Zen
No Time to Train? Practice Mentally Evolving Martial Artists practice daily. No. It doesn’t mean dragging ourselves out of bed at dawn as some do in the romanticized Asian tradition. It doesn’t even mean working out every day. In fact our hectic lifestyle and our “to do lists” crammed with career, school, personal and family [...]
Fighting? Bodhidharma? What does kicking ass have to do with sitting on your ass? Today martial artists acknowledge Bruce Lee as the force for popularizing the art of kicking ass rooted in China’s Shaolin Temple, source of Far East fighting arts. Yet the original force behind the Shaolin legacy is Bodhidharma. The blue eyed, bearded [...]
There are life lessons everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places. For the Evolving Martial Artist, fighting is a metaphor for life. Engaging a daunting adversary who hits and inflicts pain is like entering the every day battles of life. Hell, it hurts. Tough lessons are often employed by Shaolin kung fu masters to [...]
One of our evolving martial artists, Arnuld, commented in response to our Bruce Lee Mythology post. He asked if Bruce Lee invented the ideas of having no style and formless technique. Here are some thoughts: Lee’s Influence Bruce Lee was influential in modernizing traditional martial arts through his Jeet Kune Do philosophy. He was innovative, [...]
Zen found its way into the Japanese culture by way of the Shaolin monks, who learned Zen (Chan in Chinese) and Kung Fu from Bodhidharma. In Zen Buddhism there are little glimpses of enlightenment (called kensho) that come to us from the seemingly mundane world. You’ve probably heard it expressed as a “zen moment” — [...]
