Being that I am trying to get back in the habit of journaling, blogging, writing what have you, the only way is to do it. Seems a common theme for me, "Just doing It", thanks for swiping that wonderful phrase Nike and pigeon holing it to shoes. Not that it really stops its use, it's just that there is always, for me this after taste of shoe, when I say it. So last night I was talking to one of my fellow Judoka about zazen. He mentioned that he was interested in some introduction to it, led by myself. First and foremost, I was a little shocked that he saw me as someone who could do this. I then proceeded to tell him I thought the best way to be introduced is to start sitting every morning. The conversation has been ringing around in my head since then. I am asking myself if I told him the right, correct and accurate things. We talked a bit about concentration on breathe versus allowing breathe to come and go as it does, without paying it any special attention. I made some attempt to steer him toward either the sangha in Santa Monica or the one in Ventura. I am both hesitant and not at all hesitant about "leading" a sit with a small group. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Brad state that he was bored with his explanation of how to do zazen. I am currently practicing shikantaza, just sitting. I continue to read about this, "dropping off of the mind and body", but cannot identify that experience.
Zazen is definitely one of the oddest simple things that I have done. When one says to just sit, the enormity of the explanation not stated in that statement is well, big. How much the brain really, really wont just be still. In addition to it not being still, how we so naturally add energy to these unprovoked thoughts. I have read somewhere that a "moment" is a quantifiable time. This to me, does not feel accurate, as a moment is a totally subjective quantity of time. My reference to moment was to describe how one thought can floating into my mind, and without conscious effort I have added energy to the thought, and gone away on a little mental journey. That moment could be 5 seconds or 5 minutes. I try to never lose my awareness such that I am on a mental ride for that long. But, then the flip side of the coin is if you are standing in ever vigilant stance of smashing any arising thought, you are in a continuous thought about preventing thoughts. Then on top of all this madness, one is not to be concerned with the "quality" of each sitting. Some days I can hardly sit still and my mind races at mach speeds while other days my posture feels proper, not much need to move, and my mind is quieter. It is "unskillful" to compare and contrast these.
What about Judo? I lead the warm ups last night with some basic yoga. We got the blood flowing with jumping jacks. I added in the modified stepping for jumping jacks. We did several half salutes, then several surinamaskar (spelling) A then surinamaskar B. Neil said he thought it went well. I was sweating like crazy, but I do that at the drop of a hat, so I'm never sure about others. It seems these yoga series do a pretty good job of creating blood flow and stretching a multitude of body parts simultaneously. Neil went over a variation on ippon seionage. Block their gripping attempt or break their grip then keeping hold of their sleeve with a cross grip, your other hand goes under their arm you are controlling and grips their near collar. Similar to the grip for ude gaeshi but near collar versus far. Either wait for them to react by pulling up and away with this grip or you can step in deeper. I found it worked better to get in deeper and throw with more of a guruma motion. Neil said you could do it like this or more like standard seio. Something that was brought more to the forefront of my attention was turning toward the anchor hand. It is nothing new, I just typically think of turning away from the choking hand, and this makes me think for a half second longer than turning towards the anchor hand. I'll see. The anchor hand idea is somewhat new to me, at least in those terms.
That's All Folks
No comments:
Post a Comment