I am heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Zen monk Takuan Soho and his work in The Unfettered Mind and have traced the transmission of this teaching through the last four centuries. As a result of this I take a concepts-first approach to my practice of karate and seek to uncover ever more obscure points that govern the execution of form, or technique.
I first explored this some 20 years or so ago publishing an article entitled The Concept of Shotokan Karate (now available on Amazon Kindle) but since then my investigation of the relationship between Zen and martial arts has gone deeper than I originally thought would perhaps be possible. As a result of this I will also be exploring how it is that a chosen combative art form can lead a practitioner to experience a state of "satori", or realization (often popularly described as enlightenment, though I prefer to avoid that term).
Karate as Dynamic Zen
In my early training and research I became exposed to various Eastern spiritual traditions, especially Indian Buddhism, Chinese Daoism and, of course, Japanese Zen Buddhism. I was immediately attracted to the idea of viewing karate as a kind of moving Zen (what I now call a dynamic form of meditation) and delved into various books and articles eventually coming across the biography of Yamaoka Tesshu and the translation of The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho. These texts have absorbed a huge amount of my time and attention now for more than 20 years and my research has expanded into fields such as neuro-science, history, archaeology, psychology, mythology and comparative religion to name the primary areas of my current interest.
Starting with the question - from an academic point of view - as to how a martial art (Shotokan karate in my case) can lead a practitioner to an experience of satori my research has led me to the tentative thesis that what is happening at the time of spiritual realization is a sudden, but absolute, shift in brain dominance from the controlling left brain hemisphere to the right brain hemisphere (subordinate to the left hemisphere for most of us during our waking hours). In this way we let go (completely) of our sense of linear time, of notions of self and other, of here and there, of now, then and later, all characteristics of how the left brain hemisphere understands and represents the world, and replace these usually-dominant thoughts with the sense that there are no divisions and no limitations.
Even more tentatively, I am absorbed with the idea that for a few millions of years the default pre-human and human condition was to be right brain hemisphere dominant and that our shift to left brain dominance has occurred relatively recently, perhaps by a severe change in diet, and reinforced by the creation of the spoken language and reading and writing (which were themselves made possible by the theorized shift in brain dominance). This, I hypothesize, is the Original Mind of pure consciousness, free of defilement and the conceptual world.
At first blush these questions may seem alien to the practice of a martial art, but I believe that extended practice of some combative form or another is a reflection of an ever-progressive quest to satisfy ever deeper needs, somewhat akin to Maslow`s hierarchy of needs. Often at the most fundamental level a martial system is required to satisfy the need to be able to fight. That is, after all, what separates a combative art from other activities. Some people may be happy to learn a few techniques and feel a little safer and quit training. Others, their need for at least rudimentary fighting skills now satisfied, continue to attend their dojo. These people are looking for other needs to be satisfied...the need to be fit and healthy, a social need, a need for a sense of accomplishment, a need for competition, if not with other people, then at least with oneself. And so it goes on. I had a need as a teenager for exposure to something that to me at the time was exotic hence the appeal of Karate Kid II and my desire to travel to East Asia. As we progress we may view our chosen art as exactly that: an art form that fulfills our need to express ourselves while also being a vehicle to investigate ourselves. Finally though I believe that a martial art can sate our need to understand the whole process of existence, of living and dying.
Thus our chosen martial art - whether it be karate or some other form - becomes a way of life: a lifelong pursuit to understand - and express - life through the practice of a combative art form.
