More or Less

Greetings each

Confused by thoughts,
we experience duality in life.
Unencumbered by ideas,
the enlightened see the one Reality

Yours in the spirit of Budo

Mike

Greetings Each

The world is what you think it is .There are no limits. Energy flows where attention goes. Now is the moment of power. To love is to be happy with all things. All power comes from within. Effectiveness is the measure of truth

Yours in Budo

Mike

Greetings Each Bows

Took this from a journal entry of mine and added a bit to .

MIND BODY AND SOUL

It has been my belief in recent years after discovering Ki. That it is a vehicle for all things . As a simple human it can take time to organize oneself to accept Ki. As mentioned in my Great Leaning post. The Mind, Will and Ki need to be balanced. One has to be in control all of the time. Right mindfulness, right action and do not fall behind in the Way. A shorter version of the Eight fold Path.

If one can break free and finally release oneself from debilitating negative emotions and limiting beliefs. One should be able to reach ones highest potential, create healthy and loving relationships, live a happy and fulfilling life by establishing new positive beliefs and releasing fearful, negative emotions. Ones’ body will communicate to one clearly and specifically, if one is really willing to listen.

I often go on about Ki and creating a universe from which one can operate from. Ki can be thought of as positive thinking, belief in yourself, faith, confidence, or a state of ‘Emptiness’ and unification. When it is used, ki is quite naturally in your life, at those moments when something totally captures your interest and imagination. Something like, playing a sport, working late into the morning on a project that was important to you, playing with your child, or simply spending time with someone you love.

In each case, you become totally focused and completely yourself. You achieving a wonderful effect and posses a limitless supply of energy. These experiences often define our lives, yet their occurrence often seems to be out of our control. Or are they ????

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.
- Bruce Lee

Find your true self, take that path.
Ushin, be mind,
Moshin, false mind,
Mushin, no mind,
Munen, no-thought,
Mushin no shin, mind of no-mind,
Honshin, true mind, true spirit

Jedi mind Zen mind. Budo mind, beginner's mind. What matters in all of these in my view is the concentration of thought and the prompt response of Ki to the directing will. He who deliberates and moves with the sole intent on winning at all costs, misses to a still greater extent of the Way
.
To be accomplished in any skill, realize the spirit of the Way. To realize the Way, develop a proper attitude spirit and posture in all that you do. Practice with this in mind for ten years, twenty years, and become one with your movements, then forget all of it when you practice and place yourself at the mercy of inspiration. This is mushin, munen, honshin.

Musashi ( A Samurai) struggled with life's meaning. He felt there was something more important than life and meditated on this. "Sometimes the obvious is right in front of you, you just have to slow down and look for it." Truth is no where if not from within.

When you reach this state, you will place yourself at the mercy of the Way. If you do not understand this, you become a slave of exterior conditions. What is required is to have a firm hold of the spirit and yet not to be conscious of the fact. This is a very difficult task achieved only after long spiritual training. The Way, is moving with the rhythmic movement of the spirit. To realize this, I believe you must subject youself to the discipline of The Way. The Way is the doctrine of mushin. The insight of the following poem will lead to the secrets of mushin, where everything is being left to Nature itself. (I pinched this of a site I was doing some research on)

"The moon has no intent to cast its shadow anywhere,
Nor does the pond design to lodge the moon;
How serene the water of Hirosawa!"

To realize The Way, you must have the proper training. The Way can be harsh, so some people think but I actually see The Way as being “Empty”and is straight to the point. There are no shades of gray. A clear, undisturbed mind. A healthy body will in turn look after the spirit.

You must keep the mind situation as it is and as the truth. The worst is your ego which sways you. If you have not gone astray by ego, you are able to accomplish your purpose. For Zen, martial arts, tea ceremony and any others, this mind is common. Both at the time of practice and at the important time, to get into the habit of keeping your ordinary and constant mind is the best way. For example, at a martial arts match, if you are always stained, you lack for this ordinary and constant mind. A good player can always keep a constant mind.

"True knowledge cannot be imparted by words. The Zen mind, enlightened and disciplined, is able to rise above mere technique and go straight to the core of being...to reach the soul... the essence."

Yours in Budo

Mike

Greetings Each

Lakota Prayer

Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust
my heart,
my mind,
my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun.

According to the Native People, the Sacred Space
is the space between exhalation and inhalation.
To Walk in Balance is to have Heaven (spirituality)
and Earth (physicality) in Harmony.

Yours in Budo

Mike

Greetings Each

The Art of Peace is a form of prayer that generates light and heat. Forget about your little self, detach yourself from objects, and you will radiate light and warmth. Light is wisdom; warmth is compassion.

Greetings Each Bows

" The path isn't a straight line; it is a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths." In the end we all return home,

Greetings Each, Bows

Not posted anything in here for ages.

It is said that 'Emptiness' can be found in the space between inhalation and exhalation . If you practice pendulum breathing in the quite secluded place of your mind you can enjoy the moment longer

Yours in Budo

Mike

Greetings Each

Woke up at stupid O'clock this morning mostly due to another bad storm. Then the few gears in my mind began to churn lol and this came to light.

If we take a rainbow with it's many colours, most of us have a favourite colour. This could also be described as a single passion in life or a hobby and we spend as much free time on it as we can but me miss out on what all the other colours have to offer. The Rainbow is the spectrum of all things , The Force with in it is Focus Wisdom and Knowledge .

In our journey through life we should gently spin the rainbow so eventually it becomes one colour and we have absorbed all things and become one with it

The 'Great Learning' states that no stone should be overlooked. Learn all you can form each colour even the ones you do not like. it will give you a better understanding.

Make happy tracks with each step, a long journey will only commence with the first step. Do not be perturbed by a soaking from a storm. It will pass. Let the Rainbow always touch your shoulder and walk n peace.

Even with this raging storm. I looked out of my window and for a brief moment I was blessed with the sight of a full moon

Working Very Hard
A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it."
The teacher's reply was casual, "Ten years."
Impatiently, the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?" 
The teacher thought for a moment,
"20 years."

Greetings each

Here's something to get your teeth into

The Mind of No-Mind
"Mushin no Shin"

- Takuan Soho




A mind unconscious of itself is a mind that is not at all disturbed by affects of any kind. It is the original mind and not the delusive one that is chock-full of affects. It is always flowing, never halts, nor does it turn into a solid. As it has no discrimination to make, no affective preference to follow, it fills the whole body, pervading every part of the body, and nowhere standing still. It is never like a stone or a piece of wood. It feels, it moves, it is never at rest. If it should find a resting place anywhere, it is not a mind of no-mind. A no-mind keeps nothing in it. It is also called, munen, "no-thought." Mushin and munen are synonymous.

When mushin or munen is attained, the mind moves from one object to another, flowing like a stream of water, filling every possible corner. For this reason the mind fulfills every function required of it. But when the flowing is stopped at one point, all the other points will get nothing of it, and the result will be a general stiffness and obduracy.

The wheel revolves when it is not too tightly attached to the axle. When it is too tight, it will never move on. If the mind has something in it, it stops functioning, it cannot hear, it cannot see, even when a sound enters the ears or a light flashes before the eyes. To have something in mind means that it is preoccupied and has no time for anything else. But to attempt to remove the thought already in it is to refill it with another something. The task is endless.

It is best, therefore, not to harbor anything in the mind from the start. This may be difficult, but when you go on exercising kufu toward the subject, you will after some time come to find this state of mind actualized without noticing each step of the progress. Nothing, however, can be accomplished hurriedly.

Tradition has it that Yagyu left a poem to one of his sons expressive of the secret of his school of swordsmanship.

Behind the technique, know that there
Is the spirit (ri):
It is dawning now;
Open the screen,
And lo, the moonlight is shining in!
This may sound highly mystical. The strangest thing, however, is: What has the art of swordplay - which bluntly speaking, consists in mutual killing - to do with such content as is communicated in the poem on the moon at the break of day?

In Japan, the dawn-moonlight has rich poetical associations. Yagyu's allusion to it is understandable from this angle, but what has the sword to do with poetry about the moon? What inspiration is the swordsman expected to get from viewing the moon as the day dawns? What secret is here? After going through many a tragic scene, which the man must no doubt have witnessed, with what poetic enlightenment is he expected to crown all his past experience? The author is here telling us, naturally, to have an inner light on the psychology of swordsmanship.

Yagyu the master knows that technique alone will never make a person the perfect swordplayer. He knows that the spirit (ri) or inner experience (satori) must back the art, which is gained only by deeply looking into the inmost recesses of the mind (kokoro). That is why his teacher Takuan is never tired of expanding on the doctrine of emptiness, which is the metaphysics of mushin no shin (mind of no-mind). Emptiness or no-mind-ness may appear to be something most remote from our daily experience, but we now realize how intimately it is related to the problem of life and death with which most of us nowadays remain unconcerned.

- Takuan Soho (1573-1645) Abbot of Daitokkuji