The Power of Clarity

The able-bodied among us walk effortlessly, without conscious thought.

Place these same people in a dark, unfamiliar space, and ask them to take a step forward. How does it compare?

Give the stranger in the dark, unfamiliar space your verbal assurance that all will be well. "Trust me." Now ask him to take that step.

Have some "peers" limping on crutches or holding icepacks in the waiting area. "He told me it would be alright, but..."

Offer another person a new technique from the Ministry of Silly Walks and tell him that, so long as he walks just like this when he enters the dark room, he'll be fine.

How about telling a final candidate that the experiment starts on the other side of the room, which unfortunately just blew an electrical circuit, knocking out the lights. No problem--just a straight shot across and we can get started.

In each case--except perhaps for the last--direct attention was brought to our innate ability to walk, each time with varying results. These other steps were rooted in thought, doubt, distrust, and maybe even false confidence, and each showed a physical result. If I tell you you will stumble, or even if I tell you that you will not, I direct you to doubt your ability--and it likely will show. If I tell you there are fresh cookies on the other side of the room, though, it's likely you will not take one conscious step along the way. This is clarity: Your body knows what to do to get to the cookies and it will adapt to the situation as necessary.

* * *

I met a salesman who was not confident in his presentation. He knew the product had public perception problems. He studied the material to assure me--and perhaps himself--that the perception problems were unfounded. In the end, as I listened, all I heard was his doubt. Worse, all of this was doubt that he brought with him, since I offered neither resistance nor challenge of my own. Maybe he was rooted in false confidence in someone else's proven process, maybe not. It doesn't matter: He was clearly struggling with himself.

Maybe with practice these skills will integrate like walking, on call to achieve his intention. Perhaps that comes with experiencing a sequence of successes, like a child taking those first shaky steps. In truth, though, situations such as this might not require long periods of practice and sacrifice to master responses for each and every situation; instead, mastering taking one step from the top of our 100-foot pole should be sufficient to defeat your one, true enemy.

Masakatsu Agatsu Katsuhayabi!

True Victory is Victory over Oneself in this Instant!

Acting with clarity does not guarantee any particular kind of success... However, given that you are already dead--as the samurai might say--why not step boldly? Why would you defeat yourself before ever facing the enemy? Why would you offer him the means to kill you?

The Sword Mountain practices are designed to help you recognize and then shatter the barriers you place before you on your path to freedom in every situation. If you see yourself in any of the above, do contact us sooner rather than later so we can help you rediscover your footing. 

That is our purpose.

2012: Year of the Koan

It is a rare event, but I do occasionally browse the stats for this website and puzzle over why Google directed you to me from so far away, why anyone would be interested in that old post, or why you picked it up and thought to build a commentary around it. Sometimes it's a worthwhile exercise, like last night when I saw that someone found "News from Inside the Cave," a post from December 2010. Go ahead and click it if you like--I did; it'll pop up in a new window so you don't lose your place here.

One year later, I can see where I was. Now, I can plot where I am. Join them with a line and I can see a trajectory of sorts. I can say positively that, in spite of all of the chaos we encounter from day to day in life, I met those objectives in one form or another, though not necessarily as I would have envisioned. Form, it seems, is not guaranteed...

If we took a snapshot today, I would say that formal Aikido practice has faded away. I saw that coming as my Zen practice grew: Aikido became a laboratory for exploring Zen--and particularly the koan--on every level, and progressed to become one means to convey some of what I found to people who spoke Aikido. As this trend progressed, Aikido began to lose its distinction. Focusing on integration, individual components dissolved as any situation became an opportunity to practice the same. Today I will say that, given my own particular circumstances, maintaining an Aikido practice is simply requiring too much conscious effort; as such, you should note in the sidebar that scheduled Aikido classes no longer appear.

What about formal Zen practice? Interestingly enough, it's taken the same path as Aikido. Formal Zen practice became a laboratory to explore "True Zen," and then formal practice time became a method to convey findings to people who speak Zen. Now what is it? For now, we should take the last sentence from the Aikido paragraph and replace "Aikido" with "Zen."

Very well then. What should become of the Tuesday and Thursday, 6:30-8:00 P.M. time slots? We will dedicate this time to public koan practice.

Personally, I can say that koan study has been the most direct, most valuable, and most revealing key to my practice, informing my Aikido and Zen practices, then unlocking other aspects of my life. Koan practice is infinitely portable: it can occur simply in conversation, whether over coffee, over dinner, on a park bench, or on a walk around a lake; then, when you are alone, you can re-examine the exchanges more deeply. You may spar with advanced practitioners to sharpen your skills and learn some new techniques, or perhaps you will be thrown when challenging a stranger. After all, koan exchanges are occurring in plain sight all around you... You will see them if you can tune in to the conversation just beneath the words.

So, for the next round, I challenge you to join me for public koan practice. Local folks are welcome to join me in person, and we may open up via the internet (Skype, Google+, Twitter, etc.) for those more remote. Watch the Twitter and Facebook feeds (links to the right) for details.

I will reconsider formal Zen and Aikido practices later for those who show promise with the koan...

Sound interesting? Your feedback is welcome!

2012: Keep One Point

Speech and silence, movement and stillness. Each heartbeat and every breath. All the comings, all the goings. Everything accumulated or found, all that was discarded or lost. Up until this point in your life, what have they served?

Now, you wake up where you are, within your own circumstances. You sense you have a previously determined trajectory and momentum. Welcome to a show already in progress. Now, who are you?

... and what is your destination?

Hold this point knowing you are already there. Now, open your eyes and look around: What matches and what does not? Every thing and every thought. Every sensation and every emotion. Whatever catches your attention: The entire universe presents itself to assist you on this journey. Open doors allow your passage; closed doors seal off wrong paths. Ease of movement reaffirms your choice while obstacles and temptations test your faith. Those who appear to assist you along the way are blessings, while those who depart were meant only to take to this far.

If ever you lose sight of your one point, simply return to it. Your having strayed is an opportunity to sharpen your focus.

Finally, know that if all is lost, all possessions, all relationships, your health, or even your life, then this too was part of something larger--even if you cannot yet comprehend it.

Does it sound difficult? What if I showed you that you already live this way? One might say that where you are now, everything you experience as you encounter the unpredictable events of life, is precisely a reflection of your one point... but maybe you just do not know what point you are holding. Perhaps the point you are holding allows you to shift points as you go. Perhaps the point you hold is "no point." Do you know what it is? If not, perhaps you are holding the point where you are looking for the point... Does it sound silly? Perhaps you hold the point of protecting your own ground...

What is the point? It is your choice...

Once we fully understand the practice of keeping one point, we are ready to find the point that contains every point, including perhaps itself. From there, you may extend yourself to the edges of the universe and beyond.

Join us at Sword Mountain to begin. Your destination is less than one breath from here.

Happy New Year! Let this be the one.

"I Reach Out from the Inside"

... but the outside is inside, too, no?

Yeah, that's delirious Zen-speak. You guys know what I mean, right? [Wink and secret handshake go here.]

I've been sick and at home for a few days, away from the office, away from the dojo and zendo, even away from the coffee shops. It's left a notable vacuum in my routine and interactions, including both the pleasant and the irritating. "Part of me misses them all," I reminisce as I swallow another NyQuil tablet...

Suddenly, I wake up in a familiar but alien land. All other things being equal, once the shock passees, do you suppose I would instinctively seek out something like an office, a dojo, a zendo, a coffee shop, and so forth? Would you further speculate that I would seek out both those pleasant and irritating interactions I've come to expect?

Those things I seek never existed in this new place... So, where are all of these things I'm looking for?

There is a reasonable, self-help-ish type of answer to the question: All of that stuff is in your head--that is, your brain, the stuff between your ears, or maybe even distributed elsewhere throughout body. Your habits, your recollections, your perceptions--all of these are just a skewed overlay above the physical world, our reality. If we see through or see beyond our concepts, ideas, and so on, we can finally see reality clearly. Now it makes sense, right?

I wouldn't be so sure if I were you...

If you go off beyond the horizons of time and space to where all the Zen masters, the gurus, the Buddhas, God Almighty and you all concur with one mind that this is truth, you have arrived in Hell's innermost circle and surrounded yourself with the most perverse of demons feasting on your flesh...

Fortunately, from there the actual truth is within your reach.

Find the answer beyond their answer. I have faith in you.

... just don't get stuck looking for the video with that guy holding the boombox along the way.

Disclaimer: No NyQuil was consumed in the production of this delusion.

No Rhyme and No Reason

Traditionally, I use this space to sort through my own thinking. Since my exploration gravitates toward the practices of Zen and Aikido, it's natural that my writing reflects any insights--however minor--I find there in the overlap. Going back through the posts, two things are fairly clear:

• I want to find the unity of these two studies, using Zen to deepen Aikido practice, using Aikido to deepen Zen practice, going deeper and deeper; and,
• I want to show how those insights might be useful--whether inside or outside of either study--to Everyday Life.

There really is no rhyme or reason for the activity except perhaps to understand myself through my own "karma"--through my own habits, likes, dislikes, and the unique circumstances of this life (including language and diction). Consider that one culmination of the activity itself is the words that I have placed on the screen for me to read, using my karma--my living in this particular time and place where blogging is possible--to show me my own mind in reflection.

It is a curious cycle, no? Two activities which are outwardly very different sit in juxtaposition, one very physical requiring some mental dexterity and one almost entirely mental but occasionally taxing the body: Could they possibly be the same? As long as there is doubt, there is room to explore, finding deeper and deeper insights, continuously generating new blog posts and experiments for the dojo...

We will get this mind and body unified eventually... one way or another.

* * *

It is said that there was once a (mostly) congenial debate between two schools of Zen: a doctrinal school, focusing upon study of the scriptures, and the other patriarchal, focusing on the study of the koans. The debate went on and on, each side questioning and answering from within its own frame of reference, maybe saying the same thing, maybe saying something different, maybe being understood, maybe not--who knows? But I imagine they had to stop for lunch or a bathroom break eventually...

Anyway, once a student came to Master Pa-Lung and asked: 

Are the patriarchal teachings and doctrinal teachings the same or different?

Master Pa-Lung replied:

When a chicken is cold, it climbs up into the tree; when a duck is cold, it goes under the water.

It may seem as if the Master answered the question almost reasonably, but I am not so sure he answered the question we believe he was asked. We followed the Master's trail to the fork in the road, but now there are no footprints in any direction!

So, where do you go from here?

Has your Greatest Problem already been Solved?

Have you ever considered that the biggest problem in your life--the one haunting your every waking moment, the one defying every attempt to escape--has already been solved?

Let's go back a few thousand years to this classic bit wisdom of from Ecclesiastes (1:9, NIV):

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

If you're in a bad situation, reading those lines might make you feel worse. Maybe we read "This sucks, it's always sucked, and--guess what?--it's going to suck again." Trust me: I understand... and really, I know you do too. We all know that when we're in a bad mood, we see more of it all around us. We are prone to look at the flip side of whatever pithy quotes our chipper friends offer, even recasting the friend as an annoyance. We'll argue to maintain our point of view. We'll even make winning the argument more important than solving the problem. Maybe we're just not done exploring the problem...

But really, is it even remotely possible that there is a message of hope in that verse? If so, would it not be worth exploring, even if just for a little bit?

Read the verse: this thing your suffering with? It's appeared time and time again in one form or another. It's also been resolved, time and time again and in any number of ways. Sometimes maybe that means the problem is eradicated once and for all; sometimes it means a mechanism has evolved--or is ready to evolve--to handle it.

Just like "nature abhors a vacuum," nature is not too pleased with accumulation either. When something appears frequently enough, the way to deal with it evolves as well. By "something," I don't necessarily mean something tangible--your problem qualifies as a something--and by "deal with it," I really mean "transform it." That problem that you're holding on to? Somewhere there's probably a person or a system that's starving to help because you're not feeding it.

So, have you two met?

Sometimes you really don't know that there are options available. Sometimes you don't know all of the options. Sometimes you know the options but resist them. Sometimes you believe you have no other options.... In the end though, time continues to march and the problem evolves or resolves. Even if you move to release the problem's hold on you through extraordinary means, we know the problem only transforms and continues on like a wave...

Let's focus on the two pieces here that you can control, whatever the circumstances: belief (or, attachment) and resistance. Can you imagine a tree that resisted falling so as not to inconvenience the forest floor? Resistance and attachment come hand-in-hand; we don't have to consciously know our attachments, but they are evident when we resist. Resistance--your conscious attention to some kind of exertion--is your call. It's not right or wrong, per se--the system is ready for you either way--but if it doesn't matter, perhaps it's not necessary to resist at all? Releasing resistance is ultimately releasing a belief... so, okay, maybe there was really only one thing you could control after all :-)

If we needed to choose beliefs to hold, perhaps it would be better to choose the likes of faith, hope, and charity. Know that things will be better even if the path is unknown, know that there are people who can help, and--given the choice--be willing to err on the side of helping others. Trust that in the end the right things will happen, the right people and relationships will be in your life, and so forth. See what comes, what goes, and what remains when you are effortlessly you.

With a subtle doubt in your belief that all is lost, you create an opening to find solutions. Believing that a solution must exist, you can set off to engage the world and find it. Without resistance associated with trying to maintain an existing situation, saving face, saving relationships, and so forth, you can freely state your need.

Still, one day your body will die. As for how you live along the way as you "wake up" in all of these precarious situations? That's entirely your choice... and maybe you can pick up some of the wisdom mentioned elsewhere in Ecclesiastes as a result :-)

Job Seeker Zen

Why did I spot this quote in my Google+ timeline last night?

"A job seeker is a masterless slave." ~Steve Pavlina (blog)

Career, job hunting, work-life balance, difficult workplace situations, making ends meet, ... These are actively on my mind these days. We know from our studies that when an idea takes root in the mind like this, we begin to see it all around us. Throughout the day our different observations, conversations, and so forth each bump up against everything from our habits to our beliefs and onward to whatever else we are holding in our heads, regardless of whether we are conscious of them. Before we know it, it's the topic of the day in Zen class; it's shared conversation with friends over lunch; it's taking note of the economic and unemployment reports; and it's spotting serendipitous nuggets like Steve's quote resonating with us. Suddenly you see that everybody else was in the same boat with you all along? Maybe the problem was worse than you thought... Before you know it, you are giving an instinctive response from within your capabilities and circumstances, perhaps writing a blog post about the phenomenon itself. ;-)

Now if life were moving along as expected, would I have noticed Steve's post at all? It may have been in the timeline, sure, but would I have really seen it? The mind is continuously inundated with sensory input and thought, but most of it arguably goes unnoticed. Just consider for example that even when your eyes are closed, there is still seeing happening even if it's only the back of your eyelids. So, what is it when something as simple as a short Google+ post hooks your conscious attention? What circumstances were ripening inside me, ready for an encounter with such a random trigger? How much pressure must have been building to have me change course from my regularly scheduled day and write this essay in response?

Pause and consider:

• Did I have any choice in how I responded?
• What does my response show about my mind?
• How would a different mind have responded?
• Can you change your mind?

For the jobseeker, those are particularly poignant questions. After all, is this not the nature of the interview process itself? Have you ever considered what happens if an interviewer senses desperation in your responses--that is, when you are more focused upon needing a job--the scarcity or lack-- rather than evaluating the job in front of you? How are your answers received?

Steve has written about an exercise I believe he calls "manifesting pennies." In short form, we do this: Absolutely know that there is spare change lying on the sidewalks in plain sight, review the sensation of how happy we would be to find some of those coins, release those very thoughts trusting that they will take care of themselves, and then set off on a carefree walk. Over time, we undoubtedly begin to spot the spare change. Each successful find brings joy and reinforces the belief, spurring on the activity. Occasionally we may hit a dry spell and question whether the experiment is working, but we don't get stuck in that doubt; we revisit the belief and the feelings and try again another time.

Now, if we secretly hold the suspicion that the experiment will not work but set out to debunk it, will we be more likely to be happy finding a coin or proving ourselves right in finding no coin? Either way, the function--confirmation bias--is the same: Both people will get busy with their beliefs and tend toward eventually having a jar that confirms their beliefs.

Consider a different potential problem: Suppose I fail to let thoughts about that penny quest go before setting off on my walk? If during my walk my mind is focused upon the details of the experiment, when will my mind have time to scan for coins? Can it really do both? (Remember the desperate interviewer?) Is it necessary to consciously direct the search for coins with thought, or is being open to finding coins sufficient? Can't we just trust the body and mind to do the search without supervision? When my mind is locked onto a thought or pattern that is taking away from the "idle cycle" tasks at hand, how can I release the thought and get back to business?

Just like Steve's quote, I can only take note of a coin on the street because my mind was "tuned" to recognize it. It would not have been any more there or less there either way--meaning my belief did not cause it to appear in any mundane sense; however, it would not have been there in any esoteric sense unless I was predisposed to see it. The quote hooked my conscious attention. I "manifested" Steve and his quote when I gave them meaning.

We should see that faith in the "manifesting pennies" exercise creates a change in mind which in turn spurs a change in physical habit. It may take some training to adopt the new programing, but it is doable. When not otherwise distracted, your mind will have your eyes scanning the sidewalk for shiny things in hope of a find (or a failure to find, depending on your disposition). You may even change your habits further to take longer or more frequent walks than you otherwise would. In essence, incorporating the new belief and everything associated with it fundamentally puts the auto-piloted aspects of your life on a new course in potentially unpredictable ways. After all, you might miss a potential mate's gaze if your eyes are watching the ground; similarly, people who might otherwise engage you might think you too strange if you suddenly break a conversation to pick up a penny. Then again, you might find someone who appreciates your thriftiness or your pragmatism! There is no way to tell...

Now, can we extrapolate and see how all of this this might apply to the job seeker? Did you see the parallels?

The worthwhile Zen masters and the personal development specialists alike make a deep study of these functions and share their insights, giving others the opportunity to free themselves with their examples. While all of this is a concern for me, expect to see more posts delving deeper into the study and the applications. I'm working now to take our insights from our Zen and martial studies and to make them applicable to the job hunt, giving job seekers different tools and perspectives to shake free of past problems and to put success back in motion.

Do you have a story or some insight to share? Would you like to learn more? I will have the most relevant material together by year's end for a seminar at the Baltimore Zen Center. Many of our class discussions leading up to the event will focus in this area, fleshing out the applications. I welcome everyone's participation Comment on this post or email JobSeekerZen@SwordMountain.org with interest and inquiries!