C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

     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 Hyam...

Nothing is Worth Having in Life that Doesn’t Require Hard Work, but it Has to be Performed Correctly “By nature, men are nearly the same.   By practice, they become vastly different.” —Confucius      I have two teenage boys.   When they were younger—around 5 and 6, I think—I wanted them to become involved in martial arts.   The town where we lived didn’t seem to have much, nothing like the traditional karate-do that I practiced religiously, diligently for thirteen years, and have practiced less formally ever since.   They decided they wanted to take Tae Kwon Do—which, to be honest, I thought was a rather horrid idea; I never thought very highly of the Korean-inspired dojangs that I had encountered up to that point [1] .      But I relented.      And was quite horrified by what I encountered.   Here was a martial arts “school” where you could get a “black belt” in a year ...

"I f someone asked me what a human being ought to devote the maximum of his life to, I would answer: training. Train more than you sleep." —Masutatsu Oyama (founder of Kyokushin Karate-Do)