All Different People and Skills in the Martial Arts

I posted this at the Ultimate Kenpo Alliance Website. (That is the link to their message board which I enjoy reading.) There was a post regarding Women in the Arts as far as their rankings pondering if they should be held to the same standard as men.

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This is an expansion on the post Women in the Arts.



When I read the post about Women in the Martial Arts at first, I was thinking about all the many different kinds of people who study martial arts. At the school I attended, all were welcome. Not only are adult men and women studying but also children. That does not describe the full range either. People who have a variety of disabilities, including mildly retarded people studied. One woman was missing a limb. I also read a magazine article about a special class for people in wheel chairs being taught in the arts.

I often wondered about this since you have the same rankings but not the same way of being ranked. A child blackbelt is not the same, most likely, as an adult blackbelt. A adult male blackbelt is probably not the same as a woman blackbelt also. That is pretty much life. In any class of any subject you have people who have a range of skills and abilities. So then you ask, "How they are ranked?"

After I consider the ranges, I see why it is easy to not wear a ranking, although I always liked seeing the goal of the next belt. I have often pondered this question and it was once answered to a degree by my first teacher who states he watches the student develop from what he or she started from to where they have progressed. In what we are lies our true talent and we work to bring that to the surface.

I was never taught that fighting was just head on swing, kick and hit power. In some fights it can be. There are people who use many other tactics along with their physical skills. Timing and placement are important. A great fighter may be able to not ever have to fight.

One man I know who is quite loved by everyone (and loves everyone back too!) was lured into a dangerous situation and recognized the leader of the gang. He gave his great big smile, and friendly boisterous wave, and yelled, "HEY BILL!" Bill said, "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING HERE!!!?" and sent him and his friend off. He used his greatest skill in a very difficult situation without a thought.

In determining what your goal is, you may find different skills in the class more useful than the star in the ring if you do not believe that there will be a head on collision of fists. For instance, a beautiful woman friend of mine works for a detective. She is very useful in collecting information from people. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Lets face it, we use our martial arts skills every day to live our lives. There are the fights which I am taught are for only when they cannot be avoided. Often we can change the energy of the situation. Sometimes we may appear differently than we are. (How many movies have we seen where the hero is pretending he has some great skill, weapon, or back up that is not there?) A person who is disabled may be able to use the balance and peace that can come from the arts every day to live better and happier against some of the odds they up against. So can any of us.

Tonglen: Many Difficult Thoughts

Anyone who finds satisfaction in being an accomplished, skilled worker will find stage two a very tempting place to rest on the spiritual journey. Often the only ones who break free to a higher stage have had some drastic failure in their lives. This isn't to say that failure is spiritually worthy. It carries its own dangers, primarily that you will see yourself as a victim, which makes the chances for spiritual progress worse than ever. But failure does raise questions about some basic beliefs in stage two . If you worked hard, why didn't God reward you? ...As long as such doubts don't arise, the God of stage two is the perfect deity for a competitive market economy.
---Deepak Chopra on "Stage Two: God the Almighty" from his book, "How to Know God."



What is this difficult path to awakening we must be occasionally slapped into? I am told that without failure, some successful people might not go on from a physical based spirituality for a long time. A very powerful person may lose his or her position, status, health or perhaps face death. We all have to face that "big one" eventually. This shocks some people out of their physical based existence to look for more. After all, a lot of the kingdoms built here are staying here. The saying goes, "You can't take it with you." I bring this up due to people who ask about, "fully feeling." Do we want to feel this or do we deny this energy until we are past it enough to really face the truth?

Very few of us can grow up now without suffering fully in our face. Perhaps the world is ready to advance and that is the purpose of the information age. Lots of information about suffering flings by us every day on the televisions, radios and even passes us on the street. It used to be hidden like that Buddha story where the father keeps his son away from seeing age, death, poverty and disease. The news does us a service in a way of letting us know that there are many people in this world who are in pain. People beg openly in the streets in more than the third world countries now. It is right on the corner of many United States cities and even the smaller towns now. Addicted people walk by us on the very same sidewalks as we all take. Mothers and fathers cry on television for their lost children. We know that people get beaten in their own homes by their family members. The days of Mrs. Cleaver... where no one really knew that the sweet housewife who was always perfectly dressed every day complete with the string of pearls was being beaten by her husband.

There are situations in life that we are exposed to where we feel helpless, angry, hurt and probably more difficult emotions than you would care to read a list of. Difficulty can creep into our lives in all directions. Our most intimate relationships push us to the edges of what we can stand. They shoot those arrows into our hearts where only those close to us know to aim for. It can happen at work too. I used to take care of people in hospital and home situations who were very ill. Sometimes a personal story would be so tragic, or the person would be suffering so much, I would go through a period of grieving for them. After all, there was only so much I could personally do. Often they were just a child yet. Although, I did my best to help them by giving them comfort with my words or put some financial difficulties at ease, it often did not seem to be enough for their suffering.

The word Tonglen itself is Tibetan literally meaning "taking and sending." This practice can be done on the spot in challenging situations as I mentioned or can be a formal practice. On the in breath you take in the difficulty you or someone else may be experiencing. When you exhale you release healing into the world. Tonglen is using these very difficult emotions that arise that we may not want to face. I am still learning about the practice. I really like how one can do Tonglen "on the spot" just for these difficult situations where we do not otherwise know how to respond. There is no excuse for not practicing it, although many people may simply choose not to, which is fine. Pema Chodron points out that if you are becoming frustrated with your own tonglen practice not working, "You can do tonglen for all people who cannot do tonglen. ...No way to escape." :-) This often helps people speak and hear more from their hearts rather than putting up walls.

The idea behind Tonglen, as I understand it, is that difficult circumstances are the basis for waking up rather than an obstacle. Our intrepretation of a difficult event is often to view it as an obstacle. We might say, that we cannot meditate because our lives are interrupted by our nasty wife, mean cat, lack of concentration, or other worries. Well Atisha, one of the early teachers of Tonglen has something different to say about your practice. Atisha not only welcomed struggle into his life, he embraced it. The story goes that Atisha traveled to Tibet to teach. He required suffering in his life to advance in his practice which allowed him to see where he wascapable of being knocked off his balance. This way he could know what to work on. This allowed him to really see himself honestly. He then would make friends with the energy of his feelings of jealousy, envy, and irritation. Atisha would sit with the energy as a felt quality and let it transform his being without weaving it into another type of suffering such as blaming or excusing.

When Atisha heard about all the wonderful, peaceful and gentle people in Tibet, he was concerned that he would not be challenged! He was so very concerned about the legendary sweetness of the Tibetan people that he took his mean Bengali tea boy with him. The story goes that this person was so very ill tempered and nasty to deal with. Tibetans apparently have a wonderful sense of humor about this tale. They say, "When he arrived in Tibet, he realized he needn't have worried." Lol.

Lets face it... negative emotions sometimes, or maybe even most of the time, have enormous energy. If one can tap into this energy, geez... it seems like one person could provide the energy to run all those machines in Los Vegas. We learn later in the tale that this ill tempered Bengali tea boy is Atisha's brother and this brother listens at the door to the "secret" teachings. Over time, Atisha notices his brother becoming a much nicer person and even being more flexible and kind. He speaks with his brother and his brother admits to eavesdropping. Instead of being angry, Atisha decides if this practice helps his brother be a nicer person, it could help anyone! :-0 ;-) He had lots of raw material to work with!

We tend to see awaiting death as a time when everything stops, however, some of the greatest learning occurs for many people during this period. When Socrates was in prison awaiting execution, he heard another prisoner singing a lyric and begged to be taught this song. "For what reason?" the fellow prisoner inquired. Socrates responded, "So I can die knowing one thing more." Tonglen practice was taught to lepers and other people with fatal (at the time) diseases. It helped these people. Today tonglen is being taught more widely in hospice and other terminal situations too. The person breathes in with the wish that their sickness and what they are feeling will help others. The meditation may be, "May I feel this completely so my brothers and sisters may be free of it." This is released in the out breath with the person breathing out healing energies. Although the intent is not curing, it has all kinds of results at the spirit level. These individuals' pain and despair has meaning and is expanded from the individual, to others they may know. The practice can be expanded to encompasses all others who may be feeling this also.

The practice is not so easy. A sales person was obviously under a lot of stress yesterday and really was annoying me and trying to turn the tables on me making me the jerk. I forgot to use Tonglen. Lol. I am still annoyed and I am feeling like she is the jerk. I know not to let someone else be a jerk but I am sitting with the energy. ;-)

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It is important to note that I am not a meditation teacher. I have read a few comments that indicate a student should be practicing with a teacher formally to try the practice although there are books and recordings fully available on the market. I have used the lectures of Pema Chodron in my practice and find her excellent as a teacher!

Here are a few links for anyone who is interested in reading more expert discussions of the practice:

The Tonglen and Mind Training Sitehttp://lojongmindtraining.com/


Mind Training Audio Meditation
http://lojongmindtraining.com/sound.aspx

Abandonment and Finding What You Really Are!

As a child, I made some things very special. A disability was a point of interest. Many people, like the man missing an arm, had 100 pirate stories about how he lost it. I only know that because when you are very small, people let you ask the same questions 100 times. If someone told me they were adopted, like a friend did when I was small, I wondered what it was like to suddenly know this thing. I secretly wished I could openly look at a person with the glass eye and peer deeply into it so that I could see what it looked like. Mom never would let me. Many years later I did meet someone who makes glass eyes for a living as an adult. (It is a very unusual and artistic employment pursuit.) I never wanted to have any of these things myself, unless you count super human strength and to fight like the guy on Matrix, or the gift of invisibility... x-ray vision...

Now that I am older, I notice how well some people do with the changes in their bodies. One of my friends, who is very busty, had breast cancer and had a breast removed. She never had reconstructive surgery stating that she could not stand the pain of having surgery there again. She did have a special breast made that is a artistic copy and very realistic prosthesis matching exactly what her breast did look like. I saw her downtown one day and she is apparently so comfortable about the whole thing that she sometimes forgets to wear her breast. So there she was on a bright sunny day with one boob up high in the very center of her chest moving rhythmically with her pace. Cyclops came to mind. I felt I had to tell her and I said, "You forgot something today." She thought for a moment and responded with a laugh, "OH! I am a unicorn. I did not even wear my hang around the house boob." (That is a sock. PERHAPS one of the widest used prosthetic devices.) This was a new thought to me. A hang around the house boob. This lady has a neighbor who has a glass eye. He has a really nice one for going downtown and he also has a "hang around the house" eye. If he is really comfortable with someone, he apparently does not put in an eye at all.

Well, this all comes to feeling differently about something than one might suspect. I was reading "Exploring Harry Potter" by Elizabeth D. Schafer the other day. One of my friends said that it is ridiculous to have a literary study about a children's story, but I don't think so. Anything that makes someone one of the wealthiest people in the world deserves study. For one thing, this book appeals to adults and children as well as both sexes and to people representing many different cultures around the globe!

I have read all the Potter novels so far and enjoy them very much. The stories are said to speak to something primal in humans. Harry wants to know himself, and what he is. Like all of us, he would like a better understanding of the world he lives in and the forces of it. "Harry is like a lot of humans."

Harry Potter does not stand out without his actions. He is small for his age, not especially attractive but nice looking, nor is he the top of the heap in intelligence, although he is smart like a lot of children are. He takes some abuse and also gets some special notice because of his history which he only recently found out about. He has bad days, and he has days that make him feel on top of the world. He likes sports. Among Harry Potter's special gifts are his ability to take the actions he feels are right and fair even when it bends or breaks the rules. Usually he breaks the rules when it is a matter of life and death and he is strong enough to take the action. This is what makes him a legend. Despite his own mistreatment by his foster family, he does not participate in hurtful actions towards others including discrimination against "mudbloods and muggles." He somehow naturally overcomes his difficult upbringing and was all the nicer for it.

Lord Ragland's study of archetypes, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama identifies categories of archetypes including characters, situations and symbols. These are some of those observations included in the book "Exploring Harry Potter":

The hero in every culture experiences a series of well-marked adventures that strongly suggest a ritualistic pattern. Ragland finds that traditionally the hero's mother is a virgin, the circumstances of his birth are unusual, and at birth some attempt is made to kill him. He is, however, spirited away and reared by foster parents. Little is known of his early childhood, but as he nears maturity he returns to his future kingdom where he learns some of the secrets of his past. After a victory over a king or wild beast, he marries a princess, becomes king, and reigns uneventfully. After losing favor with the gods, he is driven from the kingdom and meets a mysterious death, often at the top of a hill. His body is not buried but resides in one or holy sepulchers.

So we have Moses, Superman, Harry Potter and perhaps Lighthart (an internet friend of mine who lost her father) plus many others. The difference is, some people live the archetype in a way. The Quest of the hero may be a stronger need to find out about oneself, since the defining role of the parents in self-identity may be less strong leading to the greater need of the hero's task: know thyself. Then comes the initiation or the surviving of a ritualistic act transforming them into adulthood with knowledge. Of course there is always the journey.

You might want to try standing in front of buildings full of the oppressed masses extending your arms out and exclaiming, "FREE MY PEOPLE." Try leaping tall buildings in a single bound. (Start out on the ground and maybe with doghouses first to see if this is for you or not.) Go to King's Cross Station and see if you can get through gate nine and three-quarters. If you can, enroll in wizarding school. Then again, you can just be yourself and find the treasure of what you really are. Many of us are on this path.

Is Religion Necessary?

Art is Life,
Music is Truth,
Television is furniture.
(Source of original quote unknown.)

I was speaking to an artist who does beautiful and very unusual work at a book sale. That is what he quoted to me. We were speaking because it turns out that we had a lot of the same interests. I am learning to paint, we both have been in the martial arts and love traveling. I smiled and replied:


"Television is up to you, it is about what you dial up."
---Evonne


He laughed, knowing we do watch what we wish to on television when we are adults and get out of it according to what we tune to. I have seen many great arts on television that I would have never experienced otherwise. I saw the San Francisco Ballet Company performing Cinderella on tape for instance. Seeing those large mean playing the ugly stepsisters was an inspiration. :-D

Lots of stuff is behind television. We see so much of it, we simply take it for granted. Great artists draw those cartoons. We see those pudgy little Rugrats running around and don't give it a thought. IT IS DIFFICULT TO ANIMATE RUNNING! People study live models in motion that their cartoons are drawn after. The process is painstaking. Great and gifted artists make the music that gives the feeling to many of our movies that we take for granted. If you ever watch a very pensive scene with the music turned off, you may not feel the tension at all. The music replaces the vibration that we would feel in real life had we really been there watching! Artists design and paint the backdrop of the scenes that also affect us. How real or unreal is it? Is it beautiful? Does all the bright reds and yellows give us tension? Are the angles just slightly askew to create tension? That is all done for us by all those artists in the background bringing the picture to life. Television involves writing. Who wrote the screen plays? Who read and interpreted the book? Who read the screen plays and the books and became the characters? Television is a victim of "too much." There is so much choice on there, that some people just pass it off as garbage. Those who look deeper find wonderful stuff and can ferret out all the greatness. Air and water are plentiful too. We should take care with them.

Television reminds me of religion too. Is it necessary? There certainly is a lot of it. We have freedom of religion now so we have the opportunities as adults to explore the "truths" tucked within many of the religions. I find that most religions contain gemstones within their words and actions. There have been some great non-religious people, but I normally find a religious influence in their lives although they may have departed from it. Others start out with no religions and discover it riding the wave to great heights becoming our famous teaching Masters, sages and saints or whatever the particular religions call them.

Some seem to transcend religion lifting above it into the simple truth. I notice that some religions give us keys to transcend them. After we see more clearly, I believe we lift into a more simple way of being that is simply closer to the truth of what we really are. Some of these keys are hidden and you may not agree with me. Buddhism tells us if we see the Buddha, we must kill him. :-) At first that struck me as a very violent statement and I don't believe a Buddha ever said that, but someone else. But when I think about it, it is something in our minds. A Buddha is not really a person. A person is a type of temporary vehicle that we may be right now but we won't always be a walking talking human. People come and go from this earth. If we really see the Buddha, we are ready to lift off to a place where perception is different and time does not amount to even as much as a blink of an eye. We are perhaps simply essence.



To look at this question, I asked myself, "What is it that we are becoming." Well, I don't really know. Perhaps we will become another person if reincarnation is true. Some think that we will become angels:

I died as mineral and became a plant.

I died as plant and rose to animal.

I died as animal and I was human.

Why should I fear?

When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die human,

to soar with angels blessed above.

And when I sacrifice my angel soul I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

---Rumi Jalaluddin





What if we are becoming a universe?

Ordinary death is getting rid of one life so that you can live again; nirvana is getting rid of all lives so you don't live as an individual, you start living as the universe, you start living as God. Then there is no need to come back to the body, to the mind, to the ego.

---Zen, The Path of Paradox by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh




If we are really becoming a universe, we will probably not be going to Sunday School or catechism anymore. Religion is one of the paths to something higher. For me it is a great help. Religion is one of the places where the great thinking has been preserved. I can go to the references and see people who have had the same experiences that I have and have gone way past that. Knowing they went very far and reading how they interpret the event is of great help and consolation to me.

People have their own forms of religion. People have had paths of music, art, and literature that have brought them way past the point of what we can grasp as normal human potential. Their lives have not always been easy since they are so much more than "ahead of their times." Their paintings don't sell, they seem to be a little towards insane, and may even have some difficulty adjusting or getting accustomed to the way the world really is. Glen Gould comes to mind. There are a few good movies about his existence as a great man of music. He quit the piano concert scene and went into a very private life with his music, only doing interviews through the radio over a telephone. He felt that with the new technology his music could be shared more perfectly on recording.

When our sciences (I include religion as one of the sciences) become more cohesive, I think our world will be a much better place. I like how the Dali Lama embraces science. He is definitely ahead of his time. When science, religion, government, and economics converge, I think the world could be a much better place. Each has something to add to the other. If you are interested in this subject, you might enjoy this publication which is available as a free pdf download at this link:


http://www.blogger.com/app/
Worldwatch Paper #164: Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World
Gary Gardner



I do understand that anything we touch can go in one direction or the other rather than remain in balance. We can be horrible, manipulating religion for war, false justice and any other number of things. We can also be impossibly good and all live like very religious people to the extent where we forget to have children and take care of our physical selves.There is a marvelous rabbinical myth that the ancient sages once actually captured Yetzer ha-Ra personified. The Yetzer ha-Ra roughly translated is our "evil" impulses. These great leaders were going to slay Yetzer ha-Ra but they realized that procreation and creativity would cease in the world. Instead, they blinded the Yetzer in order to weaken its power and released it. The rabbinic commentary on Genesis reads:

Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman said: The words "behold it is good" refer to the impulse to good, and the words, "behold it is very good" (Gen. 1:31) refer to the impulse to evil. But how can the evil impulse be called "very good?" Because...were it not for the evil impulse, a man would not build a house, take a wife, beget children, or engage in commerce... (Genesis Rabbah 9:7)

If we did not have religion, we would find what is there somewhere else. It is our nature to attempt to discover what is higher than ourselves. It is inside of us and we wish to find our "treasure house." I believe that is part of the purpose of being here to grow. We would ask others, form groups, and have practices passed down through families assisting us with this. Perhaps we would be like the villages where people living close to nature have their every action being something spiritual so they never forget their place in nature and the thankfulness for receiving it.

Is religion necessary? I believe it is an important stage of development that we would find somewhere, organized or not. We all are searching for the truth and trying to find the station and tune it in.