Zen in the Martial Arts

I bought this book when I came across it in my mid teens. Its been read, borrowed and battered over the years but it's still intact (just about).

The techniques it describes are quite well known and almost clichés now, but the idea of thought and focus placement was quite a profound influence on me at the time. To focus the mind on a point away from the body and concentrate on that and not your immediate self was a revelation to me at the time.

I still use this technique sometimes at the gym, when those final repetitions feel like the muscles worked are being ironed on the creased cotton setting.

It's not a religious thing to me, but more of a training technique. The human mind is capable of unbelievable power and greatness, but also of extreme depravity, hatred, and the capacity to create the potential to inflict harm. It never ceases to amaze me how outraged people can get about the most trivial of things, and how the outrage becomes almost viral.

How can we avoid such muppetry? Start using our minds like the powerful tools they actually are and use our capacity to learn and adapt.

We all, to an extent, make the choice about which path our cognitive functions will take. Learn for learnings sake, there doesn't have to be a reason to learn something new. Do it for the pure joy of absorbing information.

Nothing is impossible to the willing mind :)

Keep calm and stop mentally vegetating.