Your life in Karate

Your life is something you create moment by moment.  You are ultimately responsible for where you are, whom you're with, and what you're doing.  Like a painting, a sculpture, or a pottery bowl, you can create something fine and useful with your life, or you can throw it away.  Karate philosophy shows us that we have the power to make a life of great quality.  Karate philosophy teaches us not to fear failure, but to use it as a teacher. Karate philosophy teaches us never to surrender to a second-rate way of life.

The concept of a good Kata is familiar to all who practice karate in Sansei.  The Kata should be in complete harmony, proper line, correct execution of a technique, or the efficiency of a particular stance. The same applies equally to the mind and the emotions.  When your movement, emotional, and intellectual functions are in complete harmony, the world literally changes for you.  Life becomes simultaneously less complicated and more interesting.  All the problems and complexities of your life, which seem to be imposed upon by your circumstance, are nothing more than symptoms of internal contradiction causing disharmony among body, mind and spirit.

Karate philosophy teaches us that the unification of body, mind, and spirit frees your attention, so that for the first time, you become aware of subtle mechanism and intuitions you had rarely seen before.  There are moments you even feel psychic; moments you experience such total empathy with someone that you feel you can read his thoughts, moments that you can feel iminent danger around the corner.

All these experiences point to the meditative demand of Karate training.  Everyone in Sansei literally must meditate on every move he makes, giving total attention to his relations with the environment, and no attention to internal noise.

My approach to teaching Karate is both with an Eastern as well as Western flavor.  A student at the University asked me "Is it true that you have your students meditate before doing Kata?" "of course", I replied, "however we also meditate during the performance of the Kata".

Satori is a word from the Japanese Zen tradition, which describe the natural harmony of body, mind, and emotions.  When the mind, free of internal distraction, is pure attention to the present moment. When the spirit, free of obstructing tension, manifest as pure motivational energy.  When the body, fully relaxed and vitalized, is sensitive and open to life.  When the three centers are in this simultaneous relationship, something clicks; that's satori.  It represents a state, which the Sansei practitioner flashes in and out of on many occasions.  Satori feels good.  This is the state of being that all Karate practitioners should, shoot for. It’s the natural state of the Sansei karate-ka.  Satori is dynamic meditation; it's the reason we live and enjoy Karate.

We in Sansei are all satori seekers, because that represents a momentary vacation, free of problems or complications, free of past or future.  Satori is the hidden goal behind all our aspirations.  Satori is the core of the moving experience. It's the clue, which sends us onward, the great pathway; it's a preview of spiritual life.