Take Five!
“Just be aware, mirrorlike, right now.” -Pai-chang Do not use your phone or any other device to do what follows. For one week, dedicate five minutes of one day to be totally aware of what you are doing. Repeat for a …
Don’t Try
“Peace begins when expectations end.”-Sri Chinmoy The Classifier stage you so effortlessly practice becomes a nightmare when shot in the match. Anxiety and fear destroy our body’s ability to execute simple, familiar tasks. Desire breeds expectations, and from expectations: fear. …
Awareness & Thought
“By being alive to difficulty one can avoid it.” -Lao Tzu In the well-being department, not knowing we are thinking is our only problem. Problems appear and remain because we do not know we think them into existence. Awareness is …
Why Hurry?
“When you are not sitting quietly, you may be distracted without knowing it; but once you are aware of it, distraction itself becomes a mechanism for getting rid of distraction.”-T’ai i chin hua tsung chih If I rushed I usually …
Care Less
“Here is my secret: I don’t mind what happens.”-Krishmanurti The only things that bother you are things you care about. Care about what is immediately and obviously good, like family, friends, pets, and health. For everything else, regard care with …
See Everything!
“To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” -Krishnamurti In Practical Shooting, Beyond Fundamentals, I outlined 5 types of seeing—to call the shot—which vary with the shot’s difficulty. I wonder, however, if that caused more confusion than it helped. …
Tacit Living
“Let a tacit understanding be all! All mental processes must lead to error.”-Huang Po The easiest thing to overlook is what you always are: aware. Without awareness, you could not do anything. There is a living knowledge that is always …
Relax… A Story from The Bianchi Cup
“Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.” -Zen Proverb I was at my first Bianchi Cup in 1981. I trashed the first three stages: The Practical, The Barricade, and The Falling …
When is “it” Right?
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” What a great quote from Pema Chodron. My brother, Dennis, and I enjoyed boxing. He was three years older and quite a bit bigger, so he …
The Riddle of Existence
When we’re deludedthere’s a world to escape.When we’re awarethere’s nothing to escape. -Bodhidharma Your mind will not bother you when you stop believing its stories. The mind continuously forms desires from sensory experiences. What if some, or maybe all, desires are …