Tag: Buddhism

Better Kicks: Strength and Balance

Guest instructor SenseI AJ taught Saturday morning’s class with a focus on building balance, strength and mental resilience.

Saturday, our guest Sensei AJ returned with more challenging exercises, this time focusing on the legs. She started out by having us do warm-ups focused on helping us loosen up: circling the hips, knees, head, swinging our arms, etc.

Following the warm-up, we started with swinging-turns, where we allow our arms to dangle and move as we turn. The focus is on keeping the upper body loose and coordinated with what the lower body is doing. Next, we did “step-ups,” where we practiced stepping up on our toes as we raised one knee, with the focus on attaining more height.

Leg Exercises: Balance and Strength

Astoria-Megler Bridge June 2018: balance and strength are necessary for both bridges and karateka!

Finally, she brought us to the challenging exercise. Each of us fetched a chair or positioned ourselves against a wall, if we could. She demonstrated on a chair. My son and I also brought kitchen chairs into the living room. Lately, we’ve been opting to setup for Zoom karate indoors, in our living room. Using the back of a chair for support in front of you, you bend forward and kick. The goal is to make your shoulder, hip, leg and foot go out in a straight line. Also, you hold out the oi-zuki arm straight, too, with your hand in a fist. So your fist and arm are parallel to your leg. To practice proper chambering, you first bring your leg up with your knee bent, then extend the leg.

Sounds simple enough, but then Sensei AJ made the exercise more challenging: you keep your leg up, to practice balance, and retract the leg back to the chamber position. You do all this while balancing on one foot with your fist still out. In this position, you kick and return to the chamber position ten times without dropping that leg. Then we switched sides and did that set of exercises on the other leg.

Once we finished the exercises, I could really feel it in my hips and lower back muscles. My son felt it, too.

Spin Kick Goal, Belt-Stretches for Wind-down

Finally, our instructor went over a spinning kick that all of these exercises were building towards. Many of us practicing over Zoom did not have sufficient space for this, though my son and I attempted it in our living room. Sensei T and his family, who have a rather large dance studio for practicing, could perform the spinning kick. It was cool to see him demonstrate what we are building towards.

At the end of class, she had us stretch with belts. We looped our belts around our extended legs and feet to add some extra pressure to deepen the stretch. You put your belt round the center of your foot, extend your leg, then use the weight of your arms to pull the foot towards you. In this position, we stretch the legs, one at a time, from an upright position, then lay on our sides, leg out in front, still holding the belts, and twist our bodies to the opposite side to stretch out our lower backs and hips.

Hanging Between Disasters: a Buddhist Tale

Chinese New Year Parade 2017 in Los Angeles

I’ll end where Sensei AJ began: she opened class with a thoughtful re-telling of an old Buddhist story. A fierce tiger chases a monk through the forest, and the monk, trying to save his life, climbs into a deep well.

Too late, he sees a poisonous snake at the bottom of the well. Luckily, he grabs a hold of a protruding root, extending from the well wall, on the way down. The tiger prowls at the top of the well, ready to eat him. The poisonous snake, swimming in the water below, is ready to bite him.

Trapped, the monk hangs on for dear life between these two types of death. Then he realizes that mice are chewing through the root, so very soon, he could fall to his death in the waters below. Things look grim to the monk, but he is patient.

Sweetness and Change

Above the well, a tree towers, sheltering a bee hive directly above the well. Honey, dripping from the beehive, lands on the monk’s face. He licks the sweet honey, grateful to be alive and experience the wonderful taste of that honey. Buddhism, after all, has taught him to appreciate life’s sweetness.

An eel: not exactly a poisonous snake at the bottom of a well, but also dangerous

Also, Buddhism teaches that everything changes. Though his situation feels hopeless, he waits. The impatient tiger jumps into the well, falls past the monk and lands on the poisonous snake below. The monk manages to shimmy back up the well and climbs out. Sensei AJ then reminded us that, though this pandemic has lasted a long time, our situations will change.

Sensei AJ’s point? We can enjoy the sweetness of a karate class together over Zoom while we wait for that change.

Meditation, Enlightenment and Karate

Monday August 24th, 2020

Yesterday, I got up a little earlier than usual for a Sunday and printed out the registration forms for my son for religious school. It will start after Labor Day, and we were asked to turn in paperwork yesterday.

D and I then tuned in to a livestream meditation and lecture by Anam Thubten, a monk of Tibetan Buddhism, and founder of the Dharmata Foundation. We have attended his lectures in person, too, and he is an excellent teacher. I was able to sit through the opening chants, prayers, and a few minutes of the meditation, then I left to drop off B’s paperwork with the Temple.

Yes, please don’t tell our rabbi we moonlight with a Buddhist monk! I’m kidding. In all seriousness, if our rabbi heard we’d listened to lectures on meditation, he would most likely tell us about the role of meditation in Judaism and draw interesting parallels between Buddhism and Judaism through, say, Kabbalah practices or even cite Ezekiel, who, according to Wikipedia, may have been the first Jewish mystic. So a real discussion with our Rabbi would probably end up along those lines.

The Temple was holding “drive through” religious school registration, beginning at 10 am and ending around noon. I did not want to be too late. When I arrived, my car was the only one in the parking lot, and the Rabbi and our Temple office manager were very happy to see me. They took my paperwork, gave me a packet of materials for my son, and presented me with a collection of shakers, tambourines, hand flutes and other cool little instruments, courtesy of the Temple’s music director. I chose a beautiful, polished wooden shaker for B.

The fact that I was the only parent there, of course, worried me. A parent, earlier that morning, had emailed me, disappointed that we planned to hold Religious School over Zoom. She has younger children, and said they are already struggling with school over Zoom. I emailed her that our school has to follow the city and county guidelines regarding opening. Rabbi was interested to know about this parent and hopefully he will call her. We may lose families who simply do not want to pay for Zoom classes. In any case, I chatted with the Rabbi and office manager a good fifteen minutes before the next parent arrived for registration. Then that was my cue to leave.

I’m glad I went when I did. After all, the teachings of Buddhism and the practice of meditation center, to some degree, on minimizing suffering. I fear if I had waited too long to drop off our paperwork at the Temple, I may have caused suffering, in the form of anxiety, in these two kind people. And causing them suffering while they are performing an important service for the Jewish community would certainly be unkind.

Karate transforming discomfort and pain into health

When I arrived home, D was still meditating with Anam Thubten, so I joined them. During the break, something occurred to me: karate, based in Japanese Zen Buddhism, has a different relationship suffering, or, at least, discomfort and pain. Normally we’d lump discomfort and pain in with human suffering and, by extension, the cycle of samsara. In karate, however, we learn to get “comfortable” with discomfort, and tolerate pain. Why? We expect this self-discipline to improve our health and, ultimately, reduce suffering. And they do.

Push-ups, sit-ups and squats can certainly make you uncomfortable in the moment. Pushing your body with jump rope, or going for a run, or by lifting weights can make your muscles sore and tax your breathing. The strength, endurance and increased cardio-vascular performance you derive from these will, then, improve both your mental and physical health. Karate, and other fitness regimens, does recognize that this apparent, short-term “suffering” does lead to better health. This better health, in turn, decreases human suffering by reducing disease and disability.

Karate, when performed properly, transforms suffering to health and strength. Its foundation in Buddhism courts this realization.

Through sanchin (a kata in which your senpais and even kohais may be called upon to hit you), kumite (fighting), self-defense and tameshiwari (breaking boards, bricks, stones, etc.), we learn techniques for tolerating pain, and even channel the energy from pain towards our spiritual practice. This sounds weird, so let me elaborate. The knowledge that we can defend ourselves against attack, through specific self-defense techniques, clearly grants some peace of mind.

Sanchin and tameshiwari, in particular, teach wisdom. How? Sanchin focuses on discipline and self-mastery. When we are completely focused during this kata, we are not thinking about a self receiving blows from other karateka, but rather, keeping the abdomen, thigh and arm muscles tight, correct breathing, and the next move of the kata. This kata is a mediation: the self, including that self receiving blows, is a trick of mind. The goal is to dissolve that self in a resolve to stay rooted, tight, breathing and in motion. Anam Thubten wrote a book called, “No Self No Problem.” Sanchin holds to this principle: there is no pain if there is no self to feel pain.

Tameshiwari pits our mind against our mind. The mind sees a brick and says, “I can’t break that with just my bare hand! It’s too hard!” But the karateka knows this thinking, like the brick, can be broken. Having seen Sensei and other karateka break bricks, bats and even cinder blocks with bare hands and feet, we see that that mind is not correct. Sensei teaches, demonstrates, coaches, discusses techniques, then orders, “Break that brick!” and you do! You chop through both the brick and your mental resistance.

The first time I broke a brick, I must have wacked it six times. It took me a while probably ten minutes or so. My right hand was sore after three wacks and I had to remove my wedding ring and switch to the left, but I broke it. During our holiday demo, the next time I attempted it, I broke it in three fast, successive wacks, but it took me less than a minute.

Sensei says, at the moment of the break, the Universe suddenly opens, maybe for just a split second. Those seconds are exhilarating. Enlightenment seekers want those openings. Of course, the enlightened karateka knows that breaking a break will also give your bones little micro-breaks. If these are allowed to heal properly, your bones will grow stronger. Breaking again too soon, because your mind craves that wonderful feeling, can leave you with broken bones instead of bricks! If your mind still craves the Opening of the Universe, it can seek it through meditation, at least until the body has healed.

So, we who practice karate, we play with suffering and enlightenment. We resist our own minds and try to trick the mind into finding an Opening of the Universe. Anam Thubten offers another, albeit more methodical, possibly slower but less painful approach. The goal is the same: the Self drops away and Consciousness becomes that Opening of the Universe, where we feel all existence–all conscious life–is one.

My Rabbi might say that, according to Jewish mysticism and/or meditation, we also leave the self to the One: “’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh “, or “I am who I am.”