aikido

Mushin (無心; Chinese wúxīn; English translation "no-mindedness") is a mental state into which very highly-trained martial artists are said to enter during combat. They also practice this mental state during everyday activities. The term is shortened from mushin no shin (無心の心), a Zen expression meaning mind of no mind and is also referred to as the state of "no-mindness". That is, a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion and thus open to everything. For the origin of the mushin concept, see Muga-mushin.

Mushin is achieved when a person's mind is free from thoughts of anger, fear, or ego during combat or everyday life. There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react towards an opponent without hesitation and without disturbance from such thoughts. At this point, a person relies not on what they think should be the next move, but what is their trained natural reaction or what is felt intuitively. It is not a state of relaxed, near-sleepfulness, however. The mind could be said to be working at a very high speed, but with no intentions, plans or direction. In analogy a clear mind is compared to a still pond, which is able to clearly reflect the moon and trees. But just as waves in the pond will distort the picture of reality, so will the thoughts we hold onto disrupt the true perception of reality.

The one thing that is absolutely assured in this world is change. Change is constant, unstoppable. The entire Universe is in constant flux. At each instant structures are being created and structures are passing out of existence. And yet, nothing is separate, nothing exists in isolation from the Totality. The fundamental problem for mankind is that very few people ever actually get to truly understand this fact. The ones who do are called “spiritual”, “saints”, or Enlightened Ones. The rest of us go through our lives stubbornly acting “as if” we were really separate individuals. We have a love of what is known what is stabile, what is predictable. We don’t mind a bit of change as long as it isn’t rapid or too drastic.

But fundamentally human beings consistently show a preference for the belief that what they have and what they know is somehow permanent; that it has some reality. This is one of the essential causes of conflict. We want to protect what we have, we want our view of the world confirmed because the very idea that what we think we believe and we “know” may not be real in some fundamental sense would open up the doors to chaos. If what we believe isn’t necessarily true, then one’s very sense of one’s existence is challenged.

Let us look at the nature of “Self Defense”. There are two kinds of self defense and one is merely a distortion of the other. The first Self Defense is authentic. It is the evolutionary, biological right of any animal to defend its life and those of its family or social group. With humans this involves the development of certain skills coupled with the addition of technical development. The skills and technology of True Self Defense are simply an extension of those developed for survival over hundreds of thousands of years. So True Self Defense is the defense of the physical body when under some threat.

The distorted form of Self Defense is not authentic and is the result of illusion. It is based on the instinct for self preservation on which authentic Self Defense is founded but it is distorted by the illusion of self identity under which most people operate. In other words from the time of our birth we develop a series of self images which we put forward as “who we are.” These self images or “primary selves” are who we consciously believe we are and reflect the ways in which we have learned through our personal experience to exist in the world.

As I recently wrote, sadly, we've forgotten about reducing and reusing, and somehow have come to think that recycling is some kind of magic fix for the malaise of the planet. I was trying to make this point recently over on one of my favorite hangouts when someone called me out and said something about recycling being the way nature works. Wow did that get my blood boiling! While it does on the surface appear to be true, it is very misleading and is an example of cherry-picking what one wants, and ignoring a whole bunch of other stuff because it is convenient to do so.

So what is "the natural order"? Wow! If I knew that I sure would be a happy person! I simply do not know. But one thing I do know, is that every minute of every day, I bring myself closer-and-closer to it! Through at slow, evolutionary process. Actually, to state most simply, "evolution" probably is a good way to sum-up "the Natural Order" in one word. But as soon as we give a name to it, we lose a considerable amount of the essence of what it is. So the honest answer really is that I really do not know. One thing I do know however, is that when I'm doing something which is in harmony with the Natural Order, I can feel it. And when I am doing something that goes against the Natural Order, I know it all-to-well too. Well, not always. But more-and-more.

As folks who know me have come to know over the years, I've almost always got a political opinion, and it's rarely a mild one. So I thought I'd write a bit of something about my beliefs - where they started and where they are today. But also a bit about what I feel Canada needs in terms of politics.

Anyone who knows me from Stellarton knows that I grew up in a household that was very deeply steeped in the Labour Movement and by extension the NDP. Hey, it was a coal mining town and we saw that even in the early 90s with the Westray Mine disaster (which was underneath Stellarton) that mining bosses treated their employees pretty terribly, and had very little regard for human life if it got in the way of profits. So as much as I think today that a lot of labour unions have overstepped their bounds and ask for too much, I also see very clearly that there are areas where unions are needed today every bit as much as they were needed 100 years ago. Indeed, in cases like Westray we see how little progress has been made.

Ever since I was a kid, my dad taught me the importance of being a responsible citizen, and of being a part of the solution, not the problem. This will prove to be the most important part of his lasting legacy to me and eventually my kids, when he eventually passes on to the next world. In his day this need to get involved was expressed primarily through his life-long involvement with labour unions, though it was also expressed in a multitude of other ways. I recall once when I was about 11 or 12 finding a 20 dollar bill in a parking lot in Antigonish. As I was about to pocket the money, my pop suggested that it could possibly be the last 20 dollars of some poor person, and now they'd go without food for a while. Of course he was right - this could very-well have been the case. So we took it to the police station and turned it in there. Of course, when pop called them back a month later to see if anyone had claimed it, it seemed that someone on the police force wasn't as honest as pop and I because the money had not been claimed, but it was missing. But that's a story for another day. I also recall the time my brother bought a new pair of CCM Tacks (skates) at Canadian Tire. When he got home he realised the clerk had accidentally given him SuperTacks, but charged him the price of the less-expensive Tacks. Of course he went back and reported the problem, and exchanged the SuperTacks for Tacks.