Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Koan-Like Meme’s and Quotations

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

The site has quotations I often liken to Zen Koans but not truly Zen Koans. I want readers, practitioners and especially students to read and try to discern the meanings, both obvious and hidden, toward gaining a fuller understanding of karate and martial arts with emphasis on theories and philosophies as they drive practice, training and applications.

A Zen Koan is often worded in a question format, not meant to be answered (especially in a literal sense); they are meant to be lived. What I have come to believe is once a person is exposed to a discipline and its various Zen like Koans, like my quotations and meme’s, they must contemplate them and then try to incorporate them into their lives and practice with only one caveat, expect them to change as you gain knowledge, experience and understanding.

Similar to actual Zen Koans I challenge readers to look directly at the koan, meme or quotation itself first literally then with a certain abstraction perspective, i.e., an open mindedness that transcends the literal. You don’t rally have to come up with an answer or a theory or an idea as I have presented here but to come up with some theory and philosophy that provides you enlightened practice, training and application - regardless of that applications distinctions as to sport, fighting, combatives or self-defense. 

It is about how you evolve and how your understanding deepens through a living experience that evolves from the study, contemplation and expanding growth of understanding a koan like meme or quotation, etc.

Emptiness refers to a mind that is open and receptive to whatever is happening. Making your mind void, not truly empty but rather receptive to all ideas, theories and considerations, etc. 

Bibliography (Click the link)



No comments:

Post a Comment