Martial arts. This is why I find the spiritual (think more like “in the spirit of friendship” type spirit, or like “a way to be in life”) aspect of martial arts so interesting and fertile for learning. Since if you know how much you can lose to others even in a playfight situation, you can’t help but be humbled by it, often.
Meditation is great and all - and really challenging, often harrowing, not for the faint of heart. Vipassana… yikes! But why I like martial arts more is because when you connect with awareness of your body and someone else’s body in realtime… like a body physics experiment from the inside of a meditative consciousness… the bullshit detector is right in your face (your training partner!) and you’re not off away floating unchallenged somewhere in premature “enlightenment” land, because you can’t afford to be, you will get hit in the face!
I suck in a fight - everyone ultimately sucks in a fight, that’s my takeaway from 25+ years. Fighting is not any of us at our highest levels of humanity. Even if you “win” it doesn’t say anything about next time. I train to be unfightable, like, “actually we’re not going to fight, thank you”. I can and will enforce my refusal to participate in violence - if you make me fight you, I’ve already lost. That’s my meditation all day every day.
There is no enlightenment though, just more learning every moment! Nobody is enlightened, haha, those people are kidding themselves! But we can all have lots of little aha moments, opportunities to be less of an idiot.
So just try treat people kindly and find ways to stick up for humanity, without becoming a narcissistic fascist egoist who believes their own bullshit. That’s it.
We are fuckin nothing, less than nothing, not even temporary nothing, and this experience is everything, we are kind of everything there is, just this now… it can’t really be explained and it’s unimportant anyway… so it’s best to enjoy it, laugh at it, and allow others to do the same as long as they’re harming nobody.
That’s my way anyway… through the body, direct experience, and the medium of playful conflict.
I don’t talk about it online very much these days because the modern internet doesn’t give much of a shit about long-form discussions. Lemmy fills me with a little more optimism.
Thanks for reading my adhd ramble of the evening, if you’re still here!
Martial arts. This is why I find the spiritual (think more like “in the spirit of friendship” type spirit, or like “a way to be in life”) aspect of martial arts so interesting and fertile for learning. Since if you know how much you can lose to others even in a playfight situation, you can’t help but be humbled by it, often.
Meditation is great and all - and really challenging, often harrowing, not for the faint of heart. Vipassana… yikes! But why I like martial arts more is because when you connect with awareness of your body and someone else’s body in realtime… like a body physics experiment from the inside of a meditative consciousness… the bullshit detector is right in your face (your training partner!) and you’re not off away floating unchallenged somewhere in premature “enlightenment” land, because you can’t afford to be, you will get hit in the face!
I suck in a fight - everyone ultimately sucks in a fight, that’s my takeaway from 25+ years. Fighting is not any of us at our highest levels of humanity. Even if you “win” it doesn’t say anything about next time. I train to be unfightable, like, “actually we’re not going to fight, thank you”. I can and will enforce my refusal to participate in violence - if you make me fight you, I’ve already lost. That’s my meditation all day every day.
There is no enlightenment though, just more learning every moment! Nobody is enlightened, haha, those people are kidding themselves! But we can all have lots of little aha moments, opportunities to be less of an idiot.
So just try treat people kindly and find ways to stick up for humanity, without becoming a narcissistic fascist egoist who believes their own bullshit. That’s it.
We are fuckin nothing, less than nothing, not even temporary nothing, and this experience is everything, we are kind of everything there is, just this now… it can’t really be explained and it’s unimportant anyway… so it’s best to enjoy it, laugh at it, and allow others to do the same as long as they’re harming nobody.
That’s my way anyway… through the body, direct experience, and the medium of playful conflict.
I don’t talk about it online very much these days because the modern internet doesn’t give much of a shit about long-form discussions. Lemmy fills me with a little more optimism.
Thanks for reading my adhd ramble of the evening, if you’re still here!