Tag: tameshiwari

Discussing Covid-19 Exposure, and Rocks

Friday August 28th, 2020

Discussing Covid-19 Exposure, and Rocks

Lilies in the back yard

Family from Northern California are visiting with us. Rather, they were smoked out, and chose to come and see us. My husband’s brother Joseph, wife Fahr and son Ez (Ezekiel) drove down to see us on Fahr’s birthday. (Fahr is a nickname.)

We set up picnic tables in and chairs in the back yard. Everyone wore masks, until we cracked open a bottle of red wine. My mother-in-law put out a bowl of cherries. Joseph and his family had eaten on the drive down.

An Apt Metaphor

Fahr had an amusing metaphor for discussing the COVID-19 exposure level that people are comfortable with: it’s like discussing sex: individual boundaries and preferences regarding birth control have to be set. It was an apt comparison: people really do have a range of tolerance for different kinds of exposures, which can vary according to who they deal with. So we spent sometime talking about that.

Fahr also had a similarly useful suggestion: respect the wishes of the most conservative member of the group. In our case, that’s D. He warms any food prepared outside our home to kill potential viruses, still sprays down purchased items with a diluted bleach water solution, quarantines non-perishable items for 3 days in one room of the house, and prefers to wear a mask in most social situations involving persons outside our household. I should mention Joseph is a nurse practitioner who is tested frequently for COVID-19 exposure, and he is somewhat less conservative. Nevertheless, Fahr wanted us to respect D’s boundaries.

I found Fahr’s take on exposure insightful. I loved the fact that Fahr repurposed guidelines stemming out of feminism. Fahr, I should mention, worked for many years as a doula , is a credentialed life-coach, studied ancient healing methods in addition to undergraduate and graduate studies in the humanities. Feminism is deeply rooted in the individual’s conscious relationship to her or his own body. So, of course, when considering matters of the body and personal boundaries, as we all must now do during this pandemic, feminism presents a logical framework for coping with social relations and our comfort level with exposure to disease.

Joseph, Fahr, Ez and their small dog are staying at a nice hotel within walking distance from our home, and we’ve met almost every evening, either in our back yard or the hotel’s outdoor pool area. We’re looking forward to seeing them tonight.

F is teaching karate over Zoom with T. tonight. I hope that Ez will be able to join their class.

Oh, and Rocks!

S’s rock fragments

Now for the fun stuff: rocks!

Since we may have guests again in our back yard, B and I cleared the furniture and the build-up of junk from the back patio, so I could power-spray it down. While helping out, I mentioned to S I’d been looking for a rock to break. We looked at and discussed rocks while clearing some of the beach stones from the patio.

S and I examined a curved rock together, and what angle we might strike it at. We looked at a few other ones, and B took out a smooth composite one maybe a bit more than half an inch thick. S, thinking he’d try it out to see if it would be an appropriate one to break, gave it a wack against the pavement, cleaved it smoothly in half! He said, “Oh, I didn’t mean to do that, Mom. I just wanted to see if it might work for you.”

Including a penny so you can see the thickness of S’s rock

I was so proud that he broke it!

F’s concrete fragments

Months earlier, I’d also placed chunks of old concrete that I’d dug up from various spots in the yard around our little kumquat bush. Those caught my eye. I suggested to S that we try those. So we retrieved chunks of concrete and broke those first. My reasoning: we’ve watched Sensei and our nidans break cinder blocks. Those are concrete. S and I easily chopped through the thinner chunks of old concrete.

F came out to see what we were doing. She took a concrete fragment and easily broke that in half!

And thickness of the concrete, demonstrated by a penny

I found an actual rock that looked thin and breakable. Oyama advised his students to do just that with river rocks: find one that looks easy to break, and break it! Then try a larger or thicker one, but build up. I broke my rock.

My rock fragments against a penny

My broken rock fragments, also posed against a penny.

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.”