Tiger Above, Tiger Below

The real trick of pursuing a martial art like I Liq Chuan over the long term is recognizing the end of the duality of "on the mat" and "off the mat", so that one is always training.

The I Liq Chuan system guide opens with the following;

意力合一
yi li he yi “awareness and the physical (actions) as one”

意控制力
yi kong zhi li “awareness gains control over the physical”

用意用不力
yong yi bu yong li “use (only) awareness and not physical (force)”

The admonitions are everywhere. Train the mind, the mind is the key. This is Zen; be aware of your own mind.

The nature of human habits though, is that they are strong, hard to change, difficult to let go of.

As such it can be difficult to follow that cardinal most rule of Tai Chi and Zen - “change with the change”, especially when the change is drastic.

It seems like there's been a lot of deaths in my life lately.

A few weeks back, two of my best friends from growing up lost their younger sister. She was somebody that I had a little crush on when we were young. She was at the lake with her kids, and the waves swept her away. She drowned.

A few days ago my neighbors were killed when a home invasion turned into a double homicide.

In the face of these tragedies, it seemed somehow wrong that I should still go to work, buy groceries, scold my kids and so on, but then last night I caught site of my wife in such a way that gave rise to some kind of understanding and it made me think of and old Zen story, which I'll leave to you to ponder it's meaning.

A monk was walking along the road in the mountains when suddenly, he was confronted by a tiger which began to chase him. In his haste to escape, the monk slips over the edge of a cliff but manages to grab hold of the roots of some bush. Looking up, the hungry tiger waited for him to climb and looking down the monk sees a second tiger pacing below. A tiger above, a tiger below, without doubt the monk has met his end. Then he notices a berry nearby. He thinks “What a perfect berry”, which he picks and eats.

Zen and The Martial Arts - Mindfulness Of Breathing

The breath is used as an indicator for when you are going beyond the limit of strength. Part of tai chi is to recognize things as they are, or as such (Dao 道, or the nature of things).

I have strength, why can't I use it? We all have a certain amount of strength, this is our nature. The thing is when I try to go BEYOND the limit of my strength that my action turns into struggling, and I will lose the tai chi balance in my body, because everything has it's limits.

Understanding the limits is tai chi, so I use the breath to keep the body in yin/yang balance. when I start to struggle in my action, such that it starts to restrict my breathing, I know I need to change so I can relax again.

The Importance Of Smiling During Meditation

Ever notice the gentle smile on the face of most Buddha and Bodhisatva statues?

In The Anapanasati Sutta: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation , Ven. Vimalaramsi writes that remembering to smile during meditation is crucial.

"Imagine, for a moment, the young Bodhisatta resting under the Rose Apple Tree as a young boy. He was not serious and tense when he attained a pleasant abiding [jhana] and had deep insights with a light mind. Want to see clearly? It’s easy!
Just lighten up, have fun exploring and smile! Smiling leads
us to a happier more interesting practice."

In the video below, speaker Ron Gutman sheds some light on why this may be, by citing some of the most relevant points of around a dozen scientific studies on smiling and it's effect on our personalities and our lives.

Zen and The Martial Arts - Formlessness

I Liq Chuan is called "The Martial Art of Awareness" for good reason. Zen philosophy is inextricably interwoven into it's training approach. It's simultaneously the most difficult and most rewarding part of practice.

Recently in one of my local Tempe, Arizona classes at Falling Leaves Kung Fu, we were discussing I Liq Chuan's "Three Mental Factors" of present formless and neutral, with an emphasis on "formlessness", and how that formlessness applies to martial art.

The formlessness here is a mental quality of formless. In a recent conversation with my Sifu about the subject he explained "it's more about not locking (mentally) onto things".

Basically, when one's concentration is not strong enough, there is a mental type of "squinting" which takes place in order for the mind to process some piece of information. Scientists call this phenomenon "attentional blink".

Attentional Blink Video

The Zen masters of old wrote about it exhaustively. In fact, the Zen masterpiece, The Unfettered Mind (不動智神妙録, fudōchi shinmyōroku), written by Takuan Soho to a martial artist of his day, deals almost exclusively with this concept of attentional blink and it's application to martial arts.

Take the following passage;

"Glancing at something and not stopping the mind is call immovable. This is because when the mind stops at something, as the breast is filled with various judgments, there are various movements within it. When it's movements cease, the stopping mind moves, but does not move at all.

If ten men, each with a sword come at you with swords slashing, if you parry each sword without stopping the mind at each action, and go from one to the next, you will not be lacking in a proper action for every one of the ten.

Although the mind acts ten times against ten men, if it does not halt at even one of them and you react to one after another, will proper action be lacking?

But if the mind stops before one of the men, though you parry his striking sword, when the man comes, the right action will have slipped away.

Considering that the The Thousand-Armed Kannon has one thousand arms on it's one body, if the mind stops at the one holding the bow, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine will be useless. It's because the mind is not detained at one place that all the arms are useful."

-Takuan Soho

Although the author refers specifically to the sword, his advice applies to all martial arts, indeed, every and any activity.

Attach the mind to no object, and it is free to move from one moment to the next without hindrance. When concentration is sharpened, the mind won't be occupied with form (this is this. that is that, or possibly worse, what is is this? what is that?)

As my Sifu often says "If you think, you don't know, if you know, you don't think."

Falling Leaves Kung Fu Ranked #1 in Tempe / Phoenix Arizona!

Falling Leaves Kung Fu has been ranked #1 in the Phoenix Metro area for Chinese martial arts. (although the ranking of the top three seemed to fluctuate depending on the link you clicked).

I've worked really hard to bring the best Chinese martial arts instruction possible to the area. To help us celebrate, come get started with a free trial of two weeks!

Martial Art of Awareness Workshop Clip

Just a little taste of some what you can expect during the April 2011 martial art of Awareness workshop with Master Sam FS Chin in Tempe Arizona.

Teisho (Public Talk on Zen) In Tempe, AZ

As part of our ongoing training, both mental 意 and physical 力, in the martial art of awareness, students are encouraged to seek out meditation opportunities with those more enlightened than ourselves.

So I was lucky enough to attend a Teisho (public lecture) by the 103 year old Japanese Zen master Kyozan Joshu Roshi this morning at the Haku-Un-Ji Zen Center in Tempe this morning.

While waiting for Roshi to begin his lecture, I had an interesting thought about "formations" (remember that the three mental factors of I Liq Chuan are Present, Formless and Neutral). The Zen Center is located on a small property in a residential neighborhood, which has two structures, a Zendo in back and a house in front.

The Pluralism Project website describes it thus;

"The Haku-un-Ji Zen Center is located in the backyard of a private home in Tempe. Associated with Zen meditation centers in New Mexico and California, it reflects the highly individualized and personalized style of practice so often characteristic of Buddhism in U.S. life."

"Located in the back yard of a private home." That description brings with it a whole set of concepts and limitations doesn't it? But as I sat with 50 other people waiting for Roshi to begin speaking the thought occurred to me that description is likely due mostly to the perception of the sizes of the two structures as opposed to the location or actual function of the property itself. What if the size of the Zendo was double or triple that of the house? What if it was at the top of secluded mountain but the same an every other respect? Would it then qualify as a "legitimate" center? At any rate, my point is that these kinds of mental formations, these concepts of what things really are or are not, can be our biggest obstacles as we attempt to progress in the art as well as our lives.

Roshi's talk dealt mostly with, coincidentally enough, Tai Chi principles. He spent a great deal of time discussing the interaction of positive and negative forces in the world (i.e. yin and yang), especially with regards to male and female relationships.

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to ask questions of Roshi, or I would have loved to hear him talk more in depth about the "great difference in perception of time and distance between people of the East and West". This concept intrigued me as it's precisely the perception of time and distance that is so important in martial arts in general and I Liq Chuan in particular.

All in all it was a morning well spent to hear Roshi speak about Zen and it's application to life.