o
04-06-2001, 09:51 PM
I read that a martial artist is able to enter into a trance before a fight and thereby react (not move) much faster (almost 2 times faster). This is done by focusing at the dantian and feeling a pulse there. Can I, a beginner martial artist, try this? Do I first need to know the forms first so that I can use them spontaneously without thought and instead rely on reflexes? Right now, I do not know the forms or moves well (I started a week ago). Also, should I have a strong base of Zazen (Zen meditation) before applying anything in combat?
Here is part of the article where I read about it. I got it from:
www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/MartialArts/MartialArts/martialarts-home.html (http://www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/MartialArts/MartialArts/martialarts-home.html)
[This has been edited for briefness. However, you still may find it lengthy the way it is here.]
One can move with effortless fluidity, without conscious consideration of a single move. He remains in a state of complete dispassion, going through the motions of combat without feeling the emotions of combat. He is able to remain calm because his ego is not involved in the contest. Even though in his relaxed or casual moments the master may experience a comparatively high state of awareness, when beginning a contest he will nevertheless heighten this state by entering a meditative trance and evicting his ego from the combat arena.
The method he uses to accomplish this is usually a simple triggering stimulus. First, he concentrates his attention on some. In the martial arts the focal point is usually the body's center of gravity/hara/dantian, which is a point deep in the abdomen where the aorta (the large blood vessel that exits the heart and travels down the center of the body) splits to become the femoral or thigh arteries.
Using specific meditation exercises the master trains himself to feel his pulse beating at his hara; and, using concentration on this point as the triggering stimulus, he enters a meditative trance as he simultaneously balances himself around this center.
At this point, the master's ego-identity has vanished. He's no longer a person. He's simply a fighting machine. His thoughts have vanished. He has practiced his combat skills to reflexive perfection, and he lets his training take over, reacting automatically as he enters an intense Zone of egoless concentration (is the author referring to samadhi?)
This egoless state gives him several distinct advantages. He can react instantaneously; he can process fainter signals, signals which otherwise might be undetectable. He can respond to sensory data which his conscious ego might not notice or know how to interpret correctly, and he can prevent his own body from experiencing the deleterious effects of emotion or pain. He can even curtail blood loss should he be wounded.
In order for a person to respond to a given stimulus, that stimulus must cross several thresholds. First, it must be noticed by an appropriate sense organ. Sensory organs pick up information in the form of energy: light energy excites the receptors within the eye; compression waves of sound strike the ear drum; heat energy directly passes through our fingertips, and so on. The first threshold is the SENSORY threshold.
The stimulus must then have enough energy remaining to travel along neural pathways to his brain. If it succeeds in making itself felt in the brain, it has crossed the second threshold, the PERCEPTUAL threshold. The brain records the event - it's now entered in the student's data banks, so to speak.
The student can "overlook" or otherwise pay no attention to this data (his ego may be directing its attention elsewhere or he may simply be daydreaming) in which case the event is recorded in his brain without his being aware of it at all. In the excitement of the moment, the data can become garbled because the ego-consciousness could not process or memorize it.
The student can access an event data in two ways. He can ego-consciously respond to it by thinking. When this happens the stimulus has crossed the third threshold, the CONSCIOUS ACTION threshold. He has noticed an action and has considered and executed a reaction to it and he can usually recall this action/reaction event. If, for some reason, he is unable to summon a recollection of it, under hypnosis he will be able to remember the event.
To retrieve forgotten or overlooked data the confused ego has to be bypassed - transcended in the trance or hypnotic state. A re-entry into the perceptual threshold's domain has to be effected. This retrieval technique is related to the second way the student can respond to a stimulus: he can experience it directly or unconsciously and then react to it automatically without his ego's involvement. We call this action/reaction event subliminal.
For very good reasons, the martial artist wants to prevent his ego-consciousness from interfering in the combat. The ego's domain is the place we find those seven deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, laziness, gluttony, greed and anger-the reckless, destructive motivations.
Whenever a stimulus is consciously acted upon, the ego evaluates the stimulus and decides what, if anything, ought to be done in response. If the ego does decide to act, it directs the body by sending out electrochemical messages to the appropriate muscles. In fact, the ego has an array of chemicals at its disposal which can influence and interfere with all body systems. Unfortunately, the ego does not always act in the body's best interest. For example, any emotion can be detrimental.
Animals don't have egos; and because of this they respond efficiently and without prejudice. Their reactions are fast and direct and if they kill it is to satisfy hunger, not anger. Animals do not resort to mortal combat to settle territorial disputes; humans, providing they reasonably feel threatened, may kill anyone who intrudes into their premises. They don't have egos that interfere with their body's actions. Their responses are pure reflex, uninhibited by personal judgments. Which brings us to another reason martial artists don't want their egos involved in the action: Response times. Subliminal responses can be nearly twice as fast as consciously considered responses!
Animals do something else that martial artists emulate: they read an array of sensory signals - smells, sounds, and body and facial language; and these signals are invariably more reliable than verbal language or deliberate gestures.
We've all heard of a poker face. The expert card player trains himself never to reveal pleasure or displeasure or to give any inadvertent clue to his true intentions. He looks for such signals in the faces, tics, or mannerisms of the other players. Boxers, too, train never to "telegraph" a punch, that is to squint an eye or raise an eyebrow prior to striking in a specific way.
The fact is that we human beings have inherited from our primate ancestors a variety of facial and body signals; but in the course of evolution, our mushrooming cerebral cortex with its commanding verbal abilities has largely replaced our non-verbal signaling system. Somebody can approach us with hate in his eyes, but if he warbles, "Good to see ya', old buddy!" we go with the verbal message and discount that look of hate.
Our cerebral evolution has also caused us to discount olfactory signals. Human beings give off a variety of smells (pheromones) that signal an existing emotional state.
Fear has an odor and at a subliminal level we detect that odor. Olfactory data have the most direct route of all to the human brain; and if a combatant senses, i.e., unconsciously smells fear in his opponent, he's ahead in the game. Clearly, he doesn't want to experience fear lest he signal his opponent that he is aware of the weakness of his own position. Fortunately, fearlessness is a universal characteristic of the truly spiritual person. The Zen man understands that death is nothing to fear. He is immersed in the safe Zone of the Divine, i.e., he has truly taken refuge in the Buddha. On the other hand, he's not stupid.
Naturally, guile is a combatant's weapon. An attempt is always made to mask one's real intentions. This is simple strategy. An attacker doesn't announce the time and place from which he will launch his missiles. Zen training at every level denigrates verbal communication. The often inane language of koans is intended to demonstrate how untrustworthy words can be. Especially when life or property is at stake, words can be a great enemy. Flattery and deceitful assurances may cause the ego to enjoy comfortable feelings of safety which will annul suspicion and relax a guarded stance. Threats and innuendo may create fear and confusion. To whatever extent a combatant succumbs to deception or fear, he yields his own resources to his opponent.
Verbal messages are conscious messages and conscious messages fall under the control of the ego. The task of the martial artist is clear: he must keep his ego from getting involved in the contest, yet he may not suspend intellectual control. Hypnosis or drugs may make him egoless, but they will require him to surrender control of his judgment and will ultimately lessen his awareness.
The master further demonstrates his acute awareness by immediately determining not only which hand or leg his opponent favors, which is clearly valuable information, but also which eye his opponent favors. In the use of weapons the combatant is always taught to keep his "eye on the target". When the hand or foot is the weapon, the favored eye will just as surely aim at the targeted area.
Meditation, by definition the state, par excellence, in which the ego is transcended while awareness is enhanced, will alone provide the martial artist with the means to achieve this necessary state of mind, or, more precisely, No Mind.
[There is more info in the article, including instructions in part 10 to enter that state before sparring. Refer to the site up top. There are 10 parts to the article. The last ones are the one's I used for quoting.]
Here is part of the article where I read about it. I got it from:
www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/MartialArts/MartialArts/martialarts-home.html (http://www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/MartialArts/MartialArts/martialarts-home.html)
[This has been edited for briefness. However, you still may find it lengthy the way it is here.]
One can move with effortless fluidity, without conscious consideration of a single move. He remains in a state of complete dispassion, going through the motions of combat without feeling the emotions of combat. He is able to remain calm because his ego is not involved in the contest. Even though in his relaxed or casual moments the master may experience a comparatively high state of awareness, when beginning a contest he will nevertheless heighten this state by entering a meditative trance and evicting his ego from the combat arena.
The method he uses to accomplish this is usually a simple triggering stimulus. First, he concentrates his attention on some. In the martial arts the focal point is usually the body's center of gravity/hara/dantian, which is a point deep in the abdomen where the aorta (the large blood vessel that exits the heart and travels down the center of the body) splits to become the femoral or thigh arteries.
Using specific meditation exercises the master trains himself to feel his pulse beating at his hara; and, using concentration on this point as the triggering stimulus, he enters a meditative trance as he simultaneously balances himself around this center.
At this point, the master's ego-identity has vanished. He's no longer a person. He's simply a fighting machine. His thoughts have vanished. He has practiced his combat skills to reflexive perfection, and he lets his training take over, reacting automatically as he enters an intense Zone of egoless concentration (is the author referring to samadhi?)
This egoless state gives him several distinct advantages. He can react instantaneously; he can process fainter signals, signals which otherwise might be undetectable. He can respond to sensory data which his conscious ego might not notice or know how to interpret correctly, and he can prevent his own body from experiencing the deleterious effects of emotion or pain. He can even curtail blood loss should he be wounded.
In order for a person to respond to a given stimulus, that stimulus must cross several thresholds. First, it must be noticed by an appropriate sense organ. Sensory organs pick up information in the form of energy: light energy excites the receptors within the eye; compression waves of sound strike the ear drum; heat energy directly passes through our fingertips, and so on. The first threshold is the SENSORY threshold.
The stimulus must then have enough energy remaining to travel along neural pathways to his brain. If it succeeds in making itself felt in the brain, it has crossed the second threshold, the PERCEPTUAL threshold. The brain records the event - it's now entered in the student's data banks, so to speak.
The student can "overlook" or otherwise pay no attention to this data (his ego may be directing its attention elsewhere or he may simply be daydreaming) in which case the event is recorded in his brain without his being aware of it at all. In the excitement of the moment, the data can become garbled because the ego-consciousness could not process or memorize it.
The student can access an event data in two ways. He can ego-consciously respond to it by thinking. When this happens the stimulus has crossed the third threshold, the CONSCIOUS ACTION threshold. He has noticed an action and has considered and executed a reaction to it and he can usually recall this action/reaction event. If, for some reason, he is unable to summon a recollection of it, under hypnosis he will be able to remember the event.
To retrieve forgotten or overlooked data the confused ego has to be bypassed - transcended in the trance or hypnotic state. A re-entry into the perceptual threshold's domain has to be effected. This retrieval technique is related to the second way the student can respond to a stimulus: he can experience it directly or unconsciously and then react to it automatically without his ego's involvement. We call this action/reaction event subliminal.
For very good reasons, the martial artist wants to prevent his ego-consciousness from interfering in the combat. The ego's domain is the place we find those seven deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, laziness, gluttony, greed and anger-the reckless, destructive motivations.
Whenever a stimulus is consciously acted upon, the ego evaluates the stimulus and decides what, if anything, ought to be done in response. If the ego does decide to act, it directs the body by sending out electrochemical messages to the appropriate muscles. In fact, the ego has an array of chemicals at its disposal which can influence and interfere with all body systems. Unfortunately, the ego does not always act in the body's best interest. For example, any emotion can be detrimental.
Animals don't have egos; and because of this they respond efficiently and without prejudice. Their reactions are fast and direct and if they kill it is to satisfy hunger, not anger. Animals do not resort to mortal combat to settle territorial disputes; humans, providing they reasonably feel threatened, may kill anyone who intrudes into their premises. They don't have egos that interfere with their body's actions. Their responses are pure reflex, uninhibited by personal judgments. Which brings us to another reason martial artists don't want their egos involved in the action: Response times. Subliminal responses can be nearly twice as fast as consciously considered responses!
Animals do something else that martial artists emulate: they read an array of sensory signals - smells, sounds, and body and facial language; and these signals are invariably more reliable than verbal language or deliberate gestures.
We've all heard of a poker face. The expert card player trains himself never to reveal pleasure or displeasure or to give any inadvertent clue to his true intentions. He looks for such signals in the faces, tics, or mannerisms of the other players. Boxers, too, train never to "telegraph" a punch, that is to squint an eye or raise an eyebrow prior to striking in a specific way.
The fact is that we human beings have inherited from our primate ancestors a variety of facial and body signals; but in the course of evolution, our mushrooming cerebral cortex with its commanding verbal abilities has largely replaced our non-verbal signaling system. Somebody can approach us with hate in his eyes, but if he warbles, "Good to see ya', old buddy!" we go with the verbal message and discount that look of hate.
Our cerebral evolution has also caused us to discount olfactory signals. Human beings give off a variety of smells (pheromones) that signal an existing emotional state.
Fear has an odor and at a subliminal level we detect that odor. Olfactory data have the most direct route of all to the human brain; and if a combatant senses, i.e., unconsciously smells fear in his opponent, he's ahead in the game. Clearly, he doesn't want to experience fear lest he signal his opponent that he is aware of the weakness of his own position. Fortunately, fearlessness is a universal characteristic of the truly spiritual person. The Zen man understands that death is nothing to fear. He is immersed in the safe Zone of the Divine, i.e., he has truly taken refuge in the Buddha. On the other hand, he's not stupid.
Naturally, guile is a combatant's weapon. An attempt is always made to mask one's real intentions. This is simple strategy. An attacker doesn't announce the time and place from which he will launch his missiles. Zen training at every level denigrates verbal communication. The often inane language of koans is intended to demonstrate how untrustworthy words can be. Especially when life or property is at stake, words can be a great enemy. Flattery and deceitful assurances may cause the ego to enjoy comfortable feelings of safety which will annul suspicion and relax a guarded stance. Threats and innuendo may create fear and confusion. To whatever extent a combatant succumbs to deception or fear, he yields his own resources to his opponent.
Verbal messages are conscious messages and conscious messages fall under the control of the ego. The task of the martial artist is clear: he must keep his ego from getting involved in the contest, yet he may not suspend intellectual control. Hypnosis or drugs may make him egoless, but they will require him to surrender control of his judgment and will ultimately lessen his awareness.
The master further demonstrates his acute awareness by immediately determining not only which hand or leg his opponent favors, which is clearly valuable information, but also which eye his opponent favors. In the use of weapons the combatant is always taught to keep his "eye on the target". When the hand or foot is the weapon, the favored eye will just as surely aim at the targeted area.
Meditation, by definition the state, par excellence, in which the ego is transcended while awareness is enhanced, will alone provide the martial artist with the means to achieve this necessary state of mind, or, more precisely, No Mind.
[There is more info in the article, including instructions in part 10 to enter that state before sparring. Refer to the site up top. There are 10 parts to the article. The last ones are the one's I used for quoting.]