Thursday, September 30, 2010

Engage Buddhism in Thailand: A case study of monks of new movement in interpretation and dissemination of Buddhadhamma


In terms of engaged Buddhism, whenever we mention problems regarding interpretation and dissemination in Thailand, Buddhist scholars here might have different opinions: some point out that engaged Buddhism in Thailand is not a new concept. It is, indeed, in early Buddhism which we have failed to apply to the present world which is changing all the time. Others, however, argue that Buddhism has no social engagement, meaning there was no engaged Buddhism in early Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. Rather, it is a pattern of modern Buddhism in order to solve new problems all around the world.


Here, while social, economic and politics are changing continuously, my question is that is it possible that we re-interpret the Buddha’s teaching to approach new problems which occur every day? And these problems challenge if and how Buddhism is able to solve contemporary problems. Yes, Buddhism first developed in the agricultural society in India; but contemporary issues might offer a good opportunity for us to re-interpret the Buddha’s teaching in the light of new problems and situations.


Modern-day problems have forced some monks to form a new movement in Thailand in an attempt to re-interpret the Buddha’s teaching to find appropriate solutions to the situation. Therefore, the question in this article is that in terms of interpretation and dissemination the Buddhadhamma, what is the difference between monks in the Sukhothai, the Ayutthaya, the Thonburi and the early part of the Rattanakosin era and the monks of new movement in Thailand. Also why monks of a new movement have to reinterpret Buddhadhamma? In order to confine my studies, I would like to select some group of monks of a new movement in Thailand. They consist of Phra Paisarn Visalo, Phra Kittisuk Kittisophano and Phra Dusadee Methankaro.


2. Interpretation and Dissemination of the Buddhadhamma from Sukhothai to Rattanakosin Era


The results of the study indicate that various interesting aspects especially the way of life and on economic, politic, social, culture, custom, and environment in each period affect directly and indirectly they the interpretation and dissemination of Buddhadhamma is undertaken. For example, in the Sukhothai era the political, social and economical context was generally helpful to the disseminatition, thus increased the religious beliefs of Buddhism positively, which could be seen today in a large number of monks, temples and religion ceremonies. With that the interpretation of Buddhism grew in the same direction as well which was manifest in the ethical and moral standard maintained by lay Buddhists. This kind of society has been known as “Tribhumi Society”. People at that time were afraid of sinful things. They instead put effort to do merit and assist each others according to the concept of ocompassion as taught by the Buddha. That brought happiness to the Thai people at that time; there was harmony between layman and religion or world view and dhamma.


During the Ayutthaya period, the political, social and economic way of life affected the interpretation and dissemination too. Thai Kingdom was influenced by Brahmins who brought the cosmological concept from India to govern people under the king. Hence the king acted as the center of the universe. The king’s role changed from Parentism in the Sukhothai period to Dadaism in this time.


From the change had resulted in the way the monks interprete and disseminate to suit the kingdom’s then contemporary rule and society. Obviously some monks interpreted Buddhism to popularize and sustain the practice of magic, creating amulets or tiny Buddha images for people to carry with them as a means of protecting from danger or bringing confidence to the soldier during the war. When we look closely, we can see that the monks acted as the spiritual leaders offering wisdom and confidance to soldiers fighting the Burmese troops.


It could be said that the interpretation and dissemination in Ayutthaya period used the symbols of Buddhism and Brahmins. Not only the belief interpreted by the mentioned symbols but it also added by mystic Thana (แบบฌาน) in order to encourage the faith among the Buddhists to the Order.


Although it did not stand on the real knowledge of Buddhism directly, it was a fruitful methodology to hold people mind as the dissemination. This method was quite different from Sukhothai period which emphasized to interpret ethical precepts and the original canonical texts



At the Thonburi (1767-82AD) and the early Rattankosin period (1782-) were still influenced by the Sukhothai’s ideas of politics and government. For example the king was the absolute monarchy and the center of the kingdom. The influence is evident in the way the kingdom expanded and built towns and cities. It showed some similarity with Ayutthaya’s principle and ideas in the interpretation and dissemination because it focused on interpreting Buddhism as superstition, dominantingly as components of magic practice. So, there came an effort to re-interpret the Buddhadhamma: its study and application that emphasize more on the canonical texts. An important part of the process was to hold the Buddhist Council to revise or reaffirm the Pali Canon.


3. Interpretation and Dissemination of Buddhadhamma in contemporary Thailand


When modern sciences and technology from the west started coming and influencing the Thai society from the middle of the Rattanakosin period, the Rationale interpretation in Buddhism began and it was initiated especially by King Rama IV (King Mongkut: 1852-68) who was in the monhood for a quarter of a century when he studied the canonical texts as well as some sciences. After he became king, he changed lots of doctrinal interpretation and discipline. For his role introducing and popularizing science, the king was later honored as Father of the Modern Science of Siam. Since then the interpretation and dissemination have stood on the basic which has to be explained and proven to the public. Fortunately, at that time there was a monk called Somdet Phramaha Samanachao Kromprayavachirayanavaroros (1840-1921)7, the son of King Rama IV, who had taken an important role as the leader of monkshood to defend the Buddhism from the magic or superstition and mystery. He was the monk who tried to protect the Buddhism in the original and right way.


The progress and his rational radition have been continued by Buddhist scholar-monks such as Bhikkhu Buddhadasa8 and Phra Promkunapronb (P.A. Payutto). They use the rationale as an important tool to explain the Pali canon in order that it will create the ethics to fit the original teaching.


However when they critically studied political, economical, social, environmental and science issues, they found the contemporary issues are more complicated than those same subjects in the past. Because in the past Thais mostly lived in the agriculture society so their world view and life view did not complicate like the industrised society.


The problems of capitalism, politic and social are filled with conflicts and have caused severe violence through the whole country of Thailand. That affects the progress monks to do the interpretation and dissemination. The monks of new movement: Phra Paisarn Visalo, Phra Kittisak Kittisophano and Phra Duthsadee Methangkuro, have tried to explain and analyze the Buddhism in the social and political dimensions. Thus their interpretation and dissemination have reflected the truth that Buddhism has never been separated from the social and political dimensions since the Buddha time. Hence the progress monks’ interpretation and dissemination will cover in three dimensions that are namely focusing on this study:


(1) the practice to link the internal and external dimensions
(2) the participation of the layman in the society and
(3) the participation of the monkshood in all dimensions.


4. Conclusion and analysis


The comparison of the interpretation and dissemination between the progressive monks and the conservative one are different in some points. They are as follow: the first point the progress monk will focus on pragmatism to join the spiritual and social dimension in society. However the conservative monk would emphasize on only the spiritual dimension rather than social dimension. The last point is that the progress monk would like to participate with the large group of people as it can show by the horizontal line but another participate with a limited group as in the vertical line.


However the world view and life view of progress monk fit the present situation which the modernization is rapidly and continuously changing. The needed monks belong to the horizontal group rather than the vertical. This concerns to complicated problems nowadays and needs the participation from people. The participation in the activities of the progress monks is noted suitable and fitting whit the doctrine and discipline (Dhamma and Vinaya).


When analyzing the role and the principle of the doctrine and discipline of the progressive monks, the conclusion was found that they fit the Buddha teaching and the way the early Buddhist Order had behaved and performed. It was the valued clue that the Buddha had a good relationship with the Buddhists and also other competitors such as Brahmanism, Jhanas and so on. The Buddha’s activities were a parallel dimension of spiritual and social. It showed in the Buddha’s teaching “you all should go in order to help, to convey happiness to the people.


Finally the progressive monks have to realize or must realize about the participation to the world view and life view of layman. It is necessary that monks must concentrate on or are conscious all the time of non-monastic

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Engaged Buddhism in India and Role of Theravada Buddhism: Perspectives and Prospects

Engaged Buddhism, as a specific term, is originally coined by noted Vietnamese Zen teacher Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh. As we know, during Vietnam War when he and his Dhamma friends were engrossed in their meditative practices and surrounding society was afflicted with the sufferings of the war, the question arose in their mind regarding the objective of their religious life. They thought that when the other part of the society is enveloped with the fear, pain and suffering so would it be appropriate for them to confine themselves to their spiritual practices, hiding from the external world? They decided to expand the field of their actions. As an ideal monk to do the spiritual practices so that they could understand the grief and agony of others, and on the other hand, to go out of their Viharas to offer their services to the common people of the society and they gave this way of life a new Chinese term, translated as Engaged Buddhism into English, although not considered to be very accurate translation.

Engaged Buddhism, as a specific term might have emerged in the recent times but, undoubtedly, as a concept it had already begun with the departure of Gotam, the Buddha from his householder life to the society, to the humanity. It was the first example in the history of humanity by anyone to reject the interest of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ for the whole of the humanity. It is needless to reiterate that, Buddhist scriptures are flooded with the stories of the devotion and commitment of the Buddha as well as his disciples to the society, not only in the form of ideas, but also in the form of action. What can be the better example from the detailed illustrations of the Pāramīs in the different Jātaka stories.

The plan of action, Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh chose to apply was adopted in the situation of war, but in the normal situations, Buddhists can engage themselves even in much wider social perspectives. Active engagement of Buddhist ideas can be divided on two levels: spiritual development and social development. Since the term pertains to the Buddhists who seek the ways to apply the insights gained from meditation practices and Dharma teachings to situations of social, political, and economic suffering and injustice, these two can not be seen as distinct to each other. Both of these compliment each other and, therefore, both are interdependent to each other.

The revived Buddhism in India has not travelled a very long journey in India. Archaeologically, the gradual and slow revival of the Buddhism in India continued from 1750 to 1890 by the British scholars like James Prinsep, Alaxandar Cunningham and several others. Religious revival of Buddhism in India began with the arrival of a young Sinhalese Buddhist named Anagarika Dharmapala, who, inspired by an article of Sir Edwin Arnold written in The Daily Telegraph on pitiable condition of Bodh Gaya, established the Maha Bodhi Society in Ceylon on May 3st, 18912 and his contribution to the revival of Buddhism on historical level is outstanding.

But, the first example of the active application of the social doctrines of Buddhism on the mass level was seen by the Indian people during 1950s of 19th century because of the efforts of a legendary personality named Dr. B.

R. Ambedkar. He was born in the 1891 in a family of Mahāra cast which was considered as untouchable during that time. Born as a part of Hindu society, he felt that there was no right or freedom to study, to live with the common society, to participate in the social function to the lower caste people and, especially, untouchables were being treated very cruelly by some feudal minded people of upper caste. He, having got the higher education somehow, tried to improve the condition of suppressed class within the Hindu society and in this context; he had the conflict with the Hindu freedom fighter leaders like Mahatma Gandhi also on several occasions. But the status of Dalits could not be upgraded barring a few incidental successes.

Dr. Ambedkar decided to renounce the Hindu religion on Oct. 13, 1935, saying:

“I was born as a Hindu but I will not die as a Hindu, for, this is in my power.”


He had been studying about other religions for a long time and, then after, he began to do so with more commitments so that he could choose the appropriate religion for himself and his followers. He became greatly impressed by studying Tipitaka, the collection of Buddha’s words, and he decided to convert towards Buddhism. In 1950, Dr. Ambedkar made known publicly his determination to revive Buddhism in India. He made his followers aware of the Buddhist doctrines by his lectures and writings and established that the social equality can only be accessible through the path shown by the Buddha. In a talk Why I like Buddhism, given to B.B.C. London on May, 12th, 1956, he says:

“I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination which no other religion does. All other religions are bothering themselves with ‘God’ and ‘soul’ and ‘life after death’. Buddhism teaches ‘Prajñā’ (understanding as against superstition and supernaturalism). It teaches ‘Karunā’ (love). It teaches ‘Samatā’ (equality). This is what man wants for a good and happy life on earth. These three principles of Buddhism make their appeal to me. These three principles should, also make an appeal to the world. Neither God nor soul can save society”.

Declaring, “religion is for man and not man for religion, and announcing: “there was only one man who raised his voice against separatism and untouchability and that was Lord Buddha”, Dr. Ambedkar, with the half of the million followers of him, took refuge under Buddhism on October 14th, 1956. He popularized Buddhism at great extent in the masses of the modern India. It was the first ever application of Buddhist doctrines at the social level in the modern India. By getting strength from the Buddha’s teachings under the extra-ordinary leadership of Dr. Ambedkar, the down trodden masses of that time could be successful in getting back their lost dignity at large extent, and later became a powerful force in the political system of India. Undoubtedly, whenever the major events related to the history of Engaged Buddhism in India and world in the modern time would be counted; the name of Dr. Ambedkar would be foremost of the names.

In shaping up and modifying the mindset of intellectual community of India, the contribution of three heroes of Buddhism, namely; Rahula Sankrityayana, Bhikkhu Jagdish Kassapa, Bhadanta Ananda Kausalyayana have been stupendous. They draw to attention of the whole of Indian academia towards the depth and magnificence of the Pali literature, Theravada Buddhism and Buddhism in general, by their writings mostly in the Hindi language.

It is worthwhile to mention here that all the above personalities got their education and training of Buddhism by the help of Pali literature, and applied those teachings under the shade of Theravada tradition. Therefore, it can be said that the Theravada Buddhism played a paramount role in the conditioning of the all the Indian Buddhist scholars in the modern India and it has a great prospects to offer to the next generation also.


Every country has its own history, its own culture, and its own geographical structure and, therefore, the people of each country maintain a certain kind of mental formation. Every society has its own social structure and, resultantly, its own kind of problems also. India is suffering from population explosion whereas several countries are facing the problem of declining rate of child birth. India’s sixty years old person also do not dare to take any major decision of the family if someone elder than him is alive in the family to take decision, whereas, in many of the European countries it is considered as a healthy tradition to endorse the power of taking independent decision to a son or daughter as soon as he or she becomes young. There are several similar issues which can draw our attention if we compare any two societies.

The way of social application of Buddhism, the level of that application and the limitations can not be decided overlooking the space and time in this world. The statements of the Buddha are sometimes expressed considering the local and spontaneous situation and if we do not understand the core of the Buddha’s teachings and its methodology and we pick up every line of text and put our energy and time to justify that in each and every situation, then it would not be the right understanding of the Dhamma. Buddha’s teachings are not mere the counting of the philosophical, spiritual, social and moral teachings but are the treasure of the solutions of the problems, and moreover, the Buddha had established the proper methodology to understand the problems and to find their solutions. As the land, time and situation become different, the application and solution also may be selected accordingly. In the words of Dr. Ambedkar:

The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have.


In the recent times, Buddhism, undoubtedly, is being paid special attention in the whole world. We often come across the statement by the different people, saying, that Buddhism is getting very fascinating for the non – Buddhist westerners. The adoption of Buddhism by the Hollywood stars or any interview given in the favour of any particular form of Buddhism by any Hollywood actress adds additional glamour to the Buddhism. If any progressive, rational and open-minded person inculcates likeness for Buddhism by understanding its characteristics and virtues, then it is unquestionably appreciable and commendable. But it should not be happened out of just glamour. Sometimes ago, the five star hotels had started the trend of organizing the concert of Indian classical music for the elite and rich class, born and brought up listening western pop music. It became a fashion among that class saying and showing in the public places that they listen classical music and this or that vocalist is wonderful singer. But that added glamour could not stand long because that was not erected on the real solid ground. Yes, Indian classical music is still lovable and admired among its real lovers because of its amazing melodious effect and so is the case with the Theravada Buddhism. Theravada Buddhists should understand the strength of the Buddha’s teachings and apply those teachings to the society in a humane way as much as possible rather than attaching the artificial glamour to it for short-term popularity.

What can be the method, instruments, level and limitations of the Engaged Buddhism in India? – these issues has a certain similarities and dissimilarities also if we compare with the common problems of the whole world.. The message of Brahmavihāras (mettā, karunā, muditā, upekkhā), mental purifications, peace and conflict management, self-sacrifice for the sake of the others are of the universal value as well as of local. But if we take the Indian society into consideration then we will have to accept that many of the Indian social problems are little different and, sometimes more intricate from common social problems of the world. The feeling of the superiority or inferiority on the basis of caste, spread of Dowry system like epidemic in the marriages, increasing trend of superstitions and blind faith and religious fundamentalism are a few of major Indian social problems.

The religious superstitions, false propaganda on the name of religion and blind faiths have dramatically taken new shape in India, rather than decreasing with the technological development, in the last few years with the emerging trends of globalization. The rituals and other religious activities which were once a personal way of worshipping the God in India, are being obsolete. I was born in the most orthodox locality, placed on the bank of the river Ganga, of one of the most orthodox and religious city of Hindus, Varanasi, of India. The area was of mostly of the famous Brahmin priests and astrologers. In my childhood I used to observe that they would perform their Vedic chanting in groups and take bath in the adjacent Ganga River peacefully. They would perform their religious activities according to their tradition. One might have differences with their belief and rituals but those activities would neither interfere with others religious believers nor do any propaganda to improve its popularity.

But, in the last 10-12 years the noticeable increase in the fuss and showoff on the name of religion is baffling for any sensible, progressive and unprejudiced person. Adorned with the crown of full of diamonds and jewels, a holy man, comes in the most expensive car to the stage and narrates the Hindu philosophy of the standard of graduation first year and preaches the sermon to be detached from the desires. He suddenly begins to sing and dance on any God – worshipping lines made on the music of any Bollywood’s popular song. Disciples also start singing and dancing. A full fledged orchestra is arranged by the Babas (So called Holy men) themselves. Thousands of the followers also start singing, dancing and crying. A famous satirist of India named, Harishankar Parasai, had once commented on these kinds of characters: “All the mad of the whole world are considered as pure mad but in India they are considered as spiritual.”

Most of the Babas own more personal property like CEOs of the multinational companies facing several criminal charges of murder, capturing the illegal lands, kidnapping and rape. Interestingly, this whole scenario is closely associated with market.


Whatever is popular is saleable -adopting this theory, all the hundreds of TV channels are flooded with the advertisements of the magical stones, gems, lockets of the pictures of the Gods and Goddesses claiming that these may change your destiny absolutely. Even the news channels also have started inviting Tarot card readers, Numerologists, Astrologers, Crystal ball readers to seek their forecasting on the serious issues of the politics, economics and so on. I still remember the propaganda took place on September 21, 1995 when the rumour took place in the whole India that Lord Ganesha’s statues are drinking milk. Even the IT professors and Medical Doctors of my university ran and queued up in the rows of the people offering milk. The all temple’s ground was overflowing with the milk poured by the people but who had the common sense to find the scientific truth behind the rumour. This syndrome of creating religious propaganda is spreading out like plague in the other religions also. Last year, the sea water behind a mosque in the Mumbai became sweet and Muslims started drinking and storing gallons and gallons of the water considering it as a miracle of the Allah. Indian scientists kept on appealing to the common people that it happened because of some chemical reaction and the water can be hazardous for health but it hardly affected the ears. Exactly, next day, the falling of tears was seen in the eyes of mother Merry in a Church. Fortunately, nothing something like this happened with any Buddhist temple.

The most paradoxical situation with the Buddhism in India has been in the recent times that the Buddhist tradition in India has been mostly studied as an offshoot of the Hindu tradition and most of the Indian scholars, especially those who have been trained as a student of the Department of Indian Philosophy studying later Mahayana texts and have no previous knowledge of Pali tradition, put all their effort to establish that Buddhism has nothing new to offer except what it has borrowed from the Vedic tradition. On the other hand, the largest number of the Buddhists of Indian population, which is the follower of Dr. Ambedkar, have made Dr. Ambedkar their God, but, without any proper training of Theravada Buddhist tradition most of them can not defend the Buddhist standpoint on any issue when it comes to the controversial issues like of the Buddha being an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu and so on. Therefore, there is a great need of establishing a pure Theravada Buddhist University in India which could provide the authentic knowledge of Buddhism through the Pali texts and tradition to the knowledge seekers. Let me assure here that one such step can revolutionize the state of Buddhism and Buddhist study in India.

When ever we should talk of the engaged Buddhism in India, we should always consider the socio-religious condition of the time of the Buddha and his method of action in that society. The Theravada Buddhist tradition is firmly rooted in the rationalistic, scientific base of Pali literature and it has all those characteristics which the world can ever imagine of as a future religion for the humanity. The Theravada Buddhists residing in India should think how, by going to the public, they can remove the blind faiths, superstitions, religious fanaticism and intolerance of the people. They should enter the villages and towns for true social service and conducting the common awareness programme regarding health, education and social evils. The members should take resolution that they would not do any kind of discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or financial condition of beneficiaries. The Theravada Buddhist organizations also should not only think of establishing the temples, but also to setting up the charitable hospitals, schools and social welfare societies to reach the common people with the message of the Buddha. The schools established by them should have the provision of the study of the Pali language and literature in order to bring the glory of Theravada tradition back to its motherland. The social service should not be in the form of religious propagation of the Buddha Dhamma because as soon as the people would be free from prejudices, taboos and blindness of the mind, naturally it would be the success of the teachings of the Buddha. The teachings by the Buddha himself were delivered to be followed by the people, not to convert the people. Conversion was natural phenomena which took place after people understood the Dhamma. Buddha’s Dhamma, like a raft, is for crossing over, not for carrying over.8 The central objective of the Buddha’s Dhamma is not to make others a Buddhist just by their faith, but to make them a perfect human being. In the modern context, the meaning of crossing over can be taken as to get freedom from evils, inside and outside.

As far as the application of the Buddhist doctrines at spiritual level concern, it is my own observation and humble request on the basis of that observation from the respected scholars of Buddhism and monks that only that kind of Buddhism can be acceptable and successful in India which is based on the Buddha’s own teachings, free from Tantra-Mantra, magic, miracles, superstitions and religious propaganda. And Theravada Buddhism has all that capacity. If any form of Buddhism tries to seek attention and popularity through short-cut methods of ritualistic miracles, providing external means of purification, esoteric methods, and astrology and so on, then, I do not see any hope for the success of that form of Buddhism in India at least, as Indians already have enough of those things in their Brahmanical tradition. Moreover, those things will justify the claims of the Hindu fundamentalist forces that the Buddhism is not much different from Hinduism and it is an offshoot of Vedic Brahmanism.

- Dr. Siddharth Singh

Monday, September 27, 2010

Buddhists Monks under the SLORC regime

The mask came off in 1988 when people from all strata appeared on the streets to rally and protest against the military regime that had made Burma a Least Developed Country (LDC) during its reign. The regime sent armed troops to crackdown on the mass demonstrations. According to some estimates, 600 monks were killed during August and September 1988, while the total death toll was approximately 10,000 people that year.

As there was no ruling by the regime between August 25 and September 18 that year, monks took responsibility for the security of the people in some townships. The monasteries also delivered rice to the poor people to cover a shortage due to deteriorating communication. On August 27, with the intention to

create disorder, the military authorities released criminals from a central prison in Rangoon. Leaders of monk unions and student unions asked the criminals not to commit any crime during the demonstration period. The released criminals were fed and sent to their respective hometowns on the same day. The monks and students gave the criminals both money and recommendation letters to use on the way so that they would not be wrongly accused of being military intelligence spies.

A month later on September 18, 1988, the military generals staged a coup d’etat. The newly formed State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) announced that they were going to hold a multi-party democratic election after

which the military would return to their barracks. Although the National League for Democracy (NLD), the key pro-democracy party, won a landslide victory in the 1990 general election, the regime negated their promise. Unwilling to abandon power, the regime propagated that the August 8, 1988 people’s uprising was not a mass demonstration demanding democracy but an anarchic turmoil conspired by the banned communist party and some followers of colonialism. In addition, the SLORC authorities arrested and imprisoned many activists including students and monks.




In June 1989, a young Mandalay monk, Ven. Koweinda, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. His sentence was extended to fifteen years in 1990 as he was accused of leading a Mandalay prison riot. He died there in October 1994, in his early thirties. Another monk, Ven. Kowainda, was arrested for his involvement in the 1988 protests. Accused of being a communist, he died in September 1991. It is suspected that both monks were tortured to death.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Buddhist Monks under the BSPP Regime

After the military generals seized state power in 1962, they continually attempted to crackdown on the most active strata of society including Buddhist monks as they were believed to be a potentially significant revolutionary force. As there was no democratic governance, people suffered a great degree of hardship under the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) military regime. Student demonstrations, labor strikes, and mass protests occurred throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1965 in Hmawbi, Rangoon Division, monks refused to accept government rule over them. As a result, the BSPP regime arrested over seven hundred monks, some of whom were abused and imprisoned.

Following the death of U Thant, former UN Secretary General, thousands of people including students and monks protested against the military regime demanding an official burial site for the nationally and internationally respected statesman. U Thant passed away on November 25, 1974 and his remains were transferred to his native country, Burma, for a memorial service. The military generals, who always had a strong dislike of native intellectual figures, tried to reduce the ceremony to a minimum. On December 5, 1974, a large crowd of students seized the body in front of 50,000 mourners shortly before it was due to be buried at a public cemetery. The students viewed the military government’s arrangement for the burial site as an insult to the dignity of the statesman. The students quickly built a new mausoleum at the place where the Student Union Building was located before it was blown up in 1962. As a result of the protests, several monks were bayoneted and six hundred were arrested. The total number of people arrested was over 5,000.

When it seized state power, the military regime established the sham ‘Burmese Socialist Programme Party’ and created a socialist government in 1974 that ruled the country until the nationwide pro-democracy uprising of August 1988. During the 26 years of the BSPP’s reign, the military generals pretended to be the most nationalist and pious government that ever ruled in Burma. Taking advantage of the fact that the majority of Burmese people are Buddhists, they tried to convince the people that the government would never do wrong as it was a pious one. Using state power, the military authorities created the Sangha organization comprising it of the whole monk community.

Because monks, by tradition, hardly ever contradicted kings and remained consistent with Vinaya, the Buddhist discipline or code of conduct, venerable monks tolerated the regime’s conduct. In addition, there were already the 10 precepts incumbent on a king from Buddha’s teaching that the successive Burmese kings appreciated and followed. Some daring monks tactfully mentioned the 10 precepts when they gave religious speeches. It had once been a moral obligation of monks to teach kings when they tended toward injustice or immoral deeds.

In military-ruled Burma, some monks tried to meet the needs of the poverty-stricken lay people who could not afford basic necessities or the costs of educating their children. Monks founded small schools that gave shelter to and educate many orphans from war-torn areas and helpless children throughout the country. Under the military regime, the Minister for Religious Affairs provided some support to these schools but really very little.

As expanding global communication became vital for the social development of all countries, some monks tried to teach foreign languages, especially English. Because private language schools charged high tuition fees, the schools founded by the monks were very helpful to the poor people.


Through running charity schools as a supporting measure, monasteries reduced the gap in lay society between the rich and poor.The authorities did not prohibit or interrupt the monks support to laymen or donors. Yet, at the same time, the military authorities did not provide any funds or support to facilitate these activities. Although the regime created honorable social awards for some businesspersons, it did not recognize the work of monks for society. The regime conferred reverential religious titles only to monks who passed the religious examinations and to some prominent venerable monks. It can be noted that the regime’s intention was to keep the sangha permanently away from society, or rather, to keep the sangha away from the people. Yet, Buddhist sasana was an established part of society, and if there were no laymen to make religious offerings, there would be no Buddhist sasana at all. It is unquestionable that the perpetuation of Buddhist sasana could not be accomplished by neglecting the welfare of laymen or society.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Buddhist Monks and Burmese society

In most of the world’s tourism literature, Burma has been quoted as ‘The Golden Land’
or ‘The Land of Pagodas’. This allegory reflects the once prosperous agrarian country with glittering paddy fields and gilded pagodas. In the old days, Burmese people did well in business and were thus able to give alms, offerings and donations which contributed to gilding the pagodas and the Buddha’s images.


Traditional Burmese society cherished a monastery-based education system from the time of reign of the early kings. Most people lived in rural villages and the monastery was the axis for village life. In the early days, every Buddhist family would send their children to the monastery to learn to read and write. When a boy was old enough to read and write, the parents usually initiated him into the Buddhist order as a novice or sama.nera. When the boy became 20 years of age, he could ask the bhikkhu community for either full ordination or could remain a novice. He could also become a layperson again if he so wished.


Local people supported the monastery and the monks by giving merit, and in turn, the monks offered spiritual guidance and tended to the community’s social, educational and health needs. Monks represented “the public conscience” and were sensitive to the joy as well as the suffering of local people. When local people suffered from heavy taxation, forced labor, rice quota extortion or forced relocation, monks did not ignore their plight. Since sangha, the Buddhist community of monks and nuns, is one of the Three Gems of Buddhism (Buddha, Dharma or the Law and the sangha or the Order), monks received not only the respect of the lay people but also the respect of kings.



There still remains a close relationship between the monks and the people, a factor that enables monks to have firsthand knowledge about the affairs of the country. Buddhist people usually go to monasteries when they are not engaged in their work. In particular, Buddhists go to monasteries on Sabbath days during the period of the Buddhist lent to observe the eight Buddhist precepts and to listen to religious sermons. Most people perform alms-giving ceremonies at least once every year after they have been able to save extra money. In performing all these matters, people need to keep in touch with Buddhist monks. There is a permanent correlation between the monks and the people because only if the country is in a state of peace and people are living under normal conditions are monks able to practice Dharma, the teachings of Buddha. If the country is in turmoil and the people are impoverished, monks face great difficulty surviving and promoting the three main aspects of sasana*, Buddhist dispensation.


(*Sasana is divided into three parts:

(1) Pariyatti Sasana, the whole text of Tipitaka, three baskets consisting of the words of the Buddha;

(2) Patipatti Sasana, the actual practice in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha;

(3) and Pativedha Sasana, the attainment of the Four Noble Truths achieved by the practice of the Dharma.)


During the colonial period, the majority of Burmese people became poorer. As the national spirit for freedom rose among the people, especially among intellectuals, monks also became involved in the national movement. The Burmese nationalists began founding civil societies with a specific foundation focused on religion. As monks were able to engage in everyday communication with the communities through religious services and the monasteries, they were called upon for consultation and assistance. In many ways, monks became involved in national politics through the desire of the people.


The most prominent monks involved in advocating nationalism were U Ottama and U Wisara. U Ottama, from Arakan State, was the first monk to be arrested for political activism. He had lived abroad but urged people in Burma to wear traditional clothes and use locally made goods, defying the message promoted by the British. He was arrested twice and imprisoned for seven years with hard labor. U Wisara was jailed by imperial authorities for political activities. He died in custody after a 166-day hunger strike. Both monks were influential but were viewed by many as “politicized” monks. While some abbots dismissed them as followers of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, they were actually followers of Theravada Buddhism and inspired by Ghandi’s strategy of non-violent political action and boycotts.


In 1942 after the Second World War broke out, the Japanese occupied and ruled Burma during which time the people endured harsh conditions and experiences. Although the Japanese soldiers were mostly Buddhist as well, they treated Burmese people in an impious manner, particularly in rural areas. This treatment became one of the main reasons why the people vigorously supported the antifascist movement organized by the Burmese revolutionary forces in 1945. Due to the same nationalist sensation within society, the monks, also members of society, were involved in the movement in their own way.

Monday, September 20, 2010

A Land Where Buddhist Monks Are Disrobed and Detained

 In Burma, anyone can be detained for being involved in human rights advocacy, democratic activities or peaceful demonstrations. Thus, political activists are not the only stratum of society vulnerable to arrest by the military intelligence, Buddhist monks are also subject to the same fate. It is estimated that there are approximately 300 monks and novices in Burma’s prisons, whereas the number of political prisoners lingers at about 1400 to date.

Since the pro-democracy uprising occurred in 1988, the military regime has constantly attempted to crackdown on all strata of society including Buddhist monks who are assumed to be potentially significant revolutionary forces. During the demonstrations that occurred in August and September 1988, the regime killed masses of peaceful demonstrators including monks, students and civilians.

Although Buddhist monks have been involved in the movement by non-violent means, they have not been excluded from arrest and imprisonment. Since there is no rule of law but only ‘law and order’ in Burma, all arrests come without a warrant and the victims face brutal interrogations at military detention centers. Almost all the lawsuits concerning such arrests have been tried secretly without granting the accused any rights to seek legal counsel. Trials have been perfunctory; the so-called judges just read out the charges. While the accused is asked to plead guilty or not, the court announces its verdict which has invariably been one of guilt.

Most of the monks, including novices, that were arrested were charged under Section 5 (J) of the Emergency Provisions Act which is a widely worded law that has been used to suppress dissent even in the absence of a proclaimed ‘State of Emergency’. Some monks were charged under Article 295 of the Penal Code which describe the charge as ‘of offenses relating to religion’.

Aside from these Acts, Buddhist monks are vulnerable to arrest and charge under other Acts described in the Penal Code. In October 1990, immediately after the monks boycott of the regime began, the regime created ‘ The Law Concerning the Sangha Organizations’ or Sangha Organization Law, an intrusion of the state in Sangha affairs. Subsequently, more than 200 monks and novices were found to be guilty of contravening these rules and regulations and were stripped of their monkhood that year.

Since the ‘Sangha Organization Law’ describes all nine Sangha Sects as members of the State Sangha Organization, every monk, or member of Sangha, has no alternative but to abide by all the rules and regulations pronounced by the regime. In brief, all the orders and decrees the 7 Burma: A Land Where Buddhist Monks Are Disrobed and Detained in Dungeons Report by AAPP military regime has issued are designed to keep monks under tight control and thwart them from being involved in any social movements.



According to Buddhist principles, disrobing a monk forcibly cannot alter him into an ordinary laymen unless he himself chooses to be. Many monks who were arrested and imprisoned adhered to the principles of monkhood and never assumed that they had become laymen because they were disrobed. However, the authorities concerned in Burma, particularly those in military interrogation camps and inside prisons, treated the disrobed monks inhumanely as they considered the monks to be common criminals as they were no longer in their robes.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

"Zen" The historical development

The Buddhist doctrine traces back to the religion founder Gautama (surname) Siddhartha (proper name) out of the ruling warrior clan of the Shakya in the oligarchic Republic of Shakya in North India, in the border area to today's Nepal. Most sources state 560-480 B.C. as his life data. North India at this time bore the mark of drastic change. Through the transition from cattle-raising to agriculture administrative structures strengthened fundamentally. The caste system changed: due to the establishment of hereditary monarchies the warrior caste became less important; the Brahmins (priests) scaled up and became the highest caste in place of the warriors. Small political systems at the Himalaya mountainsides like the one of Shakya got under political pressure of the large hereditary monarchies and lost their independence.

Moving ascetics who had given up their possessions und left their families were a reflection of this upheaval of the society and had a high reputation in the population. Also Gautama left his family for this kind of search. At 29 years of age he left behind his wife and his little son. Later they both followed just like his stepmother and two of his cousins likewise into the way of life of hiking religious seekers. About the youth time of Gautama and his experience of the transitoriness, there exist many legends. Well known over all is the story that Gautama, although the son of the ruler and protected from all negative, is confronted with senility, illness and death.


The personal search of Gautama was characterized by hardest mortification. After six years of this practice it came to a second turning point, which led to the fact that he moved away from asceticism again and developed his specific doctrine. The Buddhist tradition purports that Gautama in a night and a day under a tree realized „equanimity and pure present awareness“. He awoke from the "dream existence of joy and misery of the transitoriness"

and experienced direct insight into the transitoriness and lack of substance of being and into the Conditioned Arising of all phenomena. From this time on he was given the surname Buddha, which means the awoken or illuminated one.


After this experience Gautama spent approximately 45 years to pass his insights on to people looking for the meaning of their lives or for practical advice. The group of humans who left their possessions and joined Gautama grew steadily. The fact that in this community and in the contact with people looking for advice no caste differences were recognized represented a revolutionary element of Buddhist practice. A further existed in the position of the women. In his statements Gautama made clear from the beginning that for him men and women were equal in their ability of personal and religious development. However he hesitated first to include groups of women into his movement. Today Buddhist men cloisters and Buddhist women cloisters exist, although in Buddhism altogether men are clearly over-represented in leading positions. In western Buddhist groups this ratio is more balanced, and women are established more and more as religious teachers.


It is typical for Gautama´s teachings that they contain complex philosophical ideas on the one hand, but on the other hand they are also practically and not speculatively oriented. In discussion with Brahmins he said for example that none of them had ever seen Brahman ("God"). In another teaching he emphasized that the release from greed, hate and ignorance was actually a value for itself, also without a reward for it after death. Traditional presentations that stood in contradiction to single elements of the Buddhist philosophy, like the concept of personal rebirth or the Hindu Gods canon, were relativized or amended but not posed in question in principle. Persons from most different social classes addressed themselves to Gautama and also rulers looked for his advice.


After Gautama´s death a relatively ascetic current prevailed at first in the religious community.5 Later on the two Buddhist schools of interpretation formed: Hinayana (the small vehicle) and Mahayana (the large vehicle).6 In the Hinayana the students concentrate over all on their own development, for example by means of meditation and body exercises. This school is today particularly common in Southeast Asia. In the Mahayana the students try to include all beings into their self realization (Bodhisattva ideal). The reality of the world as an inseparable whole is stated this way. The Mahayana direction is particularly common in China and Japan, Zen is a part of the Mahayana.


In the context of the propagation of Buddhism to Eastern Asia the development of Zen takes its beginning. The Indian monk Bodhidharma who traveled in the fifth century A.D. as a Buddhist teacher from India to China is considered as the founder of the Zen tradition. The Japanese word Zen comes from Chinese Chan which is derived from the Sanskrit word Dhyana (concentration, meditation). Zen represents a specific connection of Indian, Chinese and Japanese elements. In the opinion of various Zen authors Chinese culture tends to be more practically and less speculatively oriented than Indian culture, which reflects itself in the alignment of Zen on practical life experience: "What’s the use of talking about a musical masterpiece? What counts, is, that one performs it."


Eisai (1141-1214, Rinzai school) and Dogen (1200-1253, Soto school) are the founders of the two large Zen schools in Japan, which respectively trace back to Chinese schools of older date. At the time of Eisai and Dogen Buddhism became part of the popular culture in Japan. Today in Japan there exist various other Buddhist schools beside Zen, e.g. Jodo Shin, Shingon, Tendai, and Nichiren. Apart from Zen practice in a Japanese tradition, today above all the Vietnamese Zen teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh8 and his students are well-known in the West. In Tibet its own direction of Buddhism exists which combines local cultural traditions with the Buddhist doctrine and is popular likewise in the West. In India Buddhism disappeared practically completely in the 13th century: 1000-1250 A.D. all monasteries were destroyed through Islamic invasion.


The propagation of Buddhism as the first world religion was connected with the transmission of cultural heritage and cultural techniques, e.g. the transfer of medical knowledge from India to China, or the adoption of Chinese writing in Japan. A further explanation for the expansion of Buddhist ideas consists in the fact that Buddhist monks always accepted local divinities and placed them merely under the Buddhist Law of Transitoriness.


In Europe an influence of Buddhist ideas in philosophy and humanities can be determined starting in the 18th century and reaching a first peak in the 19th century when the preoccupation with Buddhism became a proper fashion for certain society circles. Above all philosophers as for example Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and later in the 20th century Heidegger appointed themselves to Gautama´s ideas.


After the discussion of Buddhist theory, the Western preoccupation with Buddhist practice started to a greater extent after 1945. The contact between Japan and the USA due to the war actions of the Second World War contributed to the propagation of Zen practice in the United States. The books of Zen author Daisetz Suzuki (e.g. Suzuki 1993) attracted attention in the West. Starting from 1970 Zen and other meditation centers were established in the United States, for example by Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki 1997) in California.

Today Buddhism as a religion is important above all in Asia and increasingly also in the West. Buddhism is the predominant religion in the Himalaya region and in Mongolia; considerable parts of the population are also Buddhists in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan, and China. It is common to the different Buddhist currents that they do not proselytize and claim no contradictoriness regarding other religious systems. As a consequence many Japanese practice Buddhist and Shintoistic rites as well, or Roman Catholics and Protestants practice Zen Meditation.

The Thought of the Buddha


The philosophical system that the Buddha taught is remarkably clear and simple. It would, however, be very easy for a presentation of his thought to degenerate into hundreds of pages of confusion and nonsense, and it could be argued that much of the history and doctrinal development of Buddhism has been just such an endeavor of obfuscation. His teaching is simple in that it can be summed up in two words: the keyword of his philosophy is “impermanence” (anitya) and the keyword of his religion is the “path” .3 All elements of the Buddha’s teachings fallout from these two concepts. The purpose of the Buddha’s teachings is to bring people to their own enlightenment by means of the “Noble Eightfold Path,” the prescriptions for living the “noble” and beneficent life. Thus, while his philosophy is the subject of this thesis, a brief presentation of his stereological teachings will be apposite here. The key to the moral life is following the “middle way” between extremes. The Buddha had attained enlightenment by renouncing the two extremes of worldliness and world renunciation. Neither his twenty-nine years of living in luxury nor his six



The question of whether or not Buddhism is a religion will not be considered here. For purposes of this discussion, “philosophy” will be taken to mean the intellectual explanation of reality, and “religion” will be taken to mean the quest for salvation. Further discussion of this question can be found in Regington Rajapakse, “Buddhism as Religion and Philosophy,” Religion 16 (January, 1986): 51-56 years of living in self-denial had led him to his goal; it was only after he abandoned such extremes that his search came to an end. The first sermon the Buddha delivered after his enlightenment opened with an admonition to give up both the seeking after pleasure and the practice of asceticism. The correct way to lead a proper life, he taught his first audience, is “the middle path, …a path which opens the eye, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind,” and eventually to nirvana. 1 The significance of following the middle way is greater than merely the renouncing of the two extremes of hedonism and asceticism: the middle way is the principle which infuses the entire corpus of moral teachings of Buddhism.2


Buddhism is primarily a path, not a philosophy. As has been aptly stated, Buddhists often insist “If you wish to understand the Buddha’s doctrine, you must practice it!” The Buddha likened the human situation to a man who has just been shot with a poisoned arrow by an unknown assailant. If the man refuses to have the arrow removed until he finds out who shot him, what caste the assailant is from, what color his skin is, how tall he is, what kind of bow he used, and what types of feathers were on the arrow, that man will die. The important thing for the man to do is to remove the arrow. The arrow in the side of humanity is afflicted, existence, duhkha. The poison on the arrow is the cause of duhkha, which cause is craving. The way to remove the arrow of duhkha and the poison of craving is by following the Buddha’s path and teachings, the Dharma.4 Duhkha cannot be satisfactorily translated into English. It conveys the sense of the words “evil,” “unsatisfactoriness,” “unpleasantness,” “imperfection,” and “disease.” The most felicitous single translation is “suffering.” Even if not exact this is the term encountered most commonly in translations. The fact of suffering constitutes the first of the Buddha’s four “Noble Truths.” All things that are temporary and conditioned are suffering, duhkha. Encounters with unpleasant things are, of course, suffering, but even pleasant things are suffering because of the fact that, being conditioned, they are subject to ending.


It may be important to introduce here the concept of conditionality, for it is a concept that will surface again and again in the following thesis. Briefly, a thing is conditioned if it arose depending on a cause, such as a sprout arises depending on the existence of the seed, or if it exists depending on a ground of support, as fire exists depending on the fuel it is burning. A thing is also called “conditioned” if it depends on something else for its differentiation and definition, as the second Noble Truth. Suffering is occasioned by desire, be it the thirst for pleasure or the craving for existence itself. This desire, having impermanent things as its object, will always be frustrated because it can never be satisfactorily fulfilled. The third Noble Truth is that it is possible to put an end to such desire and thus rid oneself of suffering. Ridding oneself of suffering occurs when one realizes the nonreality of existence in a peculiar state known as nirvana, or freedom. Thus far, the Buddha presented an analysis of the human experience which states that all existence is inherently unpleasant due to its impermanency, that the reason we find impermanent phenomena to be unpleasant is because we entertain desires and cravings which cannot be satisfied by ephemeral things, and that the key to finding satisfaction is to put an end to such desires.


The fourth and final Noble Truth is that there is a method available to us by which we can appease desires and thus attain nirvana. This way is presented as the Eightfold Path. The path is a systematized guide for living which will enable one to curtail attachment to transitory things and to train oneself in proper modes of thought and behavior to eventually achieve liberation. The eight limbs of the path prescribe behavior which is “samyak.” “Samyak” will here be translated as “right,” but it also carries the over tones of “complete” and “perfect.” A fuller understanding of “samyak” can be had by keeping in mind the importance of “middle-ism” as described above. Renouncing all behavioral extremes leads to a comportment that could best be described as “moderate;” observing moderation in all actions and thoughts and desires will lead, not just to proper behavior, but also to the very enlightenment which is the goal of Buddhism. The Eightfold Path opens with two guidelines for perfecting wisdom, namely right (samyak) views and right thought. Personal apprehension of the Buddha’s teaching, his Dharma (henceforth translated as “Law”), is an essential aspect of accepting the Law and proceeding on the path.

This understanding must be translated into right thought, the attitudes of the individual towards the rest of the world. Right thoughts are selflessness, compassion, and non-violence. This is followed by three guidelines for morality, namely right speech, right conduct, and right livelihood. The moral life is not required merely for reasons of compassion for others; appeasing the desires that cause one to suffer will be accomplished in large part by leading a life free from egocentricity, greed, and selfish goals. The final three steps on the path, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration, detail the spiritual ascesis without which the attainment “shortness” only exists in relation to “longness.” Only something which is uncaused and has an autonomous identity can be unconditioned. 1cf. Sir Monier Monier-Williams, ed., A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), 1181 of nirvana would be impossible. Right effort and mindfulness prescribe the importance of being focused on the goal of liberation, and avoiding all things which would be karmically unwholesome. Right concentration, samadhi, is that drive of pointed meditation which allows for liberation, the final abandonment of all desires and the attainment of alert equanimity and bliss.

The philosophy of the Buddha rests on one simple observation: all things are impermanent (anitya). Impermanence is the first of three fundamental marks of existent things, and from it follows the other two: suffering, and “soul-less-ness.” Transistorizes is the fundamental property of all existent things, for all things come into being, persist for a time, and then pass out of being again. Without such impermanence, no change would be possible, and thus neither would liberation be possible. That is, it is the susceptibility of all things to change that allows one the option of controlling one’s life and following the Eightfold Path. The Buddha’s emphasis on the reality of impermanence should not be seen as a doctrinal dogma as much as a simple perception. Not only is continual flux perceptible to all who have insight, but, moreover, a balance in reality requires that anything which comes into existence must also, some day, go out of existence.


The significance of impermanence is beautifully expressed by the parable of the conversion to Buddhism of the two friends Sariputta and Moggallana. Seeking enlightenment and having found it nowhere, they made the pact that they would split up and whoever should first realize nirvana would come and teach the other. Sariputta went his way, and encountered a saintly monk, placid of disposition and perfect of deportment. What is your secret, brother? asked Sariputta,  Whom do you follow, and what is the truth you have found? The monk replied that he was but a novice and a new-comer to the doctrine that he had found, and so could not expound the doctrine or describe its teacher. He could, however, offer to Sariputta this tidbit of the teaching: all things that arise will cease, said the monk. On hearing this, Sariputta suddenly understood, clearly and distinctly, the noble doctrine, and became enlightened. He returned to his friend Moggallana who, upon seeing Sariputta from afar, immediately perceived that a profound change had come over his friend. What is the truth you have found? asked Moggallana. I don’t know the doctrine or its teacher, replied Sariputta, but I can tell you this: all things that arise will cease. On hearing this, Moggallana, too, became enlighted.


The use of the problematic term “reality” must be explained. That signified by “reality” is usually taken to be the real, i.e. that which exists. Here, it will occasionally be used to refer to the cosmos as a whole, to the entirety of nature, yet without expressly signifying “existence.” For lack of a better term, the reader is asked to accept that “reality,” used here, is not necessarily meant to imply existence as such, and the meaning of the term will vary according to context needed. Are fusal to accept transitoriness is the cause of suffering, a briefly discussed above. A perception of such impermanence and of suffering, its corollary, is the key to liberation. Humans tend to desire, and desires do not exist in a vacuum — they are always desires for something, and if the object of the desire is subject to flux, then the desire will, sooner or later, be frustrated.


The third mark of existence is also a direct corollary of impermanence: there is no permanent, abiding, unchanging soul, atman, to be found in any existent thing. This is perhaps the most revolutionary of all elements of the Buddha’s philosophy, for his time period was one of great emphasis on the reality of the soul in the dominant zeitgeist of India, Hinduism.2The period of the writing of the principal Upanisads had only recently ended, and the orthodox schools of Indian thought were abuzz with theories of the individual soul and its relation to Brahman, the universal soul. By denying the reality of atman, the Buddha was subverting one of the most cherished of all concepts in Indian religion. However, the doctrine of soullessness, anatman, was an inescapable conclusion of the perception of flux; if all existent things are subject to change, then there can be no unchanging essence that exists. And if one tries to escape that conclusion by positing a soul “beyond” the realm of existence, then one arrives at the same answer: the soul does not exist. It is meaningless to posit something that is beyond existence, for it would be in no way real.


The three marks of existence — impermanence, suffering, and soul lessness — define the nature and quality of reality as taught by the Buddha. Inquiring into the ultimate cause and purpose of existence and its onto logical nature is fruitless. It is not that the answers to such metaphysical questions are beyond human understanding, nor that the answers sought are conceptually inexpressible; it is simply that they are irrelevant. If you do not remove the arrow now, said the Buddha, you will die. One must leave metaphysics alone, for the only thing of importance is to follow the path.


Notwithstanding, the Buddha was in no way misologistic. That he did not scorn the use of reason and philosophy is demonstrated by the fact that the first two limbs of the Eightfold Path are right views and


A usage note is required here. The term “metaphysical” will be encountered often in this thesis, and so a clarification of its meaning is crucial. Metaphysics must not be understood as pertaining to the study of the supernatural, the mystical, or the New Age movement; this is a very recent use of the word. Metaphysics is the branch of rational philosophy that examines the nature of reality, especially the relationships between mind and matter and substance and attribute. This includes the connotational meaning of a priori speculation upon questions that are unverifiable by observation, analysis, or experimentation, right thought. He offered a positive metaphysics by presenting a complete teaching of causation known as the theory of pratitya-samutpada, “interdependent origination,” or “dependent arising.” As a teaching of the nature of all existent things, dependent arising is a comprehensive philosophy which explains the origin of perception, the essence of the individual, the workings of karma, and the nature of previous, present, and future lives. Dependent arising is an extremely lucid and rational explanation of the nature of all existent things, but not one that is easy to understand without a great deal of reflection. The following explication of dependent arising is thus not intended to be an explanation as much as a brief introduction. (No more than an introduction is necessary here, because the theory will be discussed extensively in chapter five)Dependent arising, simply, is the principle that all existent things are conditioned and relative by virtue of having come into existence as interrelated phenomena. When this arises, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases, explained the Buddha. Impermanence and its corresponding dictum of soullessness preclude the possibility of there being permanently-enduring or independent and self-subsisting phenomena.


The “chain” of dependent arising consists of “links” of mutually interacting causes and effects. The root of the chain is ignorance, avidya, on which basis the second link, preferences and dispositions, comes to be. On the basis of these preferences arises the third link, volitional will and consciousness. This consciousness gives birth to the fourth link, the psychophysical individual. The individual then experiences sensory stimulation which creates in him or her desires to have certain sensations and to avoid others, which is a process of the next three more links. On the basis of these desires one develops cravings, link nine, and grasps onto perceived existence itself, link ten. This grasping and clinging to existence is the cause of all suffering, for it leads to the eleventh link, birth and rebirth, which is followed by the final link of old age, disease, and death. The key to enlightenment, or cessation of afflicted existence, is the reversal of the process by which afflicted existence has arisen. One must appease, or let go of, cravings. In order to do this one must seek wisdom, which wisdom will undercut ignorance, the initial cause of the chain.


Although presented as a linear chain, dependent arising should be understood as a circle, for all of the links of the chain influence all of the other links. It is tempting to look at the ultimate cause of the chain, ignorance, and ask what caused it to come into being, and thus embark upon infinite regress. There are two reasons that this would not be appropriate, one philosophical and the other pragmatic. First, it would not be proper to seek a cause for ignorance avidya), for ignorance is not a positively existing entity. Rather, it is a lack. One does not inquire into the cause of darkness, for darkness is nothing but the lack of light. Second, the “cause” of ignorance is utterly irrelevant for the Buddha’s teaching. Ignorance is a deadly poisoned arrow which must be removed; where the arrow came from is not important.


It is often said that the Buddha was neither a prophet nor simply a teacher, but was a spiritual doctor. His presentation of the four Noble Truths paralleled the practice of medical doctors in his day which was to,

1) diagnose a disease,
2) identify its cause,
3) determine whether it is curable, and
4) outline a course of treatment to cure it.

This was exactly the Buddha’s method  All humans are afflicted with the disease of suffering; this disease is caused by ignorance and the cravings which can follow ignorance; this disease is not an unregenerate condition but can be cured; the cure is to follow the Eightfold Path of moderation and understanding, which will lead to enlightenment and freedom.


The Buddha’s teachings may thus far appear simple and straight for-ward. This may be true, but for one condition. All unenlightened humans, according to the Buddha, are immersed in the mud of ignorance, and are thus incapable of seeing clearly. “Men who are overcome by passions and surrounded by a mass of darkness cannot see this truth,” he once thought to himself. However, there were also times when he reassured his disciples that his philosophy was inherently difficult to grasp. Speaking to his disciple Vaccha, he said “Profound, O Vaccha, is this doctrine, recondite, and difficult of comprehension … and it is a hard doctrine for you to learn. Whether the difficulty of comprehending the Buddha’s teachings is due only to the obscuring passions of humans or whether it is indeed inherently abstruse, the subsequent history of Buddhism demonstrates that the Buddha’s teachings were anything but unambiguous to his disciples and later Buddhist thinkers. The varieties of interpretation of the Buddha’s thought that have been propounded in the last two-and-a-half millennia bear ample witness to this. It is this diversity of interpretation that was to engender the Madhyamika school six hundred years after the Buddha’s death.

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Life of the Buddha

 


 
Siddhartha Gautama, the sage of the Sakya clan, founded are ligion that is in many ways the most anomalous of those surviving in the world today. He claimed access to no divine wisdom, no unique intuition, no worldly or spiritual authority, and no super-human status of any kind. The philosophy he taught subverts common-sense notions about what the nature of the world is and uproots the very beliefs that people tend to cherish the most:the existence of God,the reality of theself,thepromiseofanafterlife, and the availability of happiness. In their place he taught reliance on personal understanding and the pragmatic uselessness of merebelief. He taught that all phenomena are impermanent and nothing can be counted on to endure; that there is no soul to be found at any time, in any thing, anywhere; and that the fundamental quality of life, even when it seems pleasant, is radically unsatisfactory. And yet, the religion that has grown out of Gautama’s teachings has become a major world religion known for its equanimity, its compassion, and, even, its joy.
 
Gautama was born in northeastern India in what is modern day Nepali neither 566or 448BE.and died eighty years later. Gautama’s father Suddhodana was a minor king, the head of the Sakyas. Legend holds that Gautama was so remarkable asa child that soothsayers predicted that he would one day become either a universal monarch or an “awakened one,” a “Buddha.” 

Legend relates that one day, shortly after the birth of Rahula, Gautama requested to see the city that he had never before seen. Unable to dissuade him, his father had runners clear the streets of all unpleasant sights and then allowed Gautama to be taken out in a chariot. Serendipitously, or, as some legends hold, at the will of the far-seeing God, the young prince was exposed to four shocking sights which the runners had missed. First, Gautama saw a decrepit man, gray-haired, broken-toothed, and bent with age, by the side of the road. Since he had seen few humans other than his family and his 40,000 dancing girls, he asked his charioteer in astonishment what sort of creature the man was. That is what happens when people get old, explained the driver. The next day, the prince asked to go out again. Though his father doubled his efforts to clear the streets of all unpleasant sights, a sick person was missed. On seeing the person lying by the side of the road, racked with disease, Gautama again turned to his charioteer in surprise. That is illness, he was told. The following day he embarked on another tour on which he was exposed to the sight of a human corpse, and thus learned of the fact of death. Legend or not, this story portrays an important element of the Buddha’s later teachings: while the facts of age, sickness, and death are known to us, it is still easy to forget them,and a direct confrontation with their reality isoften a novel and disturbing insight.1 Unless one is aware of suffering, one will never seek to improve one’s condition, a fact of which the Buddha was to make much use.

The prince made one more excursion into the city the next day, and, again, he was exposed to something he had never before seen — a saffron-robed renunciant with a shaven head, a begging bowl, and, most importantly, a tranquil and serene demeanor. That night, after returning to his palace, he realized that all of his previous pleasures were now but hollow delights. He waited until Yasodhara and Rahula were asleep, took one last look at his son lying in his wife’s arms, kissed them both, and left. Such an exit was seen by some of the later writings as setting a precedent for the renunciant monastic disciplines the Buddha later organized, and the seeming callousness of it is mitigated by the claim that he had to leave his family for the future benefit of all beings, that is, so that he could attain his enlightenment and then teach it to others.2 It is also pointed out that he was clearly not abandoning his family, for his son later became one of his greatest disciples. However, the sense of solitude, spiritual desperation, and determination portrayed by this episode is not lessened.
 
It was with such a sense of determination that Gautama embarked on the next stage of his life. He had seen the suffering from which he had been sheltered for so long, and then he had seen proof in the form of the renunciant that such suffering can be conquered. He now set himself the goal of learning how to conquer it. He saw that his many years of living in opulence had not taught him the way to enlightenment, so he now tried the opposite path. For six years he practiced renunciation and asceticism. He first practiced raja yoga in an attempt to conquer suffering through meditation and the control of consciousness. Gautama soon surpassed his teachers by attaining states of elevated awareness higher than the ones of which they were capable, but did not feel that he had reached his goal yet. He left his yoga teachers and joined a group of ascetics to practice rigorous physical austerities. His strong sense of determination led him to practice self-mortifications so severe that he nearly died. 

By the time he could barely stand up and all of his hair had fallen out, Gautama realized that asceticism was not going to bring him to his goal, either. He recollected that he had once spontaneously experienced a certain meditative state that could provide a path to awakening, and decidedtogiveit onelasttry.Hetook food,leftthegroupof ascetics,and sat under a tree, determined to gain enlightenment or die. As he began to meditate, the legendary demon tempter, Mara, assailed him first with visions of beautiful women and then with violent storms in an attempt to prevent Gautama’s immanent enlightenment. Gautama ignored Mara and entered deeper into meditation. He passed through state after state of consciousness until he achieved the enlightenment he had so long sought, nirvana. He was now a “Buddha,” an “awakened” one. Reflecting on what he had found, he saw himself as presented with a difficult choice, which is sometimes portrayed as being Mara’s final assault. He could either selfishly enter parinirvana, the state of “nonreturning” liberation, or he could postpone the final, ultimate freedom and return to the world to teach. The latter option seemed pointless, for the awakening that he had experienced was so profound, so subtle, and so “beyond the sphere of reason” that he feared it would be pointless to try to teach it to anyone else. The deciding factor was the Buddha’s enlightened insight into the oneness of all beings, which led him to sympathize with the suffering of others. He felt compassion and realized that he must return, even if for the sake of only one person’s understanding. Thus began the ministry of the Buddha.
 
The biographies in the canonical texts, the sutras, give only sparse information of the Buddha’s life following his nirvana. A likely explanation for the greater emphasis on his earlier life than on his later is that the core teaching of the Buddha is the “path” to follow, the process one must go through to realize nirvana for oneself. Thus, the Buddha’s personal search for awakening is more important than what he did after he had found his goal. The general picture conveyed by the few details available is that he spent the rest of his life wandering around the Ganges basin area on foot, with few possessions, teaching his ever-growing group of disciples. Much of his teaching method would have been seen as subversive by the society around him. He taught in the local languages and dialects, spurning the Sanskrit which by this time was already associated exclusively with the educated, elite priestly caste of Hinduism. He taught with no distinction, associating with all classes and castes of men and women. He also shunned both the isolation of the forest and the community of the cities, preferring to reside and teach in the outskirts of the urban areas. After wandering and teaching for forty-five years, the Buddha prepared for his death.He asked his followers if they had any last questions.When no one spoke, he told them “All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your salvation with diligence!” and entered parinirvana, the final liberation.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

ZEN AND THE MARTIAL ARTS

Part l: Introduction

They seem as immiscible as oil and water: Zen, the peaceful practice of tranquillity, and the martial arts, the deadly techniques of hand-to-hand combat. Yet tradition insists that when Bodhidharma introduced them to the weary priests of Shao Lin Ji he presented them together - a solution to the problem of enfeebling Samsara, a compounded tonic for the spiritually ailing.
The priests of Shao Lin Monastery were keeping a stale, orthodox regimen when Zen's formidable "Blue Eyed Demon" arrived from India. They were following the "polishing" way of inactivity and removal, the way which claims victory over bodily temptations by avoiding other bodies, which claims victory over contentious thoughts by erasing all thoughts. Too much sitting had numbed their brains and let their physical condition languish, yoked in the sluggish pace of spiritual ennui. They gave the stranger from the West plenty to work with.
Bodhidharma taught them how to be still with purpose and how to be active with meaning. Relentless, he sat before the whitewashed walls of Shao Lin Ji and demonstrated Ba Guan (wall gazing) meditation, the effective alpha-generating method psychologists today call the Ganzfeld Technique. As such, it became Zen's only original contribution to meditation's vast catalog of methods. But it was a good one.
And when Bodhidharma got up from his cushion he taught the monks how to put Mind into muscle: he taught them the choreographed combat calisthenics of Gong Fu.
Or so legend has it.
Whatever the facts of origin are, one thing is certain: for centuries... from the Sixth to the Twentieth... in stunning proof that opposites attract, this unlikely pair, these two disciplines as counterpoised as peace and war, swayed together in a graceful embrace; and in every Asian country into which Chinese Zen Buddhism spread, generations of monks joined the spiritual dance in celebration of their union.
Nobody thought the dance would ever end. Nobody imagined that there could ever be a force strong enough to stop the music and sunder the bond. There was. The cataclysm came in the form of the surrender of the largest American fighting force in the history of U.S. warfare. The fission-event had a name: Bataan.
To understand the strange chronicle of union and dissolution we must retreat far into history and explore hidden places on the spiritual path.
In succeeding sections, we'll explore the origins of Gong (Kung) Fu. We'll discuss some of the physiology and psychology of the martial arts and the reasons why the combined regimen of meditation and physical skill is able to produce true mastery. We'll examine the Code of Wushidao (Bushido) that was formulated to guide and to sustain the true martial artist; and we'll review the reasons why the martial arts were separated from Zen and suggest ways in which we might reunite the estranged pair. 
Part 2: Origins: A synthesis of cultures 
Of all the oriental martial arts, Chinese Gong (Kung) Fu, which means "masterful", is the oldest. All of the other schools - Korean, Japanese, and other Chinese varieties, grew out of it.
But Gong Fu did not originate in China. It was an Indian import which, legends notwithstanding, had no doubt entered China long before Bodhidharma contemplated Shao Lin Ji's walls.
By the time the founder of Zen arrived, the imported "art" had already been refined, expanded, and in many ways perfected by Daoism's genius for elegant simplicity.
But neither could the "masterful" martial art be said to originate in India; for it actually arrived there by way of the Aryan invasions which had begun as far back as l500 B.C.
The Aryans were an east-european people who loved to fight and, judging from the spread of their language - a sure sign of conquest - did it rather well. Sweeping around the world from Ireland to India, variants of their proto-indo-european idiom such as Gaelic, German, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit testify that life to these happy warriors was one long and satisfying Blitzkrieg. As victors are wont to do, they thought of themselves as superior persons. Erin, Iran, and Aryan as well as the English cognate aristocrat all mean "noble".
True aficionados of destruction, they extended the work of conquest into leisurely pursuits, their fascination for warlike games and sport being mirrored in the Olympic contests of their Greek cousins, contests in which martial discipline was emphasized... throwing discus, hammer and javelin, boxing, wrestling, and especially an event called the Pancratium, a sport which combined boxing and wrestling and a peculiar ability to turn the force of an attacker's thrust back against him. In this event, no weapons or protective clothing was permitted. Hands and feet sufficed as instruments of engagement.
With no military force able to halt their advance, the Aryans swept eastward across Afghanistan and Pakistan, joyously demolishing every civilization in their path. But in India their irresistible force finally met an immovable object. In India they encountered that stolid monument to Spirituality, those amazing yogis, those peaceful men who were indomitable mental warriors. The Aryans were awed.
Without the slightest hint of condescension, yogis demonstrated their imperviousness to pain. They could walk on fire or withstand bitter cold. They could stay awake for as along as they wanted or sleep standing up. They could go without food for days and, using only the power of their minds, they could even staunch the bleeding of their wounds. Aryan generals rubbed their eyes and thought that they had entered Heaven's War Room. This kind of power was worth a good, long look. The Blitzkrieg ended. The blonde bullies settled down. The yogis were certainly a different breed of heroes. They desired little and lacked nothing. Through the simple expedient of becoming emotionally unattached to the people, places, and things of this world, they conquered and reigned, independent and invincible.
Practicing Raja (royal) Yoga, the kingdom over which a yogi so imperiously ruled consisted of only himself. But what a powerful state it was. A yogi mastered his mind by meditative exercise, spiritual discipline, devotional observance, and, of course, by adhering to a strict ethical code. He mastered his body through the rigorous practice of Asanas, postures which promoted extraordinary balance and flexibility.
The Aryans took the spiritual techniques of Indian religion and combined them with the Pancratium event of Olympic sport and called this new synthesis Vajramushti which means Thunderbolt Fist.
Culture spreads along waterways, and the few hundred miles between India's Ganges delta and China's port city of Canton is filled with great rivers... the Irrawaddy, the Rouge, the Mekong, the Si Jiang. South China Daoists learned Vajramushti and then improved it by choreographing its movements and giving them fluid grace and by adding the powerful techniques of breath control which Chinese pearl divers had developed. They called the new version Tai Ji Quan which means Great Ultimate Fist. In its pure martial arts form it was called Gong Fu, the masterful art.
News of the new improved Chinese version traveled up and down the rivers' information highway. Centuries later in 325 B.C., when Alexander the Great in another Aryan incursion invaded India, he was stunned by the daunting abilities of even second-rate Vajramushti practitioners. (Even today India's martial arts' masters are second to none.)  
Part 3: Bodhidharma, the alien Aryan 
The great rivers which crisscrossed Indo-China carried more than information about self-defense techniques. Ideas and inventions also traversed these waterways. The people who occupied the area, though often racially and linguistically unrelated, were farmers, hunters, fishermen, housekeepers, and craftsmen who enjoyed the bounty of similar natural resources and suffered from the same dependable pestilences and unreliable weather. Their clothing, buildings, and implements of work and war differed in style but not in basic design. Form happily follows function but tradition drags its heels.
Naturally they placated gods of similar temperament. The philosophical principles of Yoga were well known in South China: Brahman and The Dao were virtually interchangeable concepts. The One. The Indivisible. The Union of Opposites. But Chinese genius had refined the concept; and Daoism was a cooler, more elegant version of its Indian counterpart. The heated and often overwrought methodologies of Kundalini Yoga were refreshed and moderated when presented as Daoism's Microcosmic Orbit meditations. Additionally, Daoism subsumed the entire body of Chinese medicine: the knowledge of physical anatomy, the comprehensive pharmacology and the pain relieving procedures of acupuncture and acupressure. Daoism's pragmatic approach also expanded and enriched Indian appreciation of Prana.
To the Indian, Prana was more than just the breath of life... the vital force or "inspirit" which God had used to vivify clay. It was the core discipline of the science of Yoga. Daoism's no frills approach to spirituality simplified the science and made it more accessible to practitioners. The beneficial distribution of Prana (called Qi (Chi) by Daoists) to every part of the body, became Daoism's singular obsession. Study of the meridians, the psychic nerve channels through which Qi was delivered and circulated, gave rise to the knowledge of dozens of particularly sensitive pressure points, points which the martial artist would later exploit. The human body's vulnerability to acute pain or to muscular paralysis at these points would make them the prime targets of a combatant's strikes.
It so happened that when Buddhism was about a thousand years old a certain fatigue, if not rigor mortis, began to set in. Tons of sutras and shastras began to press the life out of it. Desiccated old men haunted Buddhist libraries while younger, more adventurous devotees left to merrily pant the oxygen rich atmosphere of Tantrism. With so much Buddhist energy being drained away in pseudo-spiritual sexual hemorrhage, the religion found itself in desperate need of more than the usual dose of Mahayana rectitude. It needed a transfusion of Daoism's practical, holistic power.
Bodhidharma, who, as Indian Prince and Buddhist priest, was well-educated both in Vajramushti/Tai Ji Quan techniques and in philosophy and theology, wanted to bring Buddhism out of the libraries and lecture halls of esthetes and pedants and into the everyday minds of the common man. His Indian temperament, camouflaged amidst China's "southern" thinkers, accorded him a nearly native claim to Daoism's methodology. He therefore combined Indian Buddhist philosophy with Daoist methodology, and came to orthodox China to preach his new synthesis: Zen.
And what was this "Zen"? The word simply means meditation. In Sanskrit the word is "dhyan"; the English cognate of which is "dwell". Dhyan and Zen appear to be unrelated words, but in fact they are similarly pronounced. Whenever a heavily voiced "D" precedes the glide "Y", as in Did You, the sounds are usually combined and pronounced as a "J". We say, "Di'ja go?." Ed-ucate becomes "ejucate." Canad-i-an becomes "Cajun." Sanskrit's Dhyan (meditation) became "Jen" - pronounced exactly that way but written as Chan in Chinese. In Japanese, a slight variation: Zen.
Temperament is not a mask. Bodhidharma was a blue-eyed aryan and tended to stand out in a crowd. Besides his startling appearance, he demonstrated some rather formidable meditation powers; and the Chinese, suitably impressed, gave him the sobriquet, "The Blue-Eyed Demon." Novelty being its own cachet the Prince from India was soon invited to the Imperial Court of the Liang Dynasty's Emperor Wu.
Bodhidharma did not fail to use the opportunity to publicize his new Zen doctrine, the rationale which would become the governing code of martial arts' conduct: The Code of Wu Shi Dao... The Warrior's (Wu Shi) Way (Dao). In Japanese: Bushido.
The Emperor had built many temples and performed many charitable acts and considered himself the most hard working and worthy of orthodox Buddhists; and so he asked the Zen philosopher how much merit all his imperial good deeds had gained him.
Bodhidharma looked surprised. "Why, none." he answered.
The Emperor grew indignant. "Then what," he demanded, "if not good works should I as a Buddhist have striven to accomplish?" "To be empty of yourself," answered Bodhidharma. It was not the sort of remark one generally made to Chinese emperors.
The emperor countered, "Just who do you think you are?" and Bodhidharma shrugged. "I have no idea," he said.
But the man with no ego was not a fool; The Blue Eyed Demon left town fast and headed for the sanctuary of Shao Lin Monastery.
At Shao Lin Ji, as legend has it, Zen's First Patriarch found the priests to be in such poor physical condition that, in addition to teaching them his new form of meditation Buddhism, he instructed them in the Tai Ji Quan/Vajramushti discipline known to us now as Gong (Kung) Fu.
However the Shao Lin priests managed to learn Gong Fu, one thing is certain: they learned it well within the context of Zen's Code of Conduct. The martial arts were practiced as a spiritual discipline, a devotional exercise, an expression of egoless action. There could be no swaggering, no aggressiveness, no emotional involvement of any kind... and never a thought of vengeance. An angry man or a proud man was unfit for such ritualized combat. If a student started to behave egoistically and didn't catch himself in the act, he'd get a lesson in humility when his master caught up with him.
"To be empty of yourself!" Think of it. What did Bodhidharma mean and how exactly did that meaning translate into Wushidao/Bushido?

Part 4: Wushidao/Bushido explained

"Be empty of yourself!" Bodhidharma's directive had been a tough one for the Emperor to wind the Imperial brain around. The Emperor, unfortunately, was not to be alone in his predicament. All Mahayana Buddhists, regardless of rank, discover its confusing difficulty whenever they recite the Heart Sutra: "Form is not different from Emptiness. Emptiness is not different from Form." What does it mean to be empty and what does whatever it means have to do with the martial arts?
Essentially, Form is Samsara, the world of the ego. It is history, Greenwich Mean Time. It is Maya, the pleasing illusion of permanence, our erroneous notion that matter's form and constitution are fixed, that our own egos are as stable as the Matterhorn.
Maya is the conditional world. Under certain conditions water becomes ice. When the conditions change, it may become steam. Somewhere between solid and vapor we encounter liquid which, we arbitrarily decide, is water's normal state. Atoms of hydrogen and oxygen do their little molecular dance and laugh. Who are we, they wonder, to decide what is normal?
We see a rock and wax poetic about its eternal properties. Years pass and when gross inspection of the rock reveals no alteration, we are reassured. A geologist would see change as clearly as a farmer counts upon it; but we don't care to look. Rocks are what we build our faith upon.
We form a bond with an individual and think we know him and his face. We fix his character and his features in our mind, certain that they will be as indelibly etched in time as they are in our memory. Years pass and when we see the person again, we're so startled by the changes our suspicions are aroused. What destructive force... or behavior... wrought such premature decay? Naturally we are annoyed if the person whose facial lines we so have so carefully mapped regards our own face as so much terra incognita. Perhaps, we wonder, he has an ulterior motive for deliberately failing to recognize us.
In Samsara, all things are in flux. We cannot step into the same river twice. The water keeps flowing: new molecules rush to rub up against our sneakers as old molecules sigh with relief for having survived the ordeal. Our mind changes just as continuously, acquiring new data and forgetting old, and forming upon shifting data bases those evanescent opinions which it regards as solidly based convictions. No matter how many of us agree on the nature of another person's character, or on our own, or on the properties of an observable phenomenon, both the observer and the observed are changing, all our certainties to the contrary notwithstanding. Ultimately, we can rely on nothing. Samsara is the ego's world of conditional relationships. Samsara is our hell.
Emptiness is Nirvana... and what Nirvana is empty of is ego. Without the seductions of a fickle ego, reality lacks the incentive to transform itself into illusion. Nirvana may be entered when we are in elevated states of spiritual consciousness or in any true state of meditation during which, by definition, the ego has been transcended. In the sense that we are still physically present whenever we enter the egoless state, Nirvana and Samsara may be said to occupy the same place. But Nirvana consists in another "meta" physical dimension, a dimension which contains Plato's Ideal Forms, and the Tushita Heaven's Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and the empyrean Void.
Nirvana is the eternal, egoless world of unchanging and therefore reliable reality. We cannot gain Nirvana through hypnotism, drugs or quietism. Among the ranks of spiritual heroes, we seldom find supper club hypnotists, potheads, or zombies. We gain Nirvana through purging ourselves of self interest. Pride, lust and greed have to be sacrificed in the interests of ecstasy. Prideful passions must be replaced by compassionate humility. Add to this a little Grace, and we're home free. Nirvana is our heaven.
In Nirvana, we become emotionally independent of those persons, places, and things of the world to which we previously affixed the adjective "my". We no longer identify ourselves in terms of our relationship to them. This independence does not mean that we do not care, it means that we do not possessively care. Instead of having friends, we are merely friendly.
Achieving Nirvana is the single goal of Zen Buddhists. Is this also the goal of the martial artist? Yes. We can have sport or athleticism without Zen, but to have artistry we require spiritual discipline and the peculiar insight that comes with spiritual experience.
Here, in part, is the Code of Wushidao/Bushido, the Spiritual Way of the Warrior:
"I have no parents; I make heaven and earth my parents. I have no friends; I make my thoughts my friends. I have no enemy; I make carelessness my enemy. I have no armor; I make goodwill and honesty my armor. I have no fortress; I make my Immovable Mind my fortress. I have no sword; I make my sleeping ego my sword. I have no magic; I make submission to Divine Will my magic. I have no miracles; I make the Dharma my miracle."
How does a man exist without parents and friends, we wonder. Why is it necessary that he cut himself off from the people he loves? Surely, we say, no great world religion such as Buddhism would ever impose such harsh conditions on its followers. But here is Jesus on the subject: Gospel of Luke, Chapter 14, Verse 26:
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Hate? We cringe at the word. But Jesus is speaking metaphorically. In Buddhism this metaphor is further exaggerated but in the extension becomes more graspable: We say that we must kill those we love. The following Zen story illustrates this requirement:
Upon being told by his master that he must cut himself free of all emotional entanglements and 'kill' those to whom he is emotionally attached, the novice asks, "But my parents, Master? Must I slay them, too?"
The master answers, "Who are they to be spared?"
"And you, Master? Must I kill you also?"
The master responds, "There is not enough of me left for you to get your hands on."
This, of course, is the egoless state, the only state in which we can love unconditionally. In the egoless state we care for people without meddling in their lives. We reject all sentimental, contractual relationships which lull us into comfortable illusions of security or press us into compromising our integrity.

In religious terms, the ultimate object of both Zen and the martial arts' training is the conquest of the ego. A man has to realize that the arts of war which he practices in the Dojo are first and foremost the tactics and stratagems of a battle that rages within his own soul. This is how he conquers himself. The Code of the Warrior, therefore, is an innocuous enumeration of the sacrifices which flesh must make to spirit, a restatement of the creed of worldly non-attachment which, in one form or another, exists in all religions.
How do we attain the goal of emptiness? Just as we grasp with the whole hand and not with one or two fingers, we make a many pronged attack upon the problem, approaching it from many angles.
We first accept the spiritual regimen which Wushidao's Code prescribes, realizing that it is an integral part of a discipline which is known and observed in all the world's great religions. Spiritual soldiers are hardly unique to Buddhism.
Wushidao, however, is antithetical to pseudo, pantheistic nature religions and it is unambiguously opposed to any form of ancestor worship including all forms of Confucian-style deification of human forebears. Nana and Pop-Pop do not reign over the Dharmakaya.
Yet, however strongly the concept was presented in Luke 14:26 and elsewhere in the New Testament, the western world found the concept unthinkable when it was presented in Buddhist terms. The reason for this is clear: the doctrine had been corrupted by the militaristic regimes of Japan.
When Zen entered Japan in thirteenth century medieval times, it was immediately drafted by the Samurai. It was still suffering this conscription when a series of Zen monks compiled the Hagakure ("Hidden under the leaves"), a rewriting of Wushidao principles which conformed them to the requirements of militaristic schemes.
According to the new version, Bushido, the Zen martial artist's singular objective was honor, by which it was meant doing nothing shameful, i.e., doing nothing to embarrass one's ancestors, who, as it happened, were always ardent supporters of whichever Shogun or Warlord was employing the Zen martial artist. Dishonor, which was to be avoided at all costs, was equated with the fear of death. Therefore, for a man to be really honorable, he had to actively seek a proud and honorable death. Buddhist humility was no where in sight.
The Hagakure version of the Way of the Warrior thoroughly confounded and compromised the original doctrine and set the stage for sundering what the Buddhist world had thought was divinely joined: Zen and Wushidao.
The sundering was accomplished in World War II. 
Part 5: The Battle of Bataan 
Bataan was not a routine early-war defeat for the U.S. Army.
The Battle of Bataan has the distinction of resulting in the surrender of the largest American fighting force in the history of U.S. warfare. But numbers do not necessarily describe defeat. The real winner of an engagement may well be the one who inflicts the most damage; and according to this combat criterion, the greater loss was Japan's. It was rather like the Alamo when, after the battle, one of Santa Ana's generals surveyed the carnage and said to him, "One more victory like this and we're finished." The Japanese paid dearly for the privilege of raising the Rising Sun over the Bataan peninsula.
It is sadly recorded that on December 7, l941 Japan launched a surprise attack on American territories in the Pacific. Among the chief targets were Hawaii, now a state, and the Philippines, now an independent nation.
While Japan's planes bombed Pearl Harbor, her ships went to the Philippines and disembarked a huge invasion force consisting of several hundred thousand men. The prize they sought was the port city of Manila.
Manila was situated at the innermost point of Manila Bay in what might be described as the bottom of a bottle. To get to Manila by sea, the Bay-bottle had to be navigated. The right side of the bottle was the large Luzon landmass; the left side was the narrow, twelve-mile-wide Bataan peninsula. The bottle's long neck was only a few miles wide, and in the middle of its opening lay a small waterless rock called Corregidor. In order for their Navy to enter Manila Bay and dock at the port of Manila, the Japanese had to take both the heavily jungled Bataan peninsula and the rock of Corregidor.
Deciding on a classic pincers maneuver, the Japanese army advanced overland and took the City of Manila, cutting off the Bataan peninsula. This inland thrust severed all lines of supply to the American and Filipino defenders of the peninsula. It also caused thousands of civilian refugees to stream southward into the defensive positions.
Having secured the north of the peninsula, the Japanese placed their warships off the west and south and proceeded to pound American positions from the sea while simultaneously launching amphibious attacks on coastal defenses. Then, there being no American warplanes of ny kind in the area, unopposed Japanese warplanes bombed targets at will as thousands of Japanese soldiers pressed down from the north.
General Douglas MacArthur, ordered to defend both Corregidor and Bataan, foresaw the inevitable and said, "Well, the enemy may hold the bottle, but I hold the cork."
The Japanese regarded the guns of the cork - Corregidor's famous cannons - as a joke. With amusement they noted that the guns had been cast in the year l896 and could not even rotate on their mountings. Japanese weapons of war represented, on the other hand, the absolute state of the art.
With American supply lines cut off and the additional drain on resources by the refugees, all stores of food and medicine were quickly depleted. The defenders of Bataan and Corregidor did not have enough of anything to last for more than thirty days.
General Tomoyuki Yamashita estimated that the peninsula would be in Japanese hands within two weeks. It should have been. It wasn't.
When December... January... February... passed with huge Japanese casualties and no dent in the American defensive positions, the general, furious and in serious danger of losing face, requested and received thousands of fresh troops.
The American forces, however, received nothing. Throughout the entire siege they received no military support of any kind nor any resupply of food or medicine. As the weeks dragged on they battled not only the enemy but malaria, dengue fever, hookworm, amoebic dysentery, beriberi, scurvy, infected war wounds, and, of course, starvation.
Cavalry, they ate their horses and mules, and when these were gone, they ate snakes and rats and whatever else they could scavenge. Their Japanese attackers were on full rations.
And so with no relief, no resupply, and not a single word of hope from home, the defenders of the strategic entrance to Manila Bay rightly considered themselves military orphans. In a now-famous poem one GI wrote:
We are the battling bastards of Bataan.
Ain't got no mommas, no pappas, no Uncle Sam.
Ain't got no nephews, no nieces, no artillery pieces.
Ain't got no one out there who gives a damn.
The American people gave a damn... they just couldn't do anything about it. Every night on the news came the reports the battle... of the suffering and the bravery... and all people could do was bite their knuckles and pray.
Then, in March, after months of relentless naval and aerial bombardment and the hand-to-hand combat of wave upon wave of amphibious and land assaults, the Japanese began to penetrate American lines with suicide squads.
Still, March came and went and the Americans and Filipinos fought on. Despite their exhaustion, disease, starvation and the utter hopelessness of their cause, they fought on.
And in the face of this uncommon valor, on April 1st, General Yamashita sent his airplanes to drop canisters on the American positions. Inside each canisters was the following note:
To His Excellency, Major General Jonathan Wainwright:
We have the honor to address you in accordance with Bushido - the code of the Japanese warrior. You have already fought to the best of your ability. What dishonor is there in following the example of the defenders of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies? Your Excellency:
 
Accept our sincere advice and save the lives of those officers and men under your command. International law would be strictly adhered to.
Yet, for more than a week afterwards, the American and Filipino defenders continued to fight until they were finally overrun and forced to surrender on April 9, l942. The four month siege had ended.
Estimates of the number of survivors vary. The Japanese captured some fifty or sixty thousand men. Though announcing that they would adhere to the life-respecting rules of Bushido, they instead gave the survivors only one canteen of water each, no food or medicine whatsoever, and forced them to march the sixty-five mile length of the Bataan peninsula in the tropical heat. A postwar count revealed that 25,000 American and Filipino prisoners died on the road, many of them with their hands still tied behind them, their heads lopped off or their backs bayoneted, the penalty for begging for water. This was the infamous Death March of Bataan.
When a Time Magazine correspondent later asked General Wainwright why he had waited a week before surrendering... why he hadn't accepted General Yamashita's promise to adhere to the principles of Bushido, General Wainwright replied that he knew all about Bushido. He new how the Japanese had treated their Chinese prisoners of war. "I therefore gave the offer all the answer it deserved," he said. "I ignored it."
After the war, General MacArthur oversaw the American occupation of Japan. It is a measure of his greatness that he succeeded completely in his mission to restore the dignity and the economy of that defeated nation. But he remembered Bataan. He remembered Bushido. And as generous as he was to the Japanese, he absolute forbade them to practice any of the martial arts covered by Bushido's code. All secular martial arts' clubs were disbanded. (He allowed only one exception: pacifistic, defensive Aikido.) Even Zen Buddhist monks were forbidden to practice any of the routine exercise "forms" of the disciplines. Anything related to Bushido was seen to be at the core of a disgusting, subhuman, fanatical, warrior cult. It didn't matter that the Japanese military had never really taught the Code much less observed it . . . that they had merely pirated its benevolent mystique much as the Nazis had plundered the mystique of the Swastika, Buddhism's other goodwill icon. These deliberate subversions of Buddhism's reputation had been intended to conn the world into believing that the intentions of those who used them were entirely as noble as any ancient Aryan had ever dreamed of being. The world was slow to recover from the ruse.
Post World War II saw a burst of international cultural exchanges. The French ate hamburgers. Americans ate Pizza and imported Yoga and Indian forms of worship. But not Buddhism nor the martial arts. Americans wanted no part of either of them.
China could have exported Buddhism and Gong Fu, but nothing was coming out of China. Nationalists and Communists were fighting a civil war that would close China for decades. It was not until the late l950s, after the Korean Conflict, that American prejudice against Buddhism and the martial arts had lessened sufficiently to tolerate their import. And when they came they, of course, came separately.
Zen Buddhism and the martial arts had been officially divorced.

Part 6: Postwar American Buddhism - the Swinging Singles

While China as both hunter and hunted engaged itself in the blood sports of revolution, Zen (Chan) Buddhism's wily Fox Spirit "went to ground".
Zen's premier monastery, Nan Hua Si, led by the Venerable Xu Yin (Empty Cloud), quietly drew on thirteen hundred years' experience of surviving political challenges. It recovered from the ordeals of Japanese invasion in time to brace for what was to be a quarter-century siege of civil war, bullying Communist bureaucrats and brutal Red Guards.
Most of South China's monastic centers, suppressed to skeletal function, entered suspended animation and hibernated through their long, dark winter's discontent as they waited for the clemency of a more enlightened government; but northern religious centers, too close to Beijing's officious notice to elude the war dogs, usually found no underground to run to. Priests were frequently "re-educated" often with swift, short, and fatal lessons. Shao Lin Ji, along with other ancient monastery complexes, was closed. Throughout China, those masters of the martial arts who had escaped conscription or imprisonment continued to teach Gong Fu to anyone who brought the proper attitude to the discipline, but such spiritual teachings as there were appeared publicly in the more secular guise of Qi Gong.
Although Buddhism, Daoism, and the Buddhist/Daoist synthesis, Zen, were far too ingrained in the Chinese psyche for marxist ideologues to eradicate, the exportation of Chinese meditation and martial arts' teachings was effectively halted. Hong Kong and Taiwan, more concerned with the immediate life and-death issues of sovereignty, gave no priority to the international marketing of their ancient religious disciplines.
On the heels of Chinese Communism's civil war victory, came North Korea's l950 invasion of South Korea. U.S. participation in the defense of South Korea left Americans certain about the evils of Communism, but more confused than ever about Buddhism now that they had encountered it in a friendly nation. The religion didn't seem like the same fanatical and godless cult the Japanese had introduced nearly a decade earlier.
That Buddhism finally began to get the benefit of doubt was no doubt due to the application of the adage, "The friend of my friend is possibly my friend, but the enemy of my enemy is definitely my friend." Chinese Communists were killing American soldiers in Korea; and in the Chinese mainland, Chinese Communists were attacking both Christianity and Buddhism. Common enemies make common allies, and allies are at least temporary friends.
In the U.S., a benign but restrained interest developed in things Oriental . . . artwork, literature, philosophy, religion, and physical fitness programs. But in particular, doomsday scenarios of nuclear catastrophe had given the average Joe a survivalist mentality. This, of course, and the rise in street crime made Americans ripe for learning Asian forms of self defense.
Ironically, it was the importation of Japanese culture which became the legacy of the Korean Conflict.
By the mid-l950s, while Korea was still struggling with the aftermath of war, Japan had long since come to grips with peace; and, since China had already withdrawn from polite society, the

field was now open for the divorced pair of Japanese Zen and Japanese Martial Arts to present themselves to their American hosts as legitimate Buddhism and Bushido. The antics of the shameless couple were as shocking to the Japanese as they were exciting to the Americans who separately entertained them.
In the U.S., Zen, cool, refined, intellectual and exotic, helped engender the new postwar attitude
-a wave of sang froid to compensate existential angst and postdiluvian Christian righteousness. Beatniks and Dharma Bums. Bongo drums and bhang. Hippies, Peace-niks and Flower Power. Zen was definitely In.
Across the country Zendos ubiquitously appeared, to use the Buddha's Diamond Sutra simile, "as miraculously as mushrooms . . . or gods . . ." So did Zen Buddhist converts.
Fortunately for the importing savants, Japanese Zen stands to Buddhism as Protestantism stands to Christianity: austere . . . straight-lined buildings with no-frills interiors and minimal or no artwork... and, of course, a non-celibate clergy. Chinese Zen stands to Buddhism as Roman Catholicism stands to Christianity: expansive . . . intricate architecture with ornate decoration and much statuary . . . and a strictly celibate clergy.
The new American posture, being of the Japanese orientation, was, therefore, easy to maintain. Nobody had to explain all those Buddhist statues with their troublesome swastikas.
Callow American youths declared themselves bodhisattvas, and with zeal conferred by bhang and benzedrine, proceeded to save, if not all sentient beings, then at least the sensual ones. The Doctrine that forbade sentimental attachments to parents and friends did not seem to prohibit lovers. In fact, the permission to marry was often interpreted as a mandate for promiscuity as birth control pills and condoms completed the clerical Kit. Scandal followed scandal. With no established hierarchy to maintain order, anarchy naturally resulted. Personal disagreements led to fragmenting schism. As new groups formed, self-ordination became the order of the day. What was Zen? Whatever anybody wanted it to be.
Persons with bachelor degrees in psychology or English literature seemed automatically to qualify for the honorific title of Roshi. Here and there the title was deserving: Jiyu Kennett, Philip Kapleau, Bernard Glassman, Joko Beck, Robert Aitken - to name a few of the real-mccoy teachers who rose to prominence. Unfortunately, the landscape was dotted with fake mccoys.
The Reverend Alan Watts, a Church of England priest, became Zen's principle exponent even though, by his own admission, he had never so much as attained the altered state of consciousness defined as meditation. Nobody seemed to think it relevant that Zen, which means "meditation", had never been experienced by the person who spoke with such authority about it. (Sadly, Alan Watts would later die an alcoholic's death.)
Wherever it was not anchored by the truly spiritual, Zen drifted off into the wretched currents of Six Worlds' spurious Zen: the Angel Zen of esthetes; the Animal Zen of the timid; the Human Being Zen of the efficient; the Titan Zen of bullies; the Hungry Ghost Zen of dilettantes; the Devil Zen of well attired poseurs.
There was merit in the approach. Zen remained unmarked by the cachet of fanaticism which Bataan had caused Christian America to stamp on Buddhism. Either Zen was not a true Buddhist Path or else it was too bizarre to take seriously.
The problem for the martial arts was different.
Since Bataan, Christians, who understood the purpose of Christian monastic training - the deliberate quest for humility through the systematic destruction of egoism - a process called "dying to self", were convinced that when Buddhist monastics used the term they were advocating ritual suicide - seppuku or hara-kiri. The Hagakure, which came to the West's attention after World War II, confirmed this view.
For American martial arts' entrepreneurs the problem was simply stated: how to attract Christian clients without offending Christian sensibilities? The solution was simply effected: dump Bushido and with it any suggestion of religious sentiment. Fortunately, Daoist emblems were untainted. On one hand, nobody had waved a Tai Chi (yin/yang) symbol at the Americans on Bataan or Corregidor; and on the other hand, the Tai Chi symbol was omnipresent in friendly South Korea.
Overnight the intriguing black and white pair of commas was incorporated into the logo of every martial arts studio in Christendom. In applique and embroidery, dragons and tigers, freed from all negative associations, appeared on Tee-shirts and jackets. There even appeared an occasional "laughing Buddha" whose innocence extended to permission to rub his belly for luck, something martial artists, in lieu of spiritual fortitude, were in need of.
Without the moral code of Bushido to conform theory to practice, the martial arts degenerated into mere sport just as Zen had degenerated into New Age fluff.
Imitation showed the extent of flattery's sincerity. Dojo etiquette was de rigueur as travesties of formality obtained. Students eager to kick ass bowed stiffly from the waist to opportunists who called themselves Sensei.
Inevitably, the same lack of hierarchical authority produced fragmentation and schism. Dojos multiplied like amoebas. One produced two: two produced four; four produced sixteen, and so on infinitum. Storefront studios popped up in the shabby malls of every town.
The sport that fed itself upon fad and fear developed an appetite for theatrical heroics.
If we could not produce masters, we could produce movie stars. American born but Hong Kong trained Bruce Lee became, unquestionably, the brightest start in the martial arts' cinematic firmament. A consummate martial artist, Lee brought to his performances an exquisite level of skill and a resonating spiritual charisma. But it was Chuck Norris who would best exemplify the American martial arts fighter. Tough and with the spiritual persona of a rutabaga, Norris led the sport down the only path it could go at the time. Due to the popularity of the Billy Jack films, the Kung Fu television series, and the Karate Kid films, people came to study martial arts under black-belted entrepreneurs, many of whom had managed to attain mastery in the empty halls of Shao Lin Ji.

A rise in street crime brought adults to the dojos or training gymnasiums, but adults soon learned that, given their dismally inadequate physical condition, they ran greater risks of being injured in the dojo than on the street.
In the "me" generation of the 80s, a new trend developed: The martial artist was seen as a buffoon... John Belushi and other comedians lampooned him; and in one of the more important films which referenced the martial arts, Indiana Jones laughed in the face of a threatening Ninja and then matter-of-factly drew his gun and shot him dead. The point was not lost on a generation of sofa spuds. It didn't take years of muscle training to squeeze a trigger.
The dojos contributed to the humor. Many continued to emphasize high-flying kicks and other flashy acrobatic moves that were originally intended to enable foot soldiers to knock horsemen off their mounts. Such moves were regarded as ludicrous in terms of modern self-defense. Nobody in the l980s expected to be mugged by someone on horseback.
The public perception of the value of the martial arts steadily declined as the return in personal protection no longer seemed worth the investment of time and money and the risk of training injuries. Besides, the average businessman felt strange carrying stardarts in his breast pocket. A more conventional can of mace, a stun-gun, a hired bodyguard, or a Beretta would protect an individual far better. And so, in the public mind, the martial arts degenerated even further into just another blood sport.
And in the United States as well as Japan, young men and women of stamina and ambition were well advised to take up tennis or golf. More deals were cut at country clubs than at dojos.
And then real Buddhists started arriving from the Orient. Mature, celibate priests began to arrive from China and Viet Nam, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Tibet, priests who understood the commitment to Dharma. Ordinary Buddhist immigrants arrived and became ordinary neighbors who flew the Stars and Stripes on the Fourth of July.
Orientals began to join oriental martial arts' studios and with their influx, the need for organization became both obvious and acute. Responding to this need, the various schools began to organize into regulatory federations which established standards of performance, competitive criteria, and so on.
When the martial arts finally submitted to the idea of self discipline, people stopped laughing. But still, there was a gap in every school's training regimen, a split that lay open like a wound. The martial arts needed the Code of the Warrior; and the Code of the Warrior was pure Zen... of which, during the narcissistic l980s, there was precious little in the U.S. Zen, too, needed order and stability. Zen, too, needed Wushidao.
And somebody began to wonder if the divorce was final, after all. Whether frivolous Zen could reunite with macho Gong Fu, whether these pseudo-disciplines could mate again and become what they were always intended to be: two halves of the glorious whole: the Buddha Dharma's Gentle Force of Goodness. Power and the Law Power Obeys.

Part 7: Why the marriage works

One man may conquer ten thousand men in battle while another man may conquer only himself . . . yet this man is the greater victor.
-The Buddha (Dhammapada)
Every Zen practitioner is a warrior and the Code of the Warrior, Wushidao (Bushido), defines his objectives and governs his actions.
In medieval Europe, the Paladin, a religious knight who trained in the heroics of championship, was expected to be brave, modest, pious, generous and courteous to his foes even as he impaled them on his lance or cleaved them with his sword. Likewise, the Wushi, the Chinese Paladin, was expected to conform his conduct to the high standards of a spiritually refined knighthood.
It is no accident that martial arts were traditionally taught in monasteries. From the earliest days of the pancratium/yoga synthesis, it was seen that the surest way to produce a champion was to fuse in his character the ethics and humility of spiritual conviction with the wisdom which only meditation can provide. In fact, it was always assumed that an enlightened man required very little in the way of additional physical training and conditioning to attain mastery in any martial art. As art transcends technique, martial art had to go beyond mere athleticism.
Without Wushidao, there could be skill in boxing, wrestling and kicking; but mastery would not inform the practice. Without Wushidao, there could be meditation as therapy or devotional exercise, but spiritual authority would not be attained. Therefore, in all regimens of physical training, the spiritual code of the warrior was given pre-eminence.
Depending upon such considerations as geography and politics, different varieties of the martial arts arose; but regardless of stylistic differences, the common denominator of all masterful performers was a peculiar spiritual demeanor, a demeanor evidenced by imperturbable humility.
What rationale and methodology did the master follow which conferred upon him such distinct advantages over any opponent who was not similarly disciplined?
We have all heard of a martial arts' master who, though old and, compared to his opponent, weak to the point of fragility, still manages to win. His defeated opponent will afterward insist that the master has an uncanny ability to read minds. What the master has is an uncanny ability to anticipate.
The moment his opponent begins to execute a strike, the master has already begun to block or parry and to follow through with a well-targeted counter-strike or riposte. Additionally, the master moves with effortless fluidity, without conscious consideration of a single move. He remains in a state of complete dispassion, going through the motions of combat without feeling the emotions of combat. He is able to remain calm because his ego is not involved in the contest. Let's look at how he accomplishes this.
Even though in his relaxed or casual moments the master may experience a comparatively high state of awareness, when beginning a contest he will nevertheless heighten this state by entering a meditative trance. To an observer, this shift of consciousness may be so subtle as to be imperceptible, yet the master has completely evicted his ego from the combat arena. The method he uses to accomplish this is usually a simple triggering stimulus.
First, he concentrates his attention on some object - think of a hypnotist swinging a gold watch back and forth in front of a person's eyes or a fortune teller staring into a crystal ball. In the martial arts the focal point is usually the body's center of gravity, sometimes called the Hara, which is a point deep in the abdomen where the aorta (the large blood vessel that exits the heart and travels down the center of the body) splits to become the femoral or thigh arteries.
Using specific meditation exercises (given at the conclusion of this series) the master trains himself to feel his pulse beating at his Hara or center of gravity; and, using concentration on this point as the triggering stimulus, he enters a meditative trance as he simultaneously balances himself around this center.
At this point, the master's ego-identity has vanished. He's no longer a person. He's simply a fighting machine. He's not wondering how good he looks. He's not wondering what he's going to do after the contest or even what move he's going to make next. He's not thinking, period. He has practiced his combat skills to reflexive perfection, and he lets his training take over, reacting automatically as he enters an intense Zone of egoless concentration.
This egoless state gives him several distinct advantages. He can react instantaneously; he can process fainter signals, signals which otherwise might be undetectable. He can respond to sensory data which his conscious ego might not notice or know how to interpret correctly, and he can prevent his own body from experiencing the deleterious effects of emotion or pain. And yes, he can even curtail blood loss should he be wounded. How does entry into this Zone facilitate such advantages? Let's examine the mechanics of an action/reaction event.
In order for a person to respond to a given stimulus, that stimulus must cross several thresholds. First, it must be noticed by an appropriate sense organ. Sensory organs pick up information in the form of energy: light energy excites the receptors within the eye; compression waves of sound strike the ear drum; heat energy directly passes through our fingertips, and so on.
Let's say that a student martial artist, a man with normal vision, is sitting in a dark room and that he's been given the instructions to shout "Yo!" whenever he sees a tiny green light flash. For him to respond, the light stimulus must be bright enough to excite the cones and rods in his eyes. If the light is too dim, it will fail to excite these receptors. But if it does excite them, it has crossed the first threshold: the SENSORY threshold.
The stimulus must then have enough energy remaining to travel along neural pathways to his brain. If it succeeds in making itself felt in the brain, it has crossed the second threshold, the PERCEPTUAL threshold. The brain records the green light event - it's now entered in the student's data banks, so to speak.
The student can "overlook" or otherwise pay no attention to this data (his ego may be directing its attention elsewhere or he may simply be daydreaming) in which case the light event is recorded in his brain without his being aware of it at all. Under hypnosis, he can retrieve the information. Consider the often cited case in which a bystander sees the license number of a getaway car but simply can't remember it. The visual stimulus clearly crossed the sensory and perceptual thresholds but, in the excitement of the moment, the data became garbled and the ego-consciousness could not process or memorize it.
Or, the student can access the "green light event" data in two ways. He can ego-consciously respond to it by thinking, "I see a flashing green light now. I'll do as I'm instructed and yell 'Yo!'." When this happens the stimulus has crossed the third threshold, the CONSCIOUS ACTION threshold. He has noticed an action and has considered and executed a reaction to it and he can usually recall this action/reaction event. If, for some reason, he is unable to summon a recollection of it, under hypnosis he will be able to remember the event.
To retrieve forgotten or overlooked data the confused ego has to be bypassed - transcended in the trance or hypnotic state. A re-entry into the perceptual threshold's domain has to be effected.
This retrieval technique is related to the second way the student can respond to a stimulus: he can experience it directly or unconsciously and then react to it automatically without his ego's involvement. We call this action/reaction event "subliminal". "Limen" is the Latin word for threshold. It is this direct, subliminal response that the master uses.
For very good reasons, the martial artist wants to prevent his ego-consciousness from interfering in the combat.
The ego's domain - the world of I, Me, Mine and Numero Uno - is the place we find those seven deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, laziness, gluttony, greed and anger... all those reckless, destructive motivations.
Whenever a stimulus is consciously acted upon, the ego evaluates the stimulus and decides what, if anything, ought to be done in response. If the ego does decide to act, it directs the body by sending out electrochemical messages to the appropriate muscles. In fact, the ego has an array of chemicals at its disposal which can influence and interfere with all body systems. Unfortunately, the ego does not always act in the body's best interest. Think about fear: Some people who are loquacious in their living rooms can't utter a meaningful syllable when standing in front of a microphone. The quick-draw artist at a gun club may find that his hand has turned to stone when he's suddenly confronted by a live, hissing rattler. We say that such individuals are paralyzed by fear.
Any emotion can be detrimental. A surgeon doesn't operate on people he loves or hates because his ego's involvement might prejudice his judgment. Lawyers, likewise, abstain from representing themselves for an understandable fear of compromising their own self-interests.
A person can become so angry that he will kill another person even though he knows that he, himself, might be punished later with imprisonment or death. We say that his reason has been consumed by rage.
The ego always sees itself as being at the center of a drama, the principal actor... the one whose feelings count.. the one who requires loyalty, respect and admiration. Egos, as we know in Zen, demand attention and they don't much care how they get it.
Animals don't see themselves as being in the center of a drama. Animals don't have egos; and because of this they respond efficiently and without prejudice. Their reactions are fast and direct and if they kill it is to satisfy hunger, not anger. Animals do not resort to mortal combat to settle territorial disputes; humans, providing they reasonably feel threatened, may kill anyone who intrudes into their premises. Male animals fighting over mating rights to females do not kill their competitors. If a rogue male enters a harem and dallies with a female, the dominant male runs the rogue off. A human male, on the other hand, will likely be excused if, upon catching his wife en flagrante, he dispatches her lover. Though the husband be a notorious womanizer who only vaguely recalls that his wife is a female, the stain upon his dishonored ego is naturally too great to be cleansed by anything less than the lover's detergent blood.
Again, animals respond faster than humans because animals don't have egos that interfere with their body's actions. Their responses are pure reflex, uninhibited by personal judgments.
Which brings us to another reason martial artists don't want their egos involved in the action: Response times. Subliminal responses can be nearly twice as fast as consciously considered responses!
Animals do something else that martial artists emulate: they read an array of sensory signals - smells, sounds, and body and facial language; and these signals are invariably more reliable than verbal language or deliberate gestures.
We've all heard of a poker face. The expert card player trains himself never to reveal pleasure or displeasure or to give any inadvertent clue to his true intentions. He looks for such signals in the faces, tics, or mannerisms of the other players.
Boxers, too, train never to "telegraph" a punch, that is to squint an eye or raise an eyebrow prior to striking in a specific way.
The fact is that we human beings have inherited from our primate ancestors a variety of facial and body signals; but in the course of evolution, our mushrooming cerebral cortex with its commanding verbal abilities has largely replaced our non verbal signaling system. Somebody can approach us with hate in his eyes, but if he warbles, "Good to see ya', old buddy!" we go with the verbal message and discount that look of hate.
Our cerebral evolution has also caused us to discount olfactory signals. We all know what a roach motel is... roaches check in but they don't check out. Glue keeps them in, but what gets them to check in in the first place is the chemical attractant added to the glue. The roaches are responding to a mating odor stimulant. Human beings also give off a variety of smells... pheromones.. that signal an existing emotional state.
When encountering a large dog on a leash, we ask, "Does he bite?" and we instinctively extend our relaxed, palm-down hand to let the dog smell that there is no scent of aggression on our skin.
Alexander Pope, the English poet, related that despite the protesting snarls and barks of his great dane, he permitted a flattering acquaintance to become his house guest. To his chagrin he learned that the guest had stolen many valuable items. Pope thereafter insisted that his dog was a far better judge of character than he was.

Fear also has an odor and at a subliminal level we detect that odor. Olfactory data have the most direct route of all to the human brain; and if a combatant senses, i.e., unconsciously smells fear in his opponent, he's ahead in the game. Clearly, he doesn't want to experience fear lest he signal his opponent that he is aware of the weakness of his own position. Fortunately, fearlessness is a universal characteristic of the truly spiritual person. The Zen man understands that death is nothing to fear. He is immersed in the safe Zone of the Divine, i.e., he has truly taken refuge in the Buddha. On the other hand, he's not stupid. He wouldn't likely volunteer to be drawn and quartered on the rack. But martyrs there are aplenty; and none has a reputation for cowardice.
Naturally, guile is a combatant's weapon. An attempt is always made to mask one's real intentions. This is simple strategy. An attacker doesn't announce the time and place from which he will launch his missiles. Just as certainly, the wise bully does not tell the Judo expert that in five seconds he's going to kick him. Zen training at every level denigrates verbal communication. The often inane language of koans is intended to demonstrate how untrustworthy words can be. Especially when life or property is at stake, words can be a great enemy. Flattery and deceitful assurances may cause the ego to enjoy comfortable feelings of safety which will annul suspicion and relax a guarded stance. Threats and innuendo may create fear and confusion. To whatever extent a combatant succumbs to deception or fear, he yields his own resources to his opponent.
Verbal messages are conscious messages and conscious messages fall under the control of the ego. The task of the martial artist is clear: he must keep his ego from getting involved in the contest, yet he may not suspend intellectual control. Hypnosis or drugs may make him egoless, but they will require him to surrender control of his judgment and will ultimately lessen his awareness.
The master further demonstrates his acute awareness by immediately determining not only which hand or leg his opponent favors, which is clearly valuable information, but also which eye his opponent favors. In the use of weapons the combatant is always taught to keep his "eye on the target". When the hand or foot is the weapon, the favored eye will just as surely aim at the targeted area.
Anyone can discover which eye he favors by selecting an object on the wall directly in front of him. He lets his nose lineup with the object and then extends a thumb until it covers the object, while remaining midpoint in his gaze. He shuts one eye and if the object continues to be covered by the other eye, that other eye is the one he favors. If he then shuts the favored eye and looks out through the other, his thumb will be seen to shift several inches to the side of the favored eye.
Meditation, by definition the state, par excellence, in which the ego is transcended while awareness is enhanced, will alone provide the martial artist with the means to achieve this necessary state of mind, or, more precisely, No Mind.
But the meditative, egoless state has even more to offer the martial artist. Let's go back to the student who was sitting in the dark room hollering "Yo!" whenever he saw a dim green light flash. Let's say that every time he correctly yelled, he received some food. If the student was hungry, an extremely dim green light could provoke a shout. In fact, a light that he might have been able to detect only half the time might have its odds of being seen appreciably changed.

He might see it 90% of the time which means that the additional positive motivation of reward could cause him to lower his sensory and perceptual thresholds and to respond to more subtle signals. Of course, he will have acted too quickly for conscious consideration; and so the question then becomes, "Who or what inside his head is responding to the reward?"

Part 8: Reading face and body signals 

Be careful whenever you consider a singing horse. It isn't what he sings or how well he sings it. It's that he sings at all.
-Anonymous Wise Person
A martial arts' master is often credited with the ability to read his opponent's mind. No sooner does the poor fellow decide to execute a strike, but the master begins to parry it and to riposte effortlessly, the force having been supplied by the opponent, himself. Can the master read minds? If so, how does he do it?
We human beings believe that we're experts at concealment, that we're terribly clever in the ways of deceit. We're sure that we know how to put on an act. Certain that we shall perform convincingly, we rehearse our little denials or excuses or flattering phrases. So confident are we that if someone tells us that our body and face language may unintentionally reveal our true intentions to our intended dupe, we indignantly protest. Impossible, we say.
But, in fact, the language of body and face is far more eloquent than any rehearsed phrase. Great literature is written in that language. Some of the sign-words are universally used and understood but many are peculiar to the individual, and these are the words the Master interprets. (Which horn does the bull favor? Is he near or far sighted? Does he feint with one horn before attempting to impale with the other? Life and death ride on this information. Ask Manolete.)
In the early nineteen hundreds, as the various schools of thought converged into the science of the human mind, the gathering herd of psychologists found itself stampeded by a horse named Hans.
Groomed by his private trainer, or tutor, Herr Von Osten, Hans could add, subtract, multiply and divide with degrees of accuracy we should all admire and envy.
Further, Clever Hans could identify playing cards, determine dates upon which certain moveable feast days would fall, and perform any number of astonishing calculations. University professors, who studied and presumably graded him, were unanimous in their praise of his uncommon intelligence. Not a few offered him as a role model to the lugheads who occupied time and space in their undergraduate classrooms. The halls of Academe rang with paeans to horsesense. All and sundry were absolutely amazed by this most intelligent animal.
There were, however, a couple of disturbing kinks in his performance. Hans, the undergraduates were pleased to note but disinclined to investigate, was not infallible. He had a few shortcomings, which, being so unlike their own, were rather noticeable.
For example, if Hans' questioner didn't know the answer to his own question, neither did Hans. (This almost never happens to a sophomore.) Further, if Hans was not standing in full view of his questioner (a normally dreaded confrontational examination) Clever Hans didn't have a clue. He actually required the physical presence of his interrogator in order to produce the correct answer.
 
Since Hans performed best when his trainer quizzed him, teams of experts scrutinized Von Osten's demeanor searching for signals - ponies, if you will - that provided the horse with correct answers. They could find nothing... no cues or clues as to how information might be conveyed to the cerebral horse. So they scratched their heads in wonder and dispensed inferiority complexes to college boys.
But these nagging kinks in Hans' performance chaffed one particular psychologist, a persistent investigator named Oskar Pfungst. Pfungst said "Pfooey" to claims of the horse's mathematical genius.
Everyone else had wanted Hans to succeed. Not Pfungst. He was determined to expose the horse as a fake. Pfungst intuitively understood that it was everybody else's desire that had something to do with the horse's abilities.
Anticipating B.F. Skinner, Pfungst noted that in the horse's early days of what would only later be called "operant conditioning", trainer Von Osten, anxious that the horse succeed, enthusiastically rewarded him for each correct answer he gave. This enthusiasm was still revealing itself in the most subtle ways. Whenever Von Osten posed a question, he imperceptibly raised his eyebrows, arched his shoulders, and pushed his face forward - a universal attitude of expectation. He maintained this pose as he waited for Hans to tap out the correct answer; and when this goal was attained, he would, in a universal attitude of relief, sigh, ever so slightly, lower his shoulders, and jerk his head back. These signals, being universal expressions of expectation and relief, were shared by all of Hans' interlocutors.
Again, when the questioner asked, "Hans, what is seven minus three?" he would pause, poised in anticipation, waiting for the horse to answer; and this pause of expectation would signal Hans to start tapping. Of course, the horse would have continued to tap until bursitis set in if the questioner had not sighed, ever so slightly, with relief when Hans reached the desired answer: "four" - and had not stopped, say, at three. And in the course of this tiny sigh of relief, the interlocutor invariably lowered his shoulders and jerked his head, signals which let Hans know that it was time to stop tapping. Though the distances moved might be measureable only with a micrometer, Hans could detect them and get his cue.
This, of course, was the reason he could not answer a question if his questioner did not know the answer. This is also why he could not answer the question if his questioner was concealed behind a screen.
What is important about the story of Clever Hans is that nobody intentionally signaled the horse and that the horse was ingenuous in his receipt of the signals. He was an egoless creature... but he had senses and a brain. He, in every sense of the word, could act subliminally. He didn't need ideomotor responses. Thoughts, of which he had none, did not motivate him to act. He relied on reflexes.
Hans, incidentally, gives us the reason why the "double blind" procedure is essential for accuracy in certain test results. When trying to determine the efficacy of a drug, for example, a technician might dispense distilled water to some patients and the experimental drug to others. There is no question but that if the technician knows which phial contains which substance, he unintentionally conveys this information to the patients who, just as unconsciously, receive it

and respond accordingly. In order for the technician not to influence the test results, he must not know the identity of the substances he is administering.
So the aim of training, aside from acquiring basic skills, is to solve the problems posed by unintentionally given signals which are unconsciously received and subliminally acted upon.
What, after all, does training consist in?
Creatures learn in two basic "conditional" ways: they learn passively simply by repetitive associations of one stimulus with another as, for example, Pavlov taught his dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. He merely rang a bell immediately before feeding them, and they soon associated the sound of the bell with the arrival of the food. Thereafter, in anticipation of the food, they salivated whenever he rang the bell.
Creatures learn actively by the same associative process. If Pavlov wanted to teach his dogs to press a lever, he'd have withheld food until they happened to press the lever, and then he'd reward them with the desired food.
In either case, he'd have had to be constant in his reinforcement of the learning sequence. After awhile, if he rang the bell and didn't feed them, or if they pressed the lever and got nothing, the association would attenuate until it was nothing but a dim memory. They'd soon ignore the once generous bell and lever.
Hans the clever horse had actually conditioned his trainer into acting like a mathematics teacher. All that Hans learned was that if he stopped tapping his foot whenever Von Osten signaled relief, he'd receive a piece of apple or carrot. Any questioner who knew the Calculus could get Hans to come up with the derivative of 3x/dx; but while the horse may have received more honor, not to mention food, than Leibnitz had ever been given, he was never in line to replace the great German.
But the meditative, egoless state has, in this regard, even more to offer the martial artist. Let's go back to the student who was sitting in the dark room hollering "Yo!" whenever he saw a dim green light flash. Let's say that every time he correctly yelled, he received some food. If the student was hungry, an extremely dim green light could provoke a shout. In fact, a light that he might have been able to detect only half the time might have its odds of being seen appreciably changed. He might see it 90% of the time which means that the additional positive motivation of reward could cause him to lower his sensory and perceptual thresholds and to respond to more subtle signals.
But more than just being motivated by reward (always a nice incentive) is the significant fact that the student was motivated by hunger. This is an important distinction to which we shall soon return.
Of course, he will have acted too quickly for conscious consideration; and so the question then becomes, "Who or what inside his head is responding to the incentive?" Martial arts training, as in Hans' case, involves the reading of signals so subtle as to be imperceptible to any "experts" who purposely attempt to discover them. It helps to know where to look.

The martial arts' master, demonstrating his acute awareness, immediately determines not only which hand or leg his opponent favors - which is obviously valuable information - but also which eye his opponent favors. In the use of weapons the combatant is always taught to keep his "eye on the target."
When the hand or foot is the weapon, the favored eye will just as surely aim at the targeted area.
Anyone can discover which eye he favors by selecting an object on the wall directly in front of him. He lets his nose lineup with the object and then extends a thumb until it covers the object, while remaining nose-midpoint in his gaze. He shuts one eye and if the object continues to be covered by the other eye, that other eye is the one he favors. If he then shuts the favored eye and looks out the other eye, his thumb will be seen to shift several inches to the side of the favored eye.
Meditation - by definition the state, par excellence, in which the ego is transcended while awareness is enhanced - will alone provide the martial artist with the means to achieve this necessary state of mind, or, more precisely, this state of No Mind.
Meditation permits the Martial Artist to enter the egoless state and become rather like one of the animals he has used as a training model in his asanas or other "forms": the horse, the crane, the monkey.
Hans would have had no problem in determining which eye his food provider favored. This information is readily available to the brain though it is discounted by the ego - which much prefers to engage in byzantine linguistic complexities... verbal messages of threats and flattery. To read these subtle signals, the egoless state must be attained - an easy state for an animal, but a difficult one for a human being to deliberately 
Part 9: The Censor 
In the early years of research into subliminal phenomena scientists discovered something peculiar. They conducted an experiment using two electrodes and tried to determine how close the two electrodes would have to be placed on a person's skin for that person to feel the two shocks as a single one.
The experimenters began by placing the electrodes far apart from each other on the subject's back so the he could clearly and separately feel the shocks. Then, as he no doubt wondered whether taxpayers' money had been used to fund such a project, the experimenters kept moving the electrodes closer and closer until they reached an area in which the person simply could not determine whether he was receiving one shock or two. In other words, the electrodes were so close their impact areas coincided in the sort of union that Venn diagrams so neatly illustrate.
Then the scientists played a kind of game. Confining themselves to just this narrow area, they shocked the subject sometimes with two electrodes and sometimes with only one and asked him to guess immediately - without thinking about it - whether they had used one or two electrodes. Instead of being 50% accurate, the statistical probability, the subject was amazingly accurate. When he had to respond spontaneously, he somehow knew the difference.
Something in the subject's brain had the power to raise or lower perceptual thresholds. Sigmund Freud wasn't surprised by this peculiar "something" in the brain. He had postulated its existence. He called it The Censor. In Zen we call it our Buddha Self.
This spontaneous state is precisely the egoless state that a martial artist strives to attain. An old Buddhist story helps to further clarify the difference between spontaneous and contrived thought:
A novice approaches a Zen master and begs to be accepted as a disciple. "I'll accept you," says the master, "providing you can say one word of truth. Come back when you can tell me a truthful word."
The novice leaves and begins to think and think until he decides he's got the right word. He returns to the master and kneels before him. At the master's nod, the novice softly intones, "Buddha."
"Get out, you fool!" shouts the master, "and don't come back until you can utter a truthful word!"
Again the novice thinks and thinks and decides upon another word. He returns to the master, kneels, and whispers, "Love."
"Get out, you fool!" shouts the master. "Don't come back until you can utter a truthful word!"
The novice thinks some more and finally decides upon another word. He returns to the master and as he kneels, the master kicks him. "Ouch!" cries the novice and jumps up.
"Sit down," says the master. "You have just uttered a truthful word."
Thoughts generated in ego-consciousness are usually self serving, compromised thoughts. They are products of deliberation and as such have a manufacturing time-line. Spontaneous intuitions, simply because they occur without considerations of advantage or detriment, cannot be devious and, taking no detours, are direct, immediate, and "true".
In a monastic setting, training is an uninterrupted and comprehensive process. One area or another of a novice's development is always being addressed. Just how the spiritual curriculum proceeds is often a mystery to the harried novice, but his martial arts' training is usually clear and unambiguous. One approach, which has had a long and colorful literary career, is typified in the following anecdote:
A novice enters a monastery prepared for some serious theological instruction only to discover that every monk in the institution has been given permission to strike or kick him not only at will, but at the most unexpected times, and in the most unlikely places. He may be walking in the garden, or working, or eating, or even sitting in the privy, when suddenly a passing monk may strike him. The blows are hard and so randomly delivered and from such a variety of sources, that the novice, disheartened and battered by what seems to be perpetual hazing, quickly doubts that he will survive his freshman year - or even the first l/12th of it.
Since he cannot initiate an attack, he finds himself in a curious situation: before he can counter a strike, he must first be able to block it - and this, as yet, he lacks the skill to do. Unfortunately, he possesses no firearms.
Inside or out of a monastery, the best way to deal with a problem is, of course, to avoid it; and the novice quickly learns how to determine when a strike is imminent. He studies the approaching monk. Is his expression different just before he actually strikes from the way it is when he passes without striking? When he does strike, will it be from the right or left? With fist or open hand? From above or below? Will the blow be a kick? From which direction? What balancing movements will the monk make before he kicks? At what precise point is the monk looking when he strikes? The novice becomes extremely observant and soon compiles a compendium of the most incredibly subtle mannerisms about his potential attackers. No nuance goes unnoticed. He has no choice in this: he cannot maintain the tension of constant alarm. A warning siren that doesn't cease, ceases to be a warning siren.
All animals have an attack mode, attitude, or poise; and humans, being members of the animal kingdom, share this behavioral trait. Discretion is still the better part of valor; and an accurate reading of a potential opponent's intentions is better than a constant state of Code Red readiness. So the novice submits to a training game, a contest of wits which requires enormous concentration; and concentration, as we know, is the first step in meditation.
It is at this point that the path of the merely skillful diverges from the masterful.
The sine qua non of the true martial artist is his peaceful demeanor and peace, as it happens, is Buddhism's most vaunted state. While Buddhists do not hold universal patent rights on Peacefulness, if any one group can be said to revel in it, to prize it more highly than any other state, Buddhists are that group. Zen Buddhists, be they martial artists of the most deadly and consummate skill, are nothing if not tranquil.
 
On the surface, paradox defines the incongruity: the peaceful warrior. Do these opposed characteristics function in spite of each other or because of each other? Let us take an admittedly oversimplified look at their baffling contrariness.
Just as the brain has two independent but cooperative halves, the body has two autonomic nervous systems: the sympathetic and parasympathetic.
The sympathetic nervous system is activated in the cause of fear, anger, pain, and, oddly enough, seminal ejaculation. By releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and a dryness of mouth is produced. The concomitant mind-set is one of self-preservation, and the attention contracts and focuses upon egoistic demands. Sensory input diminishes. We do not savor the fragrance of flowers when we are running for our lives. We do not note which key we are screaming in. And the Gucci silk we pierce with a steel blade we rend without due esthetic appreciation.
The parasympathetic nervous system is activated for feeding and for sexual arousal. Blood pressure and heart rates drop and we secrete saliva to the point of drooling. Long wet kisses or filet mignon with sauce Bernaise: juicy mouths attend them both. Blood is needed elsewhere than in the extremities of brain and feet and everything slows down to let us enjoy its midway pooling. The concomitant mind-set is convivial, expansive and sensory-appreciative. We smell the perfume. We taste the cinnamon. We hear the steak's tiniest sizzle or feel the slightest wisp of breath in our ear. In short, we are completely aware of the moment as we relish and linger in it. Assuming we are not psychopaths or perverts, we are joyously peaceful and in no way looking for a fight.
It should come as no surprise, then, that meditation techniques facilitate parasympathetic responses, that hunger and the preparation for feeding are excellent inducements to sharpen sensory awareness, and that martial artists or meditators are always advised not to practice "on a full stomach".
As the body relaxes, the mind expands. Brain activity slows down in order to increase awareness. Brain waves go from the frazzled, albeit normal, beta rhythms of ordinary or alerted consciousness to slower more sensory-aware alpha and theta rhythms, the frequencies associated with states of deep relaxation, subliminal awareness, and the vaunted Meditative Zone. Clearly, a combatant who experiences fear or pain, inhibits his ability to enter the Zone.
The first of the necessary disciplines the martial artist must master is Pranayama, the science of controlling breath and circulating energy. Every training program incorporates its rigorous practice.
Each martial arts' "form" must be learned with the appropriate breath inhalation and exhalation in concert with the choreographed movements. Naturally, these forms must be practiced until they are performed reflexively. Just as we frequently operate a car in traffic, braking for red lights and avoiding pedestrians as often as possible, with all our movements made automatically - our minds being engrossed in other scenarios, so the martial arts' students must learn the various forms so thoroughly that he can perform them unconsciously. 
Controlled breathing invariably slows down breathing rates, initiating a biofeedback loop: because breathing slows, heart rates decline, blood pressure drops, awareness increases, and in this relaxed, non-threatened state, the meditative Zone may be entered.
The martial artist must maintain a peaceful demeanor since before his mind can enter the meditative state's higher zone of total awareness it must pass through this "base-camp" stage of relaxation. Tension, a product of fear, anxiety, aggressiveness, pain, or anger, will cause his sympathetic nervous system to secrete adrenaline; and this will prohibit him from experiencing this necessary relaxed awareness. All subliminal lines of information will thereby be obliterated.
Preserving the peace is a singularly militaristic poise.
The student's Buddhist training complements his physical regimen. The Eightfold Path requires him to scrutinize all of his actions to determine if they are noninjurious, generous, self-reliant, and directed towards his maturity.
The student who neglects his spiritual development stultifies his progress, arrests it at the level of the consciously athletic. He must be loving. He must truly care about the welfare of all other human beings. He must be committed to their salvation as well as his own. He must be receptive to their needs, gentle in his help, and generous in forgiveness. In all this he must personify humility. This is basic Buddhist training regardless of whether the discipline is flower arranging, tea service, archery, or swordsmanship.
Therefore, it is not from entirely altruistic motives that the martial arts' master insists upon the essentially passive code of Wushidao/Bushido. The impervious and imperturbable fighter must get himself into the egoless Zone of absolute awareness, i.e., the pure meditative state.
Accordingly, in any confrontational situation, the master instructs his disciples to achieve a lessening of tension:
The warrior must first actively strive to avoid conflict by gracefully removing himself from the argumentative equation.
If his antagonist persists, he must try to blunt the edge of his anger by apologizing for inadvertently having given offense. He should assure his antagonist that he had no intention to inconvenience or discomfit him and suggest peaceful ways to resolve the dispute.
If the antagonist physically attacks, only minimal force to repel the attack should be used. The martial artist should merely defend or, if necessary, disarm, but not counter attack. All effort should be made to let the antagonist retain his honor. Conciliatory gestures and statements should again be made.
If the antagonist proceeds with an obvious intent to kill, he should be dispatched cleanly and with appropriate regret. At this point, the warrior is blameless. All will respect him. None will condemn. He won't need a lawyer and he won't have to worry about vendettas.
In addition to pranayama, the martial artist must, of course, master Pratyahara: the ability to eliminate any sensations which he wishes to exclude. For example, he does not want to feel pain (since pain provokes an adrenaline response), and so he practices entering those trance states which produce "anesthesia" effects; and, just as a dentist can use hypnosis to control blood flow, the martial artist knows that he can staunch his wounds by the same trance-induced method. He can also use the trance state to help him to overcome the effects of heat, thirst, and fatigue. 

This is the totality of martial arts' training: the inculcation of Buddhist values of love and understanding; the acquisition of a natural state of vigilance; the proficiency in trance-induced hyperesthesia (the ability to respond to subliminal data); the disciplined obedience to rules of engagement; the clear and unequivocal adherence to peaceful objectives; the embrace of humility which fosters the control of mind and body; and the combat skills acquired through constant practice.
The secret of the master is that he melts into his skill a coolness of mind. He never becomes emotional. His focus is upon reconciliation and not upon egotistical preservation or posturing. If he can't quite feel genuine love for his antagonist, he can at least feel respect and sympathy. He finds more honor in yielding than in defeating. The attitude of the Zen warrior is achieved and maintained in training's Mobius strip - one side martial and the other spiritual - in an ever circling progression traced endlessly in the disciplines of meditation.
This is adherence to the Paladin's Creed: Wushidao. 
Part 10: Conclusion 
Zen teachers often take too much for granted. We're like school teachers who find a student's spelling error and demand to know why he didn't spell the word correctly. He says, "I didn't know it was wrong. It looked all right to me." Then we look him in the eye and offer the sage advice, "If you don't know how to spell a word, look it up in the dictionary." Words to live by.
Unfortunately, assuming we are sufficiently inspired by doubt to open the dictionary at all, we often have to know how to spell a word before we can look it up. English is funny that way. So is Zen.
Martial arts teachers often demand that a student focus his attention upon the Hara. It is believed, correctly so or not, that the body's weight is evenly distributed around this point and that it is a kind of balancing fulcrum. "Concentrate upon the Hara!" The instruction is everywhere the same. But nowhere, apparently, does anybody tell you precisely how to do that. An Aikido master once confided to me that his master had fervently insisted that he sit in meditation "concentrating upon his Hara" and, having been told that the Hara was a point "a couple of inches below and behind his belly button" he tried to concentrate upon this general area. He said that for months he sat there trying to visualize his intestines. This was a bit disconcerting and lacked, shall we say, a certain esthetic appeal. He decided instead to imagine that his Hara was a star and that a bunch of imaginary planets revolved around it in his abdominal universe. The effort brought him new insights into astronomy but did nothing to deepen his Zen.
The Hara is a place. It is the specific place in the abdomen where the aorta, the body's major blood vessel, splits to become the femoral (thigh) arteries. The blood which traverses the aorta moves under great pressure and when it strikes this fork in its path, it slams into it. It is easy to feel a pulse beat there in the pit of the abdomen. When we wish to concentrate upon the Hara, we relax, quiet ourselves, and focus our attention on this pulse beat. This may be too great a leap forward. It's best to begin with the following instruction:
  1. Sit quietly and relax. Let your right hand rest upon your lap. Study your right hand.
  2. Lightly press your thumb and index finger together until you can feel your pulse beating.
  3. Count the beats until you reach ten. Open your hand and focus your attention only upon your thumb. Now, count ten beats in the thumb alone.
  4. Shift your focus onto the index finger. You'll feel your pulse beat there. Count ten beats and then shift your attention to your middle finger and count ten beats there. Do the same for your ring and little fingers.
  5. Feel your entire hand pulse. It will actually feel warm since by having focussed your attention upon it you are unconsciously directing blood to it.
  6. Shift your attention now to your left hand. Repeat the procedure.
With a little practice, you'll soon be able to feel your pulse beating in your eyelids, lips, feet, etc. Now you're ready for the major leagues: The Hara.
Start by pressing down into your abdomen with two fingers until you actually feel your pulse beating deep in the pit of your abdomen. Lying in bed is the best position for accomplishing this. Once you succeed, you'll know how and where to look for the pulse. But again, in order to feel it when you are "on guard" or even simply sitting in meditation, you will have to relax, draw your attention inwards, and focus upon this specific point.
Success in this exercise helps to gain several important objectives. In addition to the physical sense of security derived from feeling "balanced", concentration upon the Hara, by initiating a relaxation response, can prevent panic and the adrenalin surge associated with fear. Relaxation is as much an enemy of fear as fear is an enemy of relaxation. This one pointed concentration also lends itself to becoming a triggering mechanism for entering the trance state. It is the equivalent of swinging a gold watch rhythmically before a subject's eyes.
There are many breathing exercises and other forms of meditation which the martial artist employs to his advantage. Several chapters of The Seventh World of Chan Buddhism are devoted to these techniques.