The Light of the Lunatic Yogi’s Eyeballs

The Yogi’s Eternal Light

I wrote a little fable to celebrate the release of Black Belt Yoga. Here it is, and if you like it, visit Yogata.org and look at the blogs for other stories. 

Once upon a time there was a Yogi. Now this Yogi was a bit of a fanatic. On one hand, this was good, as it drove him to become superior in technique and advanced as a spiritual being. On the other hand,it wasn’t so good, as it drove him to do things that were, shall we say…ill-advised?

One day he was sitting in a cave meditating. The cave was bare, nothing but a few cavemen on the side wall sticking spears in an animal that was not around much anymore.  And, of course, his rug.

Don’t be afraid to be yourself!

His original prayer rug that he had bought a couple of hundred years previous, when he was but a child of 80 or 90. Truth, it was the last, expensive purchase he had ever made.

To gird his loins he depended upon the courtesy of passing pilgrims to toss him a hankie, or be offended by his omnipotent but dangling state.

So he sat in the cave, buttocks immune to feeling by virtue of two hundred years of resting them on his threadbare rug, conversing with whatever spirits happened to stumble upon his cave.

And, not to embellish this situation, but his cave was hidden deep in woods that had overgrown the attempt of any machete anywhere.

So he was sitting there, open to the universe, and an idea suddenly came upon him.

What if he opened his eyes, actually stopped his current meditation (only ten years along, day and night, no holidays, no time off for good behavior) and opened his eyes, and stared holes into the cave wall.

After all, he hadn’t been outside for a number of years, depending upon a trickle of drops of water that dampened the cave wall opposite the cavemen, and the fall of seasonal berries from a bush standing sentry just outside the mouth of his cave, and…why not?

Call it a picture window, call it a telescope to the infinite (or microscope, or whatever), he would actually be able to see outside without moving, and thus become that much more independent of the outer world. Now that was a great idea if ever there was one!

So our overly faithful Yogi opened his eyes and fixed his gaze upon the far wall.

In the darkness of the earth, he stared. His inner light bored outward, and the rocks began to tremble under his assault.

Weeks passed, then months. He grew ever more fierce in the emitting of his eternal light source, and the rocks trembled ever more.

Years passed, and one day, a single bit of pebble, not much more than a mote, cracked under the pressure of his eternal gaze. It…wafted into nothingness, was transferred into the infinite, ceased to be as hard universe, and came to be the soft nothingness of the eternal spirit that permeates and has construction of this universe.

More years passed, and more motes of rock shivered and shimmied…and then ceased to exist as if from their very imagining.

Berries trickled across the floor occasionally, and our fanatical Yogi lessened his staring meditation only long enough to scoop the errant berries into his mouth. To drink, he merrily moistened his lips and sucked the moisture off them.

More years, more hard staring, more eternal light, and, in the end, after many decades, the last bit of rock wafted into non-existence, and light slammed into the cave.

After so many years of meditating, after so many years in the darkness, the touch of light was a physical assault unimaginable.

The harsh light of the sun burned through our Yogi’s eyes, scorched the retina, blasted back up the nerves, atom bombed the brain, and…the Yogi was burned from this plane of existence.

Scorched into nothingness.

Withered.

No more.

The spirit, freed from the grasp of shrinking but still clinging flesh, bounced around the cave for a while, then drifted into rock, was caught in mountain for a couple of millennium, and, finally, burst onto the surface of planet earth, found a baby body, and was born.

If you are ever in an overgrown jungle, somewhere on the spiritual side of the world, hidden from the staunch temples that stand for a few thousand years and then degrade unto dust, or are simply made into shopping malls If you happen upon a berry bush that is weak and fragile, its berries no longer being offered for human consumption and that berry bush no longer having reason for existence. If you look behind that berry bush you will see a hole…not much more than a rabbit tunnel…and if you crawl into that hole and wiggle your way down a few yards, around a turn and down a few more yards, over the corpse of berries that have rolled there over the years, you will come to a cave.

If you are in that situation and circumstance, look around, for on the left wall you will see, about three feet above the floor of the cave, the exact height the eyes of an ancient and meditating yogi would be, two holes.

Look into these holes, search for sunlight, and hope that the outer earth hasn’t shifted and covered this one yogi’s testament to the fragility of the universe.

If you like this little tale, pop on over to http://yogata.org. There are a few more yoga fables listed in the blog.

Making use of Martial Arts Meditation to Rule Everybody!

Martial Arts Meditation!

I had been studying Karate for a while, and I was considering martial arts meditation. I had read of esoteric meditation concepts in such arts as Shaolin Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan, and it definitely did seem like something I desired to do. Heck, one book I reviewed pointed out that if a guy might focus on merely one thing for as little as 3 minutes he could rule the planet!

3 minutes? Heck, that was absolutely nothing!

And if I did it I would certainly be the most effective martial artist in the planet! I could easily knock over walls, be a wafting, disembodied intelligence. No wall could control me! No changing booth could be immune from my kung fu powers!

At the time I was working in a plastics factory in San Jose. Being rather burnt out with making heat shrinkable tubes, I made a decision that the day had actually come when I would certainly understand martial arts concentration and command the planet.

Lunchtime, and I walked out to the parking lot and into the orchard next door. I chose a round stone for my one thing, and sat down on the curb. My thoughts filled with plans for exactly what I would probably do when I had actually vanquished the globe, I consumed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and psychologically equipped myself.

Done with sandwich, I positioned the round stone on the ground and sat cross-legged just before it. I could not do a zazen sitting posture, or a yoga lotus asana, or anything like that, so I figured sitting Indian fashion might probably need to do it.

I gave myself a shake, lowered my gaze, and concentrated on the stone.

It was round. Probably I touched on that, however I did observe that it was round. And the colour dirt. Well, of course, I had actually gotten it from an orchard and … I psychologically shook myself and required myself to cease thinking. I needed to concentrate, be a laser, command the planet. My eyes stared at the rock.

A short time passed. I speculated just how I was expected to realize when 3 seconds passed. It sure was a very long time. I tossed that thought out of the way and stared at the stone once more.

After a while, I was sure 2 minutes had actually passed. I proceeded, awaiting the heavens to open, anticipating God to bow down, awaiting the cosmos to open and enjoy me as their rightful ruler.

And, 3 minutes … at least I think it was 3 minutes … I was bored. Absolutely nothing was occurring.

I picked up the rock, tossed it over my shoulder and back into the orchard and … I all of a sudden recognized something. The rock had not been dull … I was boring. The rock was merely sitting there, doing nothing, it was me that had actually made it, and reality, and life … boring.

I stood then, and life was never ever the same after that. I was never ever bored ever again. I occasionally ponder where that round stone is. Heck, if I could possibly discover it I might be up for one more 3 minutes of martial arts meditation … the things I could quite possibly discover!

She Kicked Them in the Nuts and Thought It was Funny!

Kicked in the Nuts Once Too Often!

Wehad a gal once, in this karate class I was in, and she liked to kick guys in the nuts. Kicked them hard.

Now, this was supposed to be freestyle practice, and you were supposed to have good control. This one gal, however, she kept dropping guys to the mat by the simple technique of a swift kick to the balls.

We were all relative beginners, and we weren’t polished to the point of being able to stop her favorite technique. So, unable to stop her fun, we would struggle up, past faced and near puking, bow, and continue.

And she would shrug and say here technique was just an accident.

But these weren’t accident, and there was a look on her face that showed she was hiding deep pleasure.

What it was with this girl I don’t know. Maybe she ended up in an S & M house somewhere. But, when karma comes…

There was an advanced belt watching our class. His name was Jim. And he watched this gal drop guy after guy, and he suddenly stepped onto the mat, and bowed himself into our game. I knew, from the careful way he smiled and set himself up, that something was about to happen.

When it came time for Jim to fight this gal, he bowed, and the match began. She angled slightly to the side, set her self up for her favorite kick to the balls, and then she launched it.

Jimmy slapped her foot to the side and punched her in the gut. Punched her hard.

A look of surprise crossed her face, and pain, and she dropped to her knees.

We all watched in silence, and it was the only time I have ever seen anybody puke on a dojo mat. I have seen blood. Even saw some clown spit once. But puke? I had never seen that.

She puked. And, insult upon injury, after he had apologized for the ‘accident,’ Jim asked her to clean it up.

And she did.

And, you know, she suddenly learned a whole lot of control. Still had her famous kick to the nuts, and got lots of points, but she had learned something about herself…there were no more accidents.

And the rest of us? We had been bred not to hit a girl. Jim, however, being further along in the arts, knew that the true art didn’t differentiate between male and female.

This has been a story about a kick to the nuts.

The Karate Black Belt and What Happens in the First Moments of a Fight

A Karate Black Belt Fights Back Now!

For a Karate Black Belt, or a Kung Fu Black Belt or some other type of martial artist, the first moments of an attempted mugging are not overwhelming. They don’t experience the shortness of breath, the debilitating fear, or the desire to flee. Instead, the opposite occurs.

There are those that don't...and there are those that do!

The karate trained mind gets calmer and more focused, decisions are quick and clear, and it is quickly the gangster that is in trouble. This is because the Karate black belt has trained himself to act this way. Fight or flight are meaningless, and the Karate expert just takes it in stride and goes to work.

In a karate class, or any martial arts training hall, you learn how to look at the incoming fist, really look at it. Most people don’t want to face it, so they close their eyes, shrink back, and they are in a fantasy of denial. Gee, I wish that wasn’t happening to me…WHAM!

But to learn anything a person has to look at it, and in a martial arts class the student is forced to look at it so much that something strange happens. He actually ENJOYS looking at the fist coming towards his face. The mugger thinks he’s got a victim, but, instead, he’s got a rhino by the horn, and that rhino is just starting to focus on him!

Looking at a hard punch coming towards the face is just the first step in the martial arts training procedure. Once the initial fear is overcome, and the student is able to watch a hard fist coming towards him without experiencing the fear, he learns how to judge that fist. He becomes able to make decisions right in the middle of a fight.

This is the reason that there are so many techniques to memorize in most martial arts. Kenpo has some 500 techniques, and karate and Taekwondo have 20 to 50 fighting patterns (forms, or kata) to memorize. Of course, this unfortunately lengthens the amount of time necessary to get a person to black belt, but that is easily surmounted.

To make training quicker one needs to learn how to deal with the martial arts in a more conceptual manner. Not the memorizing of techniques, but the understanding of the various but simple concepts behind a karate punch, a taekwondo kick, or a kung fu drill. Once the concept is understood, training becomes incredibly fast.

The problem with concepts is not understanding them, but isolating them. The martial arts have become so inbred, so twisted together, that it is near impossible to separate and make understandable these simple concepts. Thus, the karate black belt, or the kung fu expert, or other martial artists, often take too long in their training.

The only solution to this too lengthy time in training is in Matrix Martial Arts. Matrixing is a logic that simplifies the various arts, and makes them ten times easier to learn. Thus, to become a karate black belt, or a Kung Fu black belt, or an expert in any field of martial arts is now much quicker.