Letting Go

There was a monk, I don't remember the name, but he was a certified enlightened Zen master who walked away from the monastery and came back in a few days. He found it far easier to maintain his enlightenment in the calm of a monastery than in the hustle of a city.

Maybe that seems hypocritical to you. Maybe it seems that his enlightenment wasn't real if it wasn't universal. That call is up to you.

I think he was very wise. He knew what he had and didn't let his ego force him into spreading it farther than it reached. That is a sign of non-attachment.

Good martial arts (and real fighting} is in the transition. Victory happens less in the technique than in the spaces between the techniques. At the point of impact boxers, muay thai guys and karateka aren't that different, but what they do with their hips, their legs and their shoulders before and after are very, very different. Do you know why classical jujutsu does more damage in a strike than a "pure' striking art? It's because jujutsu teaches target preparation as an obvious and easy part of striking. Make no mistake- a good boxer hits much harder than I do, but 9 times out of ten, if I have to hit the ribs, the threat is bent over my hip with his spine extended and twisted and his ribs exposed and flexed to absorb the strike.

If you haven't been taught to prep the target, it seems like magic. If you have been taught, it seems obvious. A good fighter is integrated. Offense is defense. There is no separation between weapon and target. At higher levels your enemy is working for you, just another variable in an equation. A really good fighter integrates the threat, himself and the environment. An extraordinary fighter integrates luck.

The key to using luck is letting go. Luck can be defined as the things you didn't expect. 'Expectation' is the ‘what you believe’- your experience, your training. When you can accept it when training or experience fail, when you are cool with being surprised, you can exploit luck. Like anything, some people have a talent at it but it can also been learned, trained and practiced.

If you have ever been in the high desert of Eastern Oregon you have seen the steep hills. One of our fun childhood games was to run down those hills full-speed. The trick was to not rely on contact with the ground. Once you were at extraordinary speed you were effectively falling and, when appropriate, when necessary, when effective you would make a small contact with the ground to steer just a bit. It was control in the loosest possible sense. I never saw an adult play this game and it is just as well. The slightest stiffness, the slightest need to show more control than you had would lead to a hellacious tumble and broken bones.

It was good training. Life is like that- something like freefall. Control, beyond a basic ability to control yourself, is an illusion. Even that control is limited ( think how your skills will change with injury and advanced age and different blood sugars). But well-timed instances of control can let you ride out a storm or survive a situation that would crush the stolid and certain.