lundi 28 octobre 2013

There is a plan...


I often read articles, blogs or books about Zen or Buddhism written by very knowledgeable people. They hold PhD.s in Religious studies; some can speak Chinese and Japanese, decipher the Tun Huang Manuscripts or read ancient Tibetan or Dogen's Japanese. They are scholars of all horizons and / or certified Dharma transmitted Zen Masters...
 


What they write is usually deep - and complicated. So quite a few other brilliant and sometimes vindictive persons enjoy arguing with them, and all we have is lots of bickering and arguing between experts or enlightened people. 

But is this really the point ? And what is really the point ? Is it to be right, or is it to be happy ?

Originally, there is this nagging frustration or insatisfaction - the human condition. And Buddhism is about overcoming it. There are different ways to achieve this, but originally, this is what it is all about.

There is no speaking about form, emptiness, the 3 poisons or the 4 Noble truth to someone whose child just died. 





There is a plan. 

There is a design for each and everyone of us. 

You look at nature : 

Bird flies somewhere,
Picks up a seed,
Shits the seed out,
Plant grows.

Bird's got a job,
Shit's got a job,
Seed's got a job,
And you've got a job too.


(Quote from Cold Mountain - the Movie, not the Zen poems...)



jeudi 24 octobre 2013

SHIN - GYO - SO




During the October 2013 KNBK seminar in Pensacola, Carl Long Sensei introduced us to the the Shin-Gyo-So practice forms of the Ono-Ha Itto Ryu Kiriotoshi

The words 'shin, gyo, so' come from the three ways of writing in Shodo (Calligraphy), 'kaisho (equivalent to shin), gyosho and sosho'. Shin is a formal non cursive form, Gyo a semi-cursive one, and So is the cursive form.


" " - MU - Nothing - brushed in the 3 styles


In the Itto Ryu practice, the distance between opponents (Mai) and the target of the cut are different for each one of the 3 different ways: Shin (), Gyo () , So ().







SHIN ()
GYO ( )
SO ( )
MAI
Long
Medium
Short
TARGET
Solar plexus,
Suigetsu (水月 )
Throat, Nodo
( )
Head, Men
( )

Practice intensely and repeatedly...