If you pay sufficient attention to any particular aspect of life, you can greatly raise your general awareness. This is true of fighting. The question is, are you able to raise enough awareness to turn a survival process into a conscious process? In other words, are you able to turn a process which is self persevering, into one which is transformative in nature? This requires a great deal of discipline, much more than most people are aware. without the needed discipline, it usually just becomes a process of building the ego in a game of winners and losers.
Because people are egged on by those around them to achieve various forms of glory, it is often the case that their environment creates this attitude. It is like living in an echo chamber where you hear loud cheers over and over again to go in this direction of winning against people. People then start to think that if they don’t want these things then they are not normal, or that they lack motivation or desire. There are ways around becoming absorbed in this attitude, if you want to, which we will explore here.
So people think it’s normal for everyone to want to be the best. Either that or slightly better at some specific task. This is not true however. Some people are compelled in this direction, due to being brought up in war or desperation for example. There’s nothing wrong with using these drives therefore, but for many people it is not necessary to use fighting and aggression to move to the next level.
Fighting is not the only path in martial arts. It is true that martial arts comes from war, but this does not mean destroying those around you. There are many masters who have developed themselves simply by appreciating the fact that they can train, eat, and breathe well. If you develop this appreciation sufficiently, it is possible to become appreciative of absolutely anything, including waking up each morning as you are. If you are appreciative of this fact, then you will no longer waste time on things which are no longer important. Because you are appreciative of every moment. This is one way. There are many who do not achieve this every morning. Remind yourself of that from time to time.
In fact, it is usually better to use some other means than fighting to achieve the best possible version of yourself. And then, you end up becoming a powerful being by virtue of your own nature, rather than some attitude or personality which has been forced upon you. If you fully develop who you are, and celebrate this, then you will obviously be driven to develop in the best possible way. There is no time to waste then. You will then develop according to your potential, rather than some narrow preconception based on a small aspect of the whole.
Because achievements such as winning in martial arts contests have become glorified, then in becomes tempting to make this a general prescription for success. As we will see, there is no general need for most people to compete against others in this way. There is nothing wrong with fighting for the right reasons.
The warriors of old would die or become crippled after a small number of contests in the past, simply because there was no proper operating table or soap. A sword wound would be lethal, you would get a serious infection. There would be no guarantee of winning either, you didn’t know anything about the opponent. Sometimes, a soldier would kill himself if he lost, or dishonoured his tribe in some way. Yes, this was the reality, which you were probably born into. Today we see people fall apart mentally, even killing themselves over pride. So it is best not to go there in todays world, where we have much better opportunities for self development.
There are certain groups of people are naturally more aggressive than others, but essentially for most people it diverts them away from who they actually are. Musashi, the Japanese swordsmen, was that way. He was driven in that way which most people are not. He had no Master, no training centre. He simply went around engaging in deadly contests as if it was the last thing he would ever do. A Shaolin monk, who is seeking longevity and spiritual enlightenment, is another way. He is seeking to use the martial arts as a means for health, rather than destruction. The same energy can be used to destroy or to bring life. But it must be developed properly and with the right attitude.
The House of Cards
“This is a crime against your own humanity, to make the mistake of studying something so profound without the necessary recognition of its worth.”
Building the ego and becoming a winner seems appealing enough. But this in itself is a huge Karma for somebody who gets to into it unnaturally. when I say unnaturally, I mean in terms of what is needed by yourself and the environment you live in, not just some small aspect of yourself development. This small aspect of yourself, the ego, does not need developing in most people, in fact it needs curtailing. This is why in traditional societies, and martial arts centres, they curtailed the ego if they had build up the fighting capabilities of the individual.
Today this curtailing the ego is being ignored, and with dire consequences in many instances. people develop their fighting skills without the necessary discipline. The result is they get bored and restless because they already know everything through the internet and instruction. This is why such things were never taught to the masses, because without the right attitude you will just take for granted everything you see and not experience it totally. This is a crime against your own humanity, to make the mistake of studying something so profound without the necessary recognition of its worth. So you end up learning lots of rubbish but have experienced none of the reality which the Shaolin monks and Musashi spoke of.
The present day environment does not contain within it the same level of violence as before. There are happening here and there, but there are also much bigger threats to the existence, such as viruses and poor health. This is why practiced such as yoga and well being are on the up swing. Once you have survived a certain experience, it is much better to move on a transform your situation into one of prosperity. Otherwise, if you are hyper developing the survival aspect, this gets blown out of proportion and you never see it for what it is.
“The power of the mind is such that it can be used to focus on one aspect and then draw everything else to it”
If you can handle the consequences of your actions, then there is not problem. But in general, putting up with severe stress and anxiety about a far off event, such as a competition, is not only exhausting but it also reduces awareness of the present moment. It reduces awareness that the threats to human well being are becoming more undermined by misuse of technology, and poor maintenance of health. Thankfully, martial arts exercises take care of these things without blowing up the need to win at all costs against people.
winning at all costs builds a fixation with social approval, as well as experiencing life and stress and anxiety unless you win a major event. These are small thing in life, why blow them out of proportion? For some elite athletes, for a short period of time in their lives, this will be necessary. But in general, it is better to look within yourself and enhance your wider perceptions. That way, you will gain from every aspect of your experience, which will build and reinforce itself from a larger pool of experience. This is the power of the mind. If mind becomes a tool for imagining some glorious winning situations in the future, rather than of processing the experience of the moment and transforming it into something else, then this is limited. The power of the mind is such that it can be used to focus on one aspect and then draw everything else to it. Or, it can be used to pick something apart and lead to more complications.
The Inner Fight
A sense of ease and flexibility, as well as awareness and competence, is what the internal martial arts seeks to create. It is possible to turn trauma, stress, anxiety, or any other negative emotional states into positive ones. This is why traditionally they do not fixate on winning, because they already knew how to turn any negative experience into a positive one. Transformation has nothing to do with good or bad, it is just that you are taking any thought or emotion and channeling it into something more. You are focusing on one thing and drawing everything else include it within your experience. The other way is to focus on one thing and exclude everything else. This just leads eventually to reduced vision and therefore an illusion of reality if this is all you see.
This is the real goal, to move beyond your current situation, rather than to solidify it or blow it out of proportion the way it is. It doesn’t matter whether this is stress or happiness, all of it can be used. Otherwise, it just dissipates at a certain level of expression. Depending on how much you have transformed the energies, this level can be raised or minimised with the right attitude and training.
If you sit in stillness for a certain period of time, then the emotions and chemistry of the body dissolve and create a new form of expression. This was known as internal alchemy, or the internal energy medicine in certain Chinese systems. Basically, it involves daily meditation, as well as exercises to increase the circulation of the body, as well as the fluidity of the energies. There are many ways to go about it. It can be achieved by performing daily martial arts exercises, and then sitting in mediation and stillness when you have worked out physical need to expend energy. The amount this needs doing will vary between individuals. Even a small amount of this per day, perhaps for an hour or so, can be hugely beneficial. As a process, building in mindfulness and exercise as part of the daily routine works towards the same end.
Motivation
“If you make every moment of your life worth living, then you will not have to motivate yourself towards a future goal of any kind. It is already there for you to explore in its entirety, to the fullest extent possible”
Why would you want to win against somebody else if you are already satisfied with what you have? At the same time, if you are satisfied with what you have, you will long for more, because the nature of the universe is to expand. So when you have fully developed your capabilities, there is a natural expansion. When I say expansion, I mean an expansion of what you are, rather than an accumulation of accolades and additional baggage. If you are satisfied with what you are, then you will naturally want to defend this so that it develops, if it is valuable to you. This means making daily exercises the basis of your transformation, rather than looking for ways to rest at the end of an ordeal.
So if you make every moment of your life worth living, then you will not have to motivate yourself towards a future goal of any kind. It is already there for you to explore in its entirety, to the fullest extent possible. The problem is that if you fill the mind with all sorts of fanciful ideas, and you develop all sorts of strong emotional attachments to objectives, then this naturally clouds the mind. You are filling up the hard rive instead of leaving it free to process. another way of looking at clouding the mind is, it is like if you paint over a window, all you can see is what you have painted over it. You can’t see anything clearly beyond it, and it is no longer useful for perception.
Cultures of Combat
“Overcoming injustice and fighting wars is deeply ingrained in the human being, beyond their personality and situational experiences.”
Combat lifestyle was cultivated in traditional societies in such a way that would today be considered unnecessarily restrictive. It was not restrictive necessarily, it is just that if you are going for discipline, then why not go all the way. In modern day societies, we see that in the army a huge amount of discipline is instilled in recruits. However, without the right mental and spiritual training, the trauma of such events has been shown to have a detrimental effect on the mental health and emotional well of many individuals. So how does one develop fortitude and self discipline needed to carry such a responsibility?
When you go to war, it is not a case of planning to come back a champion. It might happen, but there are serious risks. Instead, you go in defence of the nation, and you might not come back. You might also go out of naiveté, but that’s different. If you can go anyway, whatever the costs, then it means that you have transcended your own individual needs to some degree. This is an initial step.
For other people, there is no need to develop tenacity by going to war. For many people, their own nature compels them to see injustices and war in every aspect of life. They get there by themselves, by their own nature. This explains how the idea of overcoming injustice and fighting wars is deeply ingrained in the human being, beyond their personality and situational experiences. This is why they said that if you train in the traditional martial arts forms, all the secrets will be revealed. The means are within you already. This means that fighting is inherent in human experience generally, and can be used by any one as a means for development and transformation, without or without a physical enemy.
This example of war shows you that it is not the idea that you will win that is the primary motivating force, it is the idea that you survive the process and develop from it. More than that, you don’t actually need to fight in a war to be subject to the same forces of nature which transform an individual. Perhaps if you are engaged in war, it speeds up the process, making you more immediately attentive to certain realities. But essentially, fighting is not to do with winning and losing. This only permits a certain gratification from the idea of it. So basically, thoughts about wins and losses only exist as ideas in the mind, rather than realities to be experienced.
You cannot experience a process out of an idea, you can only experience the reality of it. Otherwise, it is just a theory or an attempt to live through an imagined process or a remembered event. The imagination and memory are not suitable vessels for the full expression of life, only life is capable of doing this. So the idea is to become sensitive to these energies, rather than sensitive to some imagined social process going on in your imagination of memory.
Of course, in any contest you want to win, and you do everything to do so. This enhances your awareness and consciousness. Naturally, you capabilities go up over time as you experience the intensity of the situation. But winning is not an expectation necessarily, and if you lose, it’s not a stain on your character or profile. If you are really honest with yourself you will see that social approval and objectified situations are not set in stone. In fact, you are free to experience them as you wish, as good or bad, or inconsequential In terms of your success.
The instinctive energies can be used a platform to transformation. By themselves they only reach a certain point. It is not like you can save them up and when they reach a certain number they change their quality. It is like if you light a fire, the fire only burns for a certain amount of time. If you heat a saucepan, the heat remains for longer as it transfers on the metal and in the water container. The hot water is then used to heat a room for example, or to cook a meal, which can be stored for long periods. So you are using the heat to transform a situation, rather than stock piling it. From this example, you can see that the possibility for expansion of heat energy is increased by using it as a fuel rather than an outcome to be preserved.
So it is not so much that you develop toughness and fortitude by going to war, it is more that you better have those qualities going in to start with. In other words, you can develop these in so many other ways than fighting. One person wins a medal. I might eat a Banana, sit down, meditate, and have a profound experience. What does it matter? If the experience is profound and impactful, then this is what leads to transformation. If you have already decided that the experience is defined by an outcome or by social approval, then you are not able to experience anything new, any transformation with nothing left of the old.
In terms of the spiritual side of martial arts, you become a nobody rather than an iconic star. This is to bring down the association between winning and success. Because of the idea that you have to win at something to prove you are the best, success in this sense has be blown completely out of proportion. Because more and more people are involved it in martial ares contests, it becomes harder and harder to stand out as slightly better than someone else. So not only are peoples energies becoming increasingly dissipated in limited activities, but it also takes more and more to stand out against the competition.
Combat is used to heighten the fighting capabilities of an individual. This was neccessary during times of war. The problem is, when the war was over, people got restless, and bored. As a result, various combative arts, as well as competitive sports, were instituted into the society to alleviate the tension which built up in times of peace and prosperity. At the same time, these activities have always been in society in various forms to stop people getting lazy and unmotivated. They are also great ways of people celebrating their own vibrancy and creative energies, in such a way that they can enjoy a contest between in each other. The right balance has to be struck. The problem comes when the process of the contest becomes less important than beating the opponent. The competitive process which lead to transformation is then circumvented in favour of fighting for an outcome.
The instincts of survival involved in fighting, such as aggression and ambition, are trying to fullfill certain certain narrow objectives. They are trying to go for a particular outcome. This could be acquiring a mate, getting food, or fending off an attacker. Essentially, all these instincts are trying to fullfill is some short term objective. They are not looking for well being. It is very difficult to turn these energies into something else, especially if you blow them out of proportion. To transform them into an ultimate possibility requires a lot of wisdom and perseverance. The real question is, can these instinctive energies be used to fuel you towards something greater? Yes they can. And in the process you can discover that you need much less insticintive drive and ambition to function properly once you have learnt to focus on other things. You become too busy to blow them up uncessasrily, and everything goes into your work. They very energies of the body become a great possibility rather than a conclusion.
When you heighten the instincts of survival, this prepares you to take on opponents. These opponents are not usually in front of you most of the time. So to become sensitive enough to the environment that you can produce the necessary energy to act, is the main concern. Now, when I say sensitive, I do not mean that you get depressed or anxious about someone looking at you the wrong way. Naturally, you then become more and more aggressive and hostile to people who you consider competitors. This is why traditionally, anyone preparing for war or combat was typically put on a healthy diet, a disciplined lifestyle, and great care was taken to limit the volatility around them. Otherwise they just ended up becoming wantonly cruel or unable to function outside of severely competitive environments.
However, in todays world, in which more and more efforts are made towards ones well being rather than just survival, there are several ways to go about conducting ones lifestyle. You don’t have to go about meeting the social standards of warriors or elite athletes. Whatever you chose to do, if you put everything into it, it is possible to circumvent any unnecessary stagnation or dissipation of energy at the level of aggression and other unpleasant emotions. At the same time, you are engaged in a process which makes the most of your energies, making you more dynamic and creative than if you were under external pressures and stresses.
