Experience... with the heart.

david · Post by **david** » Sat Oct 03, 1998 2:29 am

I think this forum is a good idea.

Many of us come to the arts with the desire for personal power to overcome our fear. If we can't get beyond this, then we have lost. Even the strongest can be defeated. Everyone must die. Our training can bestow so much more. Practice with an open heart and learn to experience fully the ephemeral beauty that is life.

The following is paragraph from David Lowry's wonderful book, Persimmon Wind, a sequel to his Autumn Lightning.

"The world is full of experts in the analytical or theoretical sense of that word. They are authorities on military tactics although they have never had a shot fired at them. Childless psychologists speak endlessly and write books on the art of raising youngsters. The bugeisha respects analysis, values theory. Be he recognizes that such knowledge is etic in nature, knowledge outside and untempered by actual physical experience. He knows too, that a culture (or a person), if it is to have complete balance and diversity, must e complemented by a dose of the emic, the sweat, the pain and the pure expression of energy and motion."

Practice with your fear, anger, love, joy and hopes.

david

[This message has been edited by david (edited 10-02-98).]

Jackie Olsen · Post by **Jackie Olsen** » Sun Oct 04, 1998 8:54 pm

To action alone hast thou the right, but never to the fruits thereof. Be thou neither motivated by the fruits of action, nor be thou attached to inaction.

-- Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

And non-attachment is hard, eh? As you say, many of us come into martial arts to deal with our fears. The stronger emtioon always takes over the weaker one. As we are dealing with our feelings and learning to transmute them, we come to the realization that if one were to overcome the fear of death ... then all other emotions, all other fears become nothing to the martial artist. Therefore death becomes our ally, rather than something to fear.

david · Post by **david** » Mon Oct 05, 1998 12:28 am

"When all the knots that strangle the heart
are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal."

(Katha Upanishads, 11.314-15)

Striving for a goal is futile. In the end, nothing can be kept. Nothing remains the same. We can only journey and, at best, experience fully the process.

Jackie, glad to have you moderating this forum...

david

Jackie Olsen · Post by **Jackie Olsen** » Mon Oct 05, 1998 11:32 am

Thank you, David,

... it is my pleasure. I look forward to the many mirrors of my soul that this forum can provide...

Jackie