technical knowledge is not enough.  One must transcend technique so that the art becomes artless art, growing out of the unconscious."  -Daisetzu Suzuki When the founder of Kyokushin Karate-Do (one of the primary arts that I trained in as a young man), Masutatsu Oyama, came off the mountain (it was a very literal, and at the same time, figurative, mountain), he defeated all in the martial world who came within his path in the dojo, felling almost every opponent he met in a quick, effortless manner.  The tales of Oyama has become the stuff of legend.  Even though his exploits are recent in the history of martial arts, it's still hard to tell what exactly is fact and what has already faded into myth.  But one thing is for certain: Oyama's mountain-top training was the difference between him and those who he dismantled so quickly. Oyama's training was founded upon three integrated aspects, combining martial arts practice, zazen, and hard, physical training (...

     I wrote the original "Path of the Spiritual Martial Artist" over 10 years ago for Taekwondo Times Magazine .  About a year later, it was also one of the first articles I published here at Integral Strength.  But a lot can change in 10 years - at least, on a personal note.  Although my view of Zen, martial arts, and Buddhism has not  changed in the past decade, my maturing  of it has  changed.  After all, one of the foundational views of Buddhism is impermanence, which means that everything - and I do mean everything  - is constantly in flux, and, therefore, constantly changing.  So I thought that it might be a good time to review this original Integral Strength article, and make changes where I see that changes need to be made.  I hope you find it informative, whether or not your love is martial arts, Eastern philosophy and spirituality, or both!      (By the way, I looked everywhere for the Taekwondo ...

C.S. sits on his zafu before a training session. 1 - The Journey Begins When I was a teenager, I had one great love: martial arts.  To be more specific, I suppose, would be to write that my great love was traditional Okinawan Karate-Do, which I had trained in since I was 9 years old.     I was a small kid, tiny you might even say, compared to the size of my fellow 4th-grade classmates.  For whatever reason - and perhaps schools still do this, much to the embarrassment of small boys - my 4th grade teacher would often line up the entire class against the wall of the classroom, boys and girls alike, from shortest to tallest.  I was always the shortest.  Add in the fact that, in addition to my smallness, I was something of an introvert, often bullied, and so my parents thought that martial arts might be a good way to build my self-esteem, not to mention keep me from getting pummeled on the elementary school playgrounds. ...