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To all Karatekas,

"If you don't stand for something, you'll
fall for anything."- F.Rosevelt

I read this quote long ago, and it changed the way I saw myself and my Karate.
I would agree that soaking-up information is very important, but it is of greater importance to become your own person. In my years of training I have benefitted from the knowledge of my superiors, yet I have never stopped questioning. It is my belief that knowledge leads to more knowledge... and that the path never ends.

"It is better to never have started, once started, better finish!" -Dan Millman

My challenge to all Karatekas is: Never be too satisfied with the initial information.
Always question and try new ideas.

Recently I spent a whole class with one exercise. I showed it to them and asked them to come up with 20 different applications... One move lead to another and like the alphabet, many new "words" came into being.

Look at the same thing differently...

OPEN GATE,
Orion Mott

Anthony-San,

Right! That's it! When I find sometimes that
I'm going through the motions, I have to stop an re-evaluate myself.

Am I moving, or is moving happening through me...sometimes it is hard to say. There have been times that while doing Sanchin, that I feel a surge of a type of "connectiveness" to everything: the floor, the air...etc.

This conflicts with my earlier statment of never being satisfied. For in this moment my mind is not present (ie. nagging to be filled).

There are two sides of this coin: the spirit and the mind. Without the mind there isn't technical understanding, and without the spirit there is not a sense of "connectiveness" or "beingness" or "Sanchin State of Mind."

Open Gate,
Orion

Orion,

I can relate to your thoughts of connectedness when you do Sanchin .... it is a feeling of expansiveness, openess and timelessness. It reminds me of this Tibetan poem:

Breathe ... Breath again.
Smile. Relax. Arrive
Where you are.
Be natural ... open to effortlessness.
To being rather than doing.
Drop everything ... let go.
Enjoy for a moment
This marvelous joy of [moving] meditation.

Jackie

Jackie-San,

Thank-you for your words, and I have some for
you too, but not necessarily about Sanchin:

"What is life?
It is the flash of the firefly in the night;
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time;
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

The Dying words of Crowfoot,
Blackfoot Orator 1890.

1

Thank you Orion ... what a powerful reminder to live each moment, each day as if it were our last.

Jackie...