Zazen & Judo Training

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

Another Night of Judo, Another Day of Zazen

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to the Hill Street Center, to do zazen with their sangha. Brad Warner lead the group and the topic after the sit was Zen and Sex. I'm still not sure what the point of sitting with a group is, but it is a different experience, so maybe that is it. My mind raced a lot yesterday, during my sit and at the same time the it was more quiet at times. My legs did not fall asleep, okay a tiny bit, but it was the best thus far in a 30 minute sitting. During my second sitting with a group, my leg fell asleep so much that when I stood up I almost fell over and sprained my ankle. Yeah, I still crack up on it, almost spraining my ankle from doing zazen! Classic. I learned yesterday about a buddhist food prayer, that until now I had not heard of. It seems there is much, much more reading to do. Along these lines and in the spirit of the topic, one member asked about coming up with prayer around opening the condom package. Wow, I did not see that coming. Everything I have read and heard about Soto Zen, says that Buddhism is Zazen and Zazen is Buddhism. Yesterday however seemed to show me a whole lot more.

Friday night Judo. One word description, intense. We had a good warm up followed by our standard, newaza. I missed the stand up technique series as I worked with two new guys on seionage. We then went on to form two lines facing each other to do static uchikomi to Ben's count. We did 100 I think, in sets of twenty. I miss this. As hellishly exhausting and somewhat monotonous as it is, I always feel like it helps a lot. We finished the class with tachi randori which we all love.

Tomorrow we Disc Golf

Zazen, Judo, Yoga and Disc Golf

It's a new year and I have a renewed motivation to begin blogging again. My previous blog over at Judoforum.com has entries back to when I started blogging back around June of 2005. It is mostly a training blog, but I was fairly consistently posting. My last entry was in June of 2009, so four years is a decent run, before taking a few months off. Yesterday I reread nearly the whole thing as a little review.

Soooo.... what's new? Well, zazen is one major new thing since then. I have been sitting nearly every morning since the beginning of last March. I was reading this guy's second book, "Sit Down and Shut Up", after reading his first book, "Hardcore Zen - Punk Rock, Monster Movies & the Truth about Reality", and about 10 pages in I realized that either I put the book down or I get my rear end to a cushion. So I did. I went on to read his last book, "Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma" In the last few months I found a group, sangha, that meets the Saturday of the month to sit then talk. The group is lead by Kevin Bortolin, who like Brad Warner studied and received his Dharma transmission from Gudo Nishijima. Some interesting sychronicity there, I thought. I just finished reading Roshi Nishijima's book "To Meet the Real Dragon", as suggested by Kevin. One thing looking back that still makes me chuckle every time I think of it is how I set up in my mind these various goals/milestones. My first goal was to make it through a week, then a month, then 3 months, at which point I would be enlightened. Not really, obviously, but it was such a defining point that I made the joke with a friend on the 3 month morning that I hadn't achieved enlightenmet yet. So my next major milestone is coming up in a couple of weeks, my one year mark. That is pretty kewl. My zazen has evolved pretty radically in some regards and yet it is still just sitting in front of a wall. I definitely have moments of wondering what the heck motivates me to get up at 5am everyday to go sit and stare at a wall for a half hour. Even crazier is how I continue to increase how long I sit and have a goal of another 30 minute sit at night. The one thing that zazen has definitely done is put to rest the quiet, unquieting voice that said I should do zazen or meditation.

Where am I with my Gentle Way to Self Realization via the Art of Perseverance? Well, I have been studying Judo for almost 5 years now. I think I started back in March of 2005. My judo has definitely changed since then. Granted, the "end" is just as faraway as it was on day one. Of course, I do not believe any of these things have an "end". They are all about the journey and not the destination. A few months ago I got my ikkyu rank, the rank before shodan (black belt). One really kewl thing about being where I am with Judo, is that there are many people above me in skill and many people below me. It is a neat feeling to be aware of this and participate in it, in class. I do not feel anywhere near being ready for my shodan, and I am grateful, that is not my decision to make. In the coming days, weeks, months I will be adding blips of training sessions that stand out and I wish to remember. Neil Ohlenkamp, my instructor, teacher, and sensei at the Encino Judo Club, in Oxnard has recently started teaching these really incredible series of moves. Not that there wasn't great things to learn before, but I am thoroughly enjoying these. Judo continues to move beyond the mat in its scope for me.

Series 1 - right ouchigari > left hand kuchiki taoshi > knee over guard pass entry into newaza > kesa gatame > bridge and roll escape > arm post to block the escape > push hand over head and get the back

Series 2 - tate shiho > hands and knees top/bottom (slide to butterfly turn over) > tai otoshi > counter with kosoto gake > hands and knees turnout defense

So what's with this union of body, mind & spirit thing? Yoga. Apparently it's more than stretching. So in blog reading I found out I have been doing Yoga now for about three years. My teacher, Zan, from Zanzilla, teaches us twice a week at the city. So I did a bit of reading when I first started practicing yoga regularly. There a few perspectives regarding meditation and yoga. The one that stands out was I believe by Iyenger which stated that yoga and meditation were the same thing. I struggled with this for a while as it related to zazen. However, my teachers have told me and I am in agreement that zazen and meditation are not the same. Currently my focus has been on greater awareness of whatever area of the body we are working on.

Last bit about Disc Golf. Great sport that I commonly describe as hiking with a frisbee. That's about all I have at this time about disc golf.

This entry has taken me about three days. Hopefully that is not how they will all be.