Sunday September 13th, 2020
Maybe because last week was a shorter week, the workdays and evenings were extra hectic. Nevertheless, it was meditation week, so I want to share at least one meditation entry. Our daughter has been having some issues with friends. This required more grown-up involvement than usual, so my attention has been there. I hope to do a better job in the future of keeping up with this blog.
The weather in Burbank is playing a prominent role in our lives right now. The wildfires in Southern California have pumped enough smoke into the air that it is not healthy to be outdoors. Ash so coats the leaves of my crepe myrtle that newer leaves are a different color than older ones. Our karate club had discussed meeting in a park, and we opted for Zoom instead. A week ago, we had a record-breaking heat wave to keep us indoors. This is all in addition to the pandemic.
Meditation Entry from Tuesday, September 8th.
I meditated for ten minutes today. It was quiet. I heard a cricket, but no birds at first. One airplane roar overhead. The air is damp–it’s cloudy and feels as if it may rain. We need it. Over the weekend, we had record-breaking beat. I brought two plants indoors: a “volunteer” walnut tree and a Santa Barbara hibiscus. I’d early lost the walnut sapling to the heat. The hibiscus suffered from the heat, too, and is struggling. It wilted and is in shock. Its leaves are brown, wilted and shriveled, but it has very small green leaves.
Last Friday, I hurriedly dug it up and put it in a pot. I feared the coming heat wave would finish it off. Transplanting it most likely added to its stress. However, I feared the 106 degree temperatures on Saturday and Sunday would finish it off.
My husband is a “lead” for a neighborhood website called NextDoor. People post everything from ads for garage sales, inquires on local street name origins and notes about lost and found pets. One neighbor had posted that a couple squirrels in their backyard died due to the heat wave over the weekend. Remembering this during meditation made me think about our own squirrels and birds. I’ve been looking for a little black and white Phoebe that likes our compost. I haven’t seen it today.
The next time we have a heat wave, I should open the shed and put out bowls of water. Yes mosquitoes may benefit from standing water, but other wildlife may as well. The neighborhood wildlife enriches our lives and is certainly worth preserving.
Focus, Phones and Wildlife
I have been having an on-going debate with F about whether or not to give her her cell during on-line classes. Her father and I contend having a phone during class will be distracting. If she texts or receives texts while the teacher talks, she will miss important concepts. Also, if she were in a physical classroom, the students would not be allowed to have cells out during class.
To make a point, I asked S to text F while I read an article out loud. I chose an article from the LA Times concerning the effects of global warming on vintners. She seemed to retain a remarkable amount of information when I questioned her. Then she confessed that S’s text messages had not come through. I aimed the rest of my questions at S. We discovered that he, in fact, had not absorbed as many of the points from the article as F, since his attention was divided.
Then we performed the same experiment on S. I found a different article about big cats being sited more frequently in Chile, also from the LA Times. Covid-19 restrictions had reduced traffic and other human activities, allowing cautious big cats to explore the suburbs. This time, the experiment went as expected: S received a few silly texts from F. Honestly, I was surprised each of them retained as much as they had. However, each also missed one of the major points of the article. I was still able to make my point: divided attention is not as effective as focused attention.
On-line learning and Socialization
F’s high school had Open House on-line this past Thursday. D and I put the question about phones and communication to each of F’s teachers. F’s contention was that, during a normal class, she would be able to talk to other kids in class. During on-line learning, her phone could provide a means to talk to other kids.
At least one of her teachers, her pre-calculus teacher, wanted nothing interfering with her students’ abilities to focus. She suggested a quiet place with no distractions for students. She asked parents and kids to put away phones during class.
Other teachers allowed the use of Zoom or Google chat for students to communicate, or used break-out rooms so kids can see each other and work together. Perhaps her Chemistry teacher, an older, animated gentleman, was most concerned about the loss of social interaction for the kids. He actively looks for ways to help kids connect to each other, as well as to him.
Overall we were impressed with the teachers and how they are handling the restrictions placed on them by the pandemic. We were also not convinced F needs access to a cell phone during class time. Her grandfather was less convinced, and suggested we try it out for a bit. He is often the one suggesting we test out our assumptions, and advocating for giving the kids more autonomy. So maybe the Chemistry teacher might allow the use of a cell during his class.
Finally Karate and Zen
So how does any of this relate to karate and Zen, other than through our lives? I acknowledge that’s the most important through-line. However, I’m towards the end of Oyama’s “This is Karate.” He dedicates a while section to Zen, and begins it with “Karate is Zen” (pg 320, What is Karate? by Masutatus Oyama.) He goes on to describe Zen as that which animates great artists and swordsmen, in addition to karateka.
What does it mean to say that karate is Zen? We could try to define Zen, but, by its own definition of itself, it resists such analysis. However, if we look at descriptions of what it does when it is attained, it may be best to understand it in this manner.
One Spirit to Cleave Stone
Oyama goes on to tell an old Chinese tale about a man who practiced archery late into the night, out in the country. This archer wished to truly master his art, and practiced constantly. One night, under a bright moon, he practiced in the woods. The only sound he could hear was his own arrows. Suddenly, up above the man on a rocky outcropping, the man saw the shadow of a great cat, perhaps a tiger, crouched to spring. The creature growled. The man swiftly drew an arrow, aimed, and let it fly; it hit the tiger. The man returned home.
The next morning, he decided to visit the spot to discover the kind of great cat he had killed the night before. He found no animal carcass, but rather his own arrow, stuck deep in a stone of the nearby crag. According to Oyama, the instant that the man thought his life was in danger, “… all of his spirit was immediately concentrated in the arrow, which he let fly with greater force than ever before ” (pg. 321) Oyama calls this concentration of spirit, or focus, “one spirit to cleave a stone.” He gives other examples of legendary swordsmen who fight with a single-mindedness that also reveal Zen.
Zen and Single-Minded Focus
By Oyama’s description, Zen, or the nothingness that one reaches, is actually a complete, single-minded focus–a focus so strong that one’s self seems to fall away, or be entirely concentrated in some activity, be it archery, swordsmanship, karate or meditation. When we practice karate, we strive to reach that single-minded state, where there is only that specific action: a strong upper block, or the downward force of a shutō-uchi on a brick, for the forward momentum of a mai-geri to an opponent’s middle section.
Zen in karate, then, can be described as the laser focusing of the self into an action such that there is no self. There are no concerns about dinner or chores or friends’ gossip or one’s hairstyle or scratching a mosquito bite on your ankle. The mind is clear.
I could point out to F that it is no accident that we do karate without phones. We do not and send and receive text messages while training. She knows this already. She easily focuses when she stands among karateka. Encouraging her to bring her karate to pre-calculus, or chemistry, or any other challenging school subject is what I ought to do.
Full Circle: Zen, Nature and Our Duty to the World
Finally, Oyama, as well as many Zen masters turned to nature as a source of renewal or inspiration for finding Enlightenment. Oyama, according to his own accounts, left human society for three years to live in the mountains, and at temples, to study Zen and practice karate. Reputedly, he meditated under waterfalls, struggled with wild animals and smashed stones.
I wonder how he would feel if he were alive today and living in California. Record-breaking heat, wildfires and smoke, clearly all made worse by human activities, threaten our health as well as our ability to go out into nature. I’m guessing he would recommend we devote effort to preserving the natural world. One cannot meditate under waterfalls if there are no more natural bodies of water, or struggle with wild animals where there are none.
Macro-micro
The two articles we read in our little concentration test were both about the impact of human activities on the natural world. Global warming adversely effected the crops of vintners: they planted crops earlier and those had less time to mature due to the more blazing summers. On the converse of this, reduced human activity in Chile, due to the pandemic, was allowing wildlife to flourish in more suburban areas, and their presence was both studied and welcomed by the human residents.
Within the little eco-system of our yard, I nearly lost my little walnut sapling to the heat. It had turned to a single sad stem with only tiny leaf-buds remaining. I was sure it was dead. However, bringing it indoors during the worst of the heat wave, watering it, and moving it between the shade and sun seemed to help it. It sprang back. Now my little purple hibiscus has suffered an equally sad fate and I’m hoping to nurse it back to health.
Conclusion
We have to do what we can to heal this world of ours. However, small, we can turn off lights when not in use; take care to avoid pesticides or poisons with the potential to kill wildlife when we garden, leave out water for wildlife during a heat wave. And yes, as humans, we are also obliged to look at the suffering of other humans and do what we can to help others. We can donate to charities that feed and clothe those less fortunate, especially the homeless.As humans, we are not separate from the natural world, but part of it. For this reason, Oyama reminds us that karate can help transform us to “better humans, better members of society and better family members.”
