The Mind in the Martial Arts & Eastern Thought: Part 3: Emptiness.

The late Joseph Campbell tells a wonderful story about the time he was in Japan for a conference on Religion. He overheard a
conversation between one of his fellow delegates, a social philosopher from New York, and a Shinto Priest. The philosopher said to the priest “I have seen a good many of your practices and ceremonies now, but I just don’t get your Ideology, or your Theology”. The Shinto Priest shook his head slowly “Ideology! I don’t think we have that” he replied “And theology! No, I don’t think we have that either” then added quietly “We just dance”. The question was a product of the conditioned mind; the answer came from a realisation of emptiness. It is hard to pick up any book about Eastern Traditions without very soon seeing the word “Emptiness”. Is this something we just skip over, writing it off as just something “Oriental”? Or is it, because of it’s repeated use, is it worth investigating, to see if it has any meaning for us, and our Martial Arts Practice?

Words are not the thing. Paradoxically, we cannot really discuss “Emptiness”, simply because it is beyond words. However, because an understanding is so important in many ways, we will have to use language, which really is quite inadequate for our investigation, but which may trigger the reader to his or her own realisation. At this point it maybe as well to say what we mean
by “Realisation” What for example is the difference between “Knowledge” and “Realisation”? Well, let me say that when I started training in Martial Arts many years ago, I was always told that the “Stances” were very important. Fine, we hear this day in and day out, and in the beginning our balance, timing and coordination probably leaves a lot to be desired. However, knowledge alone is not enough, practice alone is not enough, but it is where we have to start. Eventually armed with this knowledge and with constant practice, realisation will be born. I remember many years ago, after I had been training for possibly some 10 to 12 years (It’s now 23) I suddenly have this absolute and complete understanding regarding footwork, and stances, dawn on me. I was teaching a self defence class at a local college, and in the class along with mainly raw beginners were many Judo, Karate and Tae Kwon-Do people, of course I was trying to teach internal methods. I say trying, because although I had this group of Martial Artists present, not one of then could move with any fluidity or power, in fact the raw beginners had more idea. Now all those from a martial background had been taught footwork etc, but none of them had built it into their subconscious mind/being, therefore they had to think about moving, resulting in mechanical, and uneconomical effort. So for me, the importance of stance now became a different kind of knowledge, something I would never need to learn again, because whatever I did from now on I would never consciously need to worry about moving correctly. Even learning new forms, the footwork falls into place in a faster and more natural way. And as we know, when our body/mind/energy and spirit moves as one unit, then our practice becomes powerful, but there is no way that it can happen by training the mind and body etc; in a way that is not totally integrated. So after many years of training, this wholeness will just be there. And you won’t even notice, until one day when you realise that one of many steps has been reach.

As we have said, knowledge is out there (external), realisation is knowledge internalised, instantly! So lets look at Emptiness, what on earth does it mean? How can we begin to investigate something that is described in the books as.... having no inherent existence? Lets start slowly, the conditioned mind is necessary, otherwise we couldn’t function, we need to use our mind to run the business, make a living, look after our families and ourselves etc. But the conditioned mind is old, in fact thousands of years old. Full of ideas, ambitions, loves, hates, prejudices and self-importance. It is also full of fear. So how can a mind that is so exhausted with propping up it’s own self-image in the world, be open, spontaneous, and whole? Well if the conditioned, sometimes called grasping mind (a good description appears in the Bon Mother Tantra as “Active manifestation mind”) is thought of as the prison, then the realisation of this emptiness (empty nature) may well be the key to our liberation.

Emptiness (Wu Chi in Chinese, Shunyata in Sanskrit, sTongpanyid in Tibetan) is the natural state of all things, according to Buddhism, Taoism, Bon and many others of the enlightenment schools. For example, the essence of famous Heart Sutra of Buddhism says, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form”. So, what does that mean you may well ask? Well leaving aside for the moment modern Physics, with its inability to find anything “solid” in the Universe, we must try to understand it, simply by observation. As it is said that nothing exists from it’s own side, in other words everything that arises is interdependent, that is, everything is dependant on causes, and therefore must be empty of any inherent existence. Also emptiness does not exist, as an object in it’s own right. For a moment, just consider this, go into the garden and look at a flower, then ask yourself “Where was this flower one hundred years ago? Now ask yourself where will this flower be in one hundreds years from now? It has arisen from emptiness and returned to emptiness or as the Tao Te Ching states returns to the “one” You may say for example, that the flower appeared because of the natural cycle of nature, flowers growing, flowering, dying and seeding. O.k. good point, that is called dependant arising, now go back, millions of years to when the Earth was a molten rock. Now, where is that flower? How did it originate? Because its here, now, right under your nose! Or as the say in Zen “Show me your original face before you were born, now speak”! O.K! So, if you haven’t given up by now, and gone down the pub. Lets just look at why on earth we should bother with what to many people will appear to be so much crazy Eastern mumbo-jumbo? What relationship hasemptiness to Martial Arts? In our Internals Arts training, at some time, or other, certain questions will arise, certain states of consciousness will be encountered, and certain truths and realisations will come. We need to resolve these issues, and move on. So it is here that we should start to look at those warriors and sages of the past, and to see how even after many years of training they still progressed and developed.

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