|
The Mind in the Martial Arts & Eastern Thought: Part 2: The Conditioned Mind-Seeing Things As They Are-The Two Truths- Impermanence.
In any investigation, we have to begin with a clean sheet. A sheet that is not stained with preconceived ideas, and opinions. This of course is extremely difficult to accomplish. Difficult, because the very tool that we are going to use to investigate i.e. ‘the mind’ is already highly conditioned. It is conditioned by our culture, education, environment, parents and family and by everything that we have come in contact with from our birth. It will be impossible (at first) to drop our conditioning. We must begin with some sort of compromise. Firstly we must try to keep an open mind, (but not so open that our brains fall out) and we should endeavour not to demand a scientific answer for everything. Both ways are extreme and should be avoided. In other words we should learn to see things as they actually are, and not as we think they should be, or as someone else thinks they should be. The conditioned mind, dualistic mind, ego, or self, whatever you wish to call it, lives in fear, and it is rooted in fear. For the average human being fear is the main motivation for all our actions. Why is this so? It is because the condition mind sees everything in the Universe as impermanent, and it cannot accept that it too, is part of this same flow of life, death and is therefore, not immortal. Buddhism, Taoism, Bon and a few other traditions realise that “this” must be the place to start, for if we cannot accept that our minds are conditioned, and therefore deluded, how can we take any steps toward liberation?
There is a Zen saying that goes: “The great way is not difficult, except for those who pick and choose” So what is this “picking and choosing”? It is a lack of recognition of our real condition, or our actual state of existence. The Tao Te Ching states this immediately.
For example:
Follow the nothingness of the Tao, and you can be like it, not needing anything, seeing the wonder and root of everything. And even if you cannot grasp this nothingness, you can still see something of this Tao in everything. These two are the same, only called different names- and both are wonderful and mysterious. All mysteries are Tao, and Heaven is the Mother: She is the gateway and the womb door.
In some translations it says “The mother is the creator of Ten Thousand Things” this “Ten Thousand Things” appears regularly in Eastern literature it means basically “everything”, everything that is created by the mind. So the Mind is literally the cause and creator of all of our lives, and it can create both heaven and hell.
The Buddhist Dhammapada states:
All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. With our thoughts we create the world. If a man speaks or acts with a harmful thought, trouble follows him as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. With our thoughts we create the world. If a man speaks or acts with harmonious thought happiness follows him as his own shadow, never leaving him.
So the mind can be both our worst enemy, and our greatest asset. Any one who realises that mind must be understood, and directed towards an enlightened state for the benefit of all life is called a “spiritual warrior” This term “spiritual warrior” is used quite often today in “New Age” literature and “Martial Arts” writings, but actually the concept is more ancient than we may realise, for example in the ancient Tibetan Bon Tradition (18,000 years of history) the term is “Yungdrung Sem-pa”, and
later in the Buddhist Tradition, “Bodhisattva” Maybe I should take some time to explain why I bring in the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon teachings in an article about the mind and Martial Arts. There are two reasons; for many years Tibet was isolated from the outside world where it developed the science of the mind to heights beyond our everyday comprehension, using many techniques to explore and understand the world of conciseness, meditation, psychics, colour, sound and an array of practices that lead to states of Wisdom, Compassion and Ultimate Enlightenment. Not only have we access today to these teachings in the West (because of the Chinese invasion which force the Tibetans to flee their own country) but because at one stage in history, before Tibet was a country, there existed an area call Zhang Zhung which was spread over the Himalayas, China, and Ancient Persia which was complete with its own language and culture, and it is in this culture I believe that the ground of all Eastern metaphysics was laid. I hope to show in a forthcoming article that the seed of all the Yoga, Qigong, Martial Arts and Meditation practices have their roots firmly planted in the Zhang Zhung culture, and I have been fortunate
|
