Meditation in Martial Arts

     Meditation is an act that brings one closer to truth. It is an act that awakens the senses of perception and insight into the nature of reality. Meditation in martial arts, is developing martial ability in a way that awakens the senses to truth. From my own experience and awareness, I know that many traditional Asian martial arts contain deep truths in their practices. These truths are learned by properly performing techniques and forms in these arts. It is easier to learn these truths from instructors who are aware of them. In the United States and probably world wide, the deep truths are taught less and known less. In many organizations in the United States these truths are almost glossed over completely. The depth of awareness of our societies has shallowed and is shallowing today. This shallowness makes it harder to maintain and learn the deep truths of these arts. The shallowness of our societies is the reason that the depth of these martial arts has dwindled.
     The purpose of Gung Fu, Karate, Taekwondo, Aikido, and probably many other martial arts is to awaken to truth and lead a balanced life. This truth is the Oneness of life, the singleness of subject and object. The truth of these martial arts even extends to living in harmony with the Earth and maintaining balance in society. They teach how to lead, how to grow, and how to take command of yourself. For those with martial spirits, they are joyful gems to carry and study throughout life.
      Meditation in martial arts can be incredibly joyful because of the intensity and vigor they create in practice. Not only do you push your mind further than you ever expected, but you push your body as well. The spirit of martial arts is that their is no limitation on what your body can do and what you can do. You can always push the boundary. Through the exercise of perfecting and pushing the body to extraordinary fitness, you learn the subtle nature of life. You gain control of it and use it in new and exciting ways. Meditation in martial arts is a practice of discovery, liberation, dance, and unleashing and mastering power.
     Meditation in martial arts is about unifying the self through the art of combat. Its taking everything that you are and putting it into your training and your fighting. Its about taking everything that you feel, everything that you think, and all of your body and concentrating them all on one point of striking or movement. This one-pointedness is the intention of any kind of meditation. The difference in martial arts is that instead of sitting on the ground with legs crossed you are leaping, spinning and striking in the air.
     What I like about martial arts and meditation in martial arts is the way in which martial arts confronts some of the realities of life that are often ignored. In martial arts you face the violence in you and channel it directly. I think it's important to become conscious of the violence and aggression within us and to learn to use it in positive ways, to incorporate it into our being. I don't think we need to be afraid of violence or get rid of it completely. Life is violent. We're animals. By consciously engaging with it, studying it, and incorporating it into your life, you learn how violence and aggression fit in our society, how they are apart of our social structure and competition. How they don't have to be bad things. Violence and aggression can be controlled and tamed. Proper practice in martial arts does this in a positive way.
      I think violence and aggression lie at the root of our passions and our vitality. I think that by embracing them with conscious intent to do good and be more whole, we can discover strength and authenticity that we haven't known before. We can discover awareness of who and what we actually are. By understanding violence and aggression and integrating them into our life in a wholesome way, they won't lurk in the back ground suppressed and hindering our health and psychology.
     In sports, you learn about your motivations, and how your emotions influence your performance. You learn the same from traditional Asian martial arts. The same and perhaps even to a deeper degree. I think because of the spiritual element of these traditional martial arts, the inner awareness cultivated by the practices is stronger. This inner awareness includes being and becoming conscious of the emotions and how they effect action and the flow of vitality. The forms in Taekwondo, Karate and Gung Fu direct the attention inward, developing self-consciousness and consciousness. True practice of traditional Asian martial arts is a practice of personal and spiritual growth, the development of consciousness of self and world and the way to balance them.
     This is why many of us practice martial arts. They are a deep discipline of awakening consciousness and creating balance in life. Many of are called to train and participate by destiny and our souls, to further and maintain the arts in our lifetimes. I personally wish to bring the spiritual depth of the traditional Asian martial arts to the mma community, to heighten the level of competition and to bring the sport closer to introspection and serving humanity.
     Traditional Asian martial arts (tamas) awaken the self by awakening the energy centers of the body. The traditional forms cannot be practiced correctly without awakening the energy and sense centers. As you progress through the forms and techniques, you awaken and master deeper and deeper senses and energy centers. It is essential that you have an instructor who can adequately perceive this awakening and can give proper instruction according to your degree of insight and ability or, you posses the intuition and skill to teach yourself. If the organization loses sight of the spiritual depth of the tradition, then practitioner's will be allowed to teach before they are ready to properly teach the art. If the living heart of the tradition is lost, the art will degenerate and it will lose it's ability to awaken human beings. If their is not Light or sight or truth, the leadership cannot navigate through the terrain of life and when they misstep, they won't be able to return to sense, but will continue to fade into darkness and decay. The same is true for all arts, traditions, individuals, and societies.
     Meditation in martial arts opens up doors to great physical ability and different and perhaps new modes of consciousness. When you awaken the energy centers and the senses, you can do extraordinary things and your consciousness changes. The reason tamas are good at getting to the extraordinary is because their practices involve more direct and scientific understanding and manipulation of the vital energies and the body than other athletic disciplines. The knowledge and understanding of tamas are apart of multi-millennium old holistic sciences of the East. Understanding and technique that far surpasses Western science and understanding in many ways. Especially when it comes to the understanding of the subtle energies of the body and the world; and the way these energies effect the human anatomy generating health or disease.
     The knowledge of these arts and ancient sciences comes from millennia of holistic scientific inquiry. This accumulated knowledge is the key within the tamas that generates super physical ability; and consciousness/sensory awakening and expansion. The knowledge is transmitted into the forms and techniques by the highly advanced practitioner upon their creation. It is also passed down, generation to generation via  instructor-student relationships.
     One of the modes of consciousness cultivated in tamas is intuition. Intuitive receiving of information and intuitive spontaneous action. It is through this mode of consciousness that much of the learning is transmitted, especially at higher levels of practice. This faculty of consciousness  also governs holistic scientific inquiry. Through intuitive perception we sense the holistic nature of reality and the bodies in reality. We sense the interconnectedness of nature and develop understanding of its bodies based off of this sense. This intuitive objective science has been kept alive over thousands of years in the East and lives in tamas today.
     Embracing and cultivating this intuitive holistic approach is key to success in tamas. It is the key that drives the meditation of tamas. It is the key that drives meditation in general. Intuitive holistic vision unifies the individual under the force of expanding perspective. The intuition that all of the parts are interconnected is itself apart of the process of a being awakening to direct objective perception of reality. The individual is transitioning from believing that the mind, body, spirit, world and other are separate to seeing all of these phenomena as a single seamless body. Intuitive holistic awareness develops as the individual begins to consciously sense the interconnectedness of the components of their life. The power that arises with this awareness gives the individual what many see as extraordinary physical/mental ability. An individual who can sense the interconnectedness of being can draw and develop power from the interconnectedness of their being. An egoic person is always at war with themselves and the world. What if instead of fighting against parts of life and yourself, you were able to unite those parts and combine their powers for your own use. One who senses the interconnectedness of life seeks to unify themselves in higher orders of integration. The more you can integrate yourself, the more power you can draw and concentrate. If you sense the interconnectedness between yourself and the world, your power is unlimited.
     Intuitive holistic awareness is inherently an awareness that draws power from the singleness or wholeness of life. The inkling that you are interconnected with the world is sense and power drawn from the indescribable wholeness of life. The greater the sense you have of the interconnectedness and wholeness of life, the more you can draw power from the infinite. This tends to heighten your natural abilities and talents so long as the opening to greater power and being is manageable. Too much power can overwhelm the body and the senses, crippling abilities. If you can manage it wisely, you can gain powers that seem super human to general society: going further than what many believe is possible.
     The intuitive, holistic, and objective vision and study of life leads one to more direct perception of the workings of the body. You develop awareness of the interconnected subtle energy system of the body and how to manipulate it. You can more precisely perceive what your strengths and weaknesses are; and more efficiently work to generate health and functioning of the system. Tamas contain knowledge of how to turn on energy centers in the body that are normally dormant: driving ability and health even further.
    The realm of possibility in human endeavor is limited to our understanding of ourselves and of our world. It is limited to what we think is possible and what we know how to do. The Western mind thinks itself to be at the pinnacle of human awareness and ability; and often doesn't consider that many ancient cultures have deeper and greater understanding of the systems we inhabit; and can consequently generate much greater health and ability. Traditional Asian martial arts are apart of the wisdom and understanding of the ancient intuitive, holistic, and scientific thought of the East: a way of thinking and acting potentially older than 10,000 years. A way of thought developed from the interplay of Yogic wisdom; Buddism; Daoism; ideas and systems of Yin, Yang and Qi; and other rich traditions.
     As we become more and more globalized we must be mindful of how our traditions and societies change. We must maintain the integrity of traditions that uphold the integrity of our societies. We must not abandon the wisdom and understanding we have accumulated over the ages in the fires of consumerism, materialism, and thoughtlessness that ravage our ways of life: our connections to our senses. We must adapt in ways that preserve tradition, expand our ability to include others, and protect the sanctity of life. We must use our traditions as stepping stones into the future of high technology, unified science, a unified humanity, and direct perception of truth: the massive awakening of individuals and their occult energy centers to God consciousness.
     Tamas come from a lineage of wisdom traditions. Although they are flawed like any other traditions, their merit deserves close attention: especially as they spread throughout the world; and are threatened by forces that are rapidly destroying tradition and culture. We must preserve the elements of life that bind us together; we must preserve the elements of life that lead us towards deeper and better understanding of the world around us; we must preserve what is meditative and close to our hearts. I think it is important that we study tamas and other martial arts, assessing their validity and worth, because it is important to maintain and further a spirit of uniting human kind in goodness and precise understanding. The spirit of tamas is holistic and intuitive. It is meditative. It is this quality in martial arts that makes them wonderful, enchanting and worth pursuing if your seeking a discipline that will help you bring balance and awareness to your life.