The Strong Is Weak Because They Are Strong

This could be a part of Zen Discussion. For those who are not familiar with Zen Discussion, it is a discussion used among Zen Buddhism priests. Their purpose of this discussion is to approach the truth of the universe. Their sentences seem to be contradictory. They contain profound meanings when one thought through it. Pay attention to the title of this article as an example. In the logical way it does not make sense. Instead, it would make more sense if it were "Even the strong is weak in their weak points." It will be logically correct if it is "The strong is not strong because they are strong".

It is not, however, typographical error writing this sentence this way. It says, "The strong is Weak because they are strong." Let us examine this proposition taking an example of martial arts fighting involving existing 2 masters historically.

It is a story on 2 martial arts masters. They were masters of swords art. One is Kojiro Sasaki. Kojiro's skill was speed. When he swung his sword, no enemy could track his sword. He used long sword taking advantage of his speed. He could cut flying sparrow twice using his long sword, people said. The other one's name was Musashi. He was powerful and intelligent. He always studied his opponent before he fought. All swordsmen need both hands to handle one sword, which is heavy. Musashi could use one hand to manage one sword, as others use both hands. Later he invented 2 swords technique.

They decided to fight. People talked about the fight. People thought that Musashi would not have been able to win against the speed of Kojiro. Interesting was that Musashi thought so, too. Musashi studied the method how to win Kojiro's speed. Musashi prepared long wooden sword. Their fight was in seashore. When they met to fight, Musashi positioned himself having sun behind him and kept top of hand-made wooden sword inside of seawater, so that Kojiro could not realize the length of his wooden sword. Kojiro was fast. Musashi's wooden sword, however, could reach Kojiro from the position beyond Kojiro's sword's reach. Musashi won the fight.

Kojiro lost because his opponent Musashi studied his strength. He lost because of his strength. Musashi could win because he accepted his weakness and invented a strategy to overcome his weakness. The strong lost because he was strong. The weak won because of his weakness. Let us keep in mind that one can lose because he is strong. This happens often in the market place. The majority of reasons why top share company loses ground to the followers are not because they have weaknesses, but because they do not consider and exercise next step because they are strong in the market.




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Nature of Fear - 3 Suggestions to Control Your Fear

"Fear" is the backside of "Anger". Some say fear creates anger. People show anger to hide their fear. In this sense, you need to control your fear to control your anger. Fear is the most complicated, most profound, and very powerful emotion. The way we all feel about "Fear" is related to our childhood experience or education. In most cultures including mine, Japanese, being fearful is almost sin. All parents do not like their children to be fearful. So parents educate their children not to be fearful. Be brave. Do not cry. Do not be afraid.

So, fear is the most control intended emotion. By age 10 or 11, most of us learn how not to show our fear even we feel it. Many feel insulted if somebody says you are afraid. Ask your kid if he is afraid, he will answer you, "No" with angry face asking back why you. But the reality of life is there is no one who does not feel fear. These mixed and complicated experience makes fear to be a special emotion for all of us. It may be simpler if one can freely and openly show their fear. Think we do not have to hide our fear. We do not have to hide it with anger or any other emotion.

There are many kind of fear in our lives and society. But despite of its complexity, fear can be categorized into just following 2 kinds:
1. Fear that you lose what you possess.
2. Fear that you do not get what you badly want.

What is Nature of Fear? As we discussed, we were all born with fear. Not just human beings, but any animal is born with fear. The fear is one of built-in mechanism of any creature on the planet earth. Fear is one of the safety mechanism prepared for avoiding dangers in living. So, everybody feels fear. The person called bravest in the world feels fear as you and I do. Knowing this is one of important factor to deal with your fear. Nobody is fearless even they are called so.

Then, how and when do we feel fear? When we are sick, we feel fear. You do not have to be seriously ill to feel fear. Even you have hung-over from previous night drinking triggers your fear. You feel fear when you face something, which you cannot control. For example you do not receive email reply from your lover. You heard that your colleagues in your company lost his job. You may be the next. CNN said stock market crashed, and so on.

Have you had an experience, maybe when you were a young boy or girl, walking in the school after everybody left at night? Or going home late and you tried to make a short cut walking through a park with lots of trees like a forest. You might have noticed that how different they were, when you walk through vacant school or park at night by yourself. You must have been frightened by your own shadow and sound of trees by wind. Once you started to feel fear, you could not stop it, could you?

It appears that fear has amplifying effect as above, when you started to feel fear, it just could not be stopped, it amplifies and becomes bigger and bigger. When your baby is sick, you hope it would not be serious and it is just a cold and simple fever. Next day, the fever does not go down. You started to worry. It might be a serious disease. It might be pneumonia. He coughed a lot last night. It must be pneumonia. Your anxiety would be continued to be bigger until you decided to take him to a hospital and doctor told you that it is simple cold and he would be okay in a few days.

I have heard that 99% of your anxiety, fear, worry will be solved as a matter of time. Please take a moment trying to remember what you were feeling fear this time last year. There must have been something, which you worried. Most cases, you would not be able to even remember what those were.

As mentioned above, there are 3 things you can try to control your fear:
1. You can accept you feel fear. Remember everybody feel fear. There is nothing to be shameful to be afraid.
2. You can analyze why you feel fear. Is it not amplified fear without cause or reason?
3. You can think about near future, maybe next week or next month. Do you think you would be fearful next week in the same way as you are today?

It is always help to do what you can do to get rid of your fear and focus on actions not emotions.




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What is Zen Discussion?

Zen is famous for meditation. At the same time, Zen is not just meditation. Zen is a process and training for getting absolute status of mind, unchangeable and peaceful. One of the training methods, in addition to meditation, is "Discussion".

Here is one example. A Zen priest asked his teacher how many times and how long he should meditate to reach the ultimate-mind status of peacefulness. The teacher asked back to the priest why he meditated. The priest answered that he wanted to reach ultimate status of mind. Suddenly the teacher brought a roof tile and started to grind with a cloth. The student priest asked what teacher was doing. The teacher answered. "I am grinding the roof tile to make a mirror." The student priest frowned and said. "Teacher, you cannot make mirror out of roof tile." The teacher stood up and told the student. "What you are asking is same as asking how long you should grind a roof tile to make a mirror from it."

"A roof tile can never be a mirror however long or however many times you grind it." This is an intriguing statement. The teacher is saying that meditation does not help to achieve ultimate-mind status. Then why do they meditate? There are no right answers for Zen questions. My interpretation is that instead of thinking about how long or how many times of meditation, you should consider changing yourself to be mirror material from a roof tile. The meditation is just help, not a way to reach it. What is more significant is you find mirror material to grind to be the mirror. Do not we sometimes make a mistake on which is more substantial, find the mirror material or grinding a junk?

The story continued. "The teacher asked the student priest "When your ox carriage stopped which you whip, the cow or carriage?" Many would answer "ox." More important is to find why the carriage stopped. Carriage wheel might have stuck. Nothing might be wrong with ox. In this case, answer would be, "Check both before whip."

There are many more stories of Zen discussion on ultimate status of mind, here is the background to explain the world of Zen discussion to achieve ultimate state of mind.

First of all, what is "Ultimate Status of Mind" and why we need it? Watching TV News Programs, we usually come across some miraculous happening. Survived in a major earthquake, saved a life almost drown to death, and so on. When people ask how they survived, and what they thought, they say, "My mind was all blank and I do not remember anything I was just thinking to survive."

This status of mind is called "Beyond Oneself" or "Nothing Oneself". This is the moment people are capable of doing something, something extraordinary, beyond consideration. In martial arts, this status of mind is called "Unchangeable Status of Mind". If one can create this status of mind consciously, it will be powerful.

You know that, in sports games, the skilled, or trained does not necessarily win against less experienced. I think more trained mind can defeat more skillful and stronger. That is why mental training is more powerful than skill training, although skill training can increase confidence and improve mind status. Zen is extraordinarily suitable for this training.




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Touch the Spirit of Zen

Zen became one of main streams of Buddhism in China in 6th century. The meditation sitting form both legs crossed is famous worldwide. But Zen in China did not invent this meditation style of sitting. It was there since Yoga in India started about 3000 years age. Chinese priest, Daruma, who started Zen, used this meditation form in 6th century. He was against King over tax issue and put in the jail. He kept himself sitting for 9 years in jail and lost both arms and legs, but he gained ultimate status of mind and opened his Buddhism, Zen.

Zen teaches that anybody can reach to ultimate status of mind if one trains himself. Kung Fu origin can be found in Zen, too. While Kun Fu is dynamic form, Zen is static. Zen style meditation started from Buddhism to save people and save oneself. Because it asks people train themselves, this was well adopted by Samurai worriers in Japan in 15th - 17th century. It is under Zen philosophy Samurai believed that his life or death could have same meaning.

Although Zen was well adopted and known by people all over the world by its powerful meditation practices, there is another part of Zen, which is not well known. It is brain training.

The most mysterious but interesting statement in Zen brain training is "Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything." There can be millions of interpretation on this statement. And it was designed that way. Let us think about Roman Empire, Mongolian Kingdom, The Third Reich, Japanese Pacific Empire and so forth. Historically, they were there prosperous and strong. They looked like imperishable. But, all of them are gone. Gone as if they did not exist from the very beginning. Still it does not mean all human society was gone. It is still there and benefiting at the same time keep giving huge influence to people. In this sense, this statement is quite correct when we take a look at history from time length.

Another one is "The strong is not strong because of his strength, but because of his weakness. The strong will not lose because of his weakness, but because of his strength." Here is an example. There was very strong clan in 15th century Japan, the time of medieval age. The name is "Takeda". The head of the clan, Shingen Takeda was eminent strategist. One of the early adopter of "Guns" brought into Japan for the first time. He trained his gunmen and formed gun unit. His army was called strongest in Japan that time.

After the death of Shingen Takeda, his son, Katsuyori, inherited his army. His army was supposed to be as strong as his fathers. He fought against Nobunaga Oda. Although Katsuyori was so confident that his army with gun unit can defeat Oda. But, Nobunaga Oda studied everything about his gun army unit of Takeda and imported newer guns from Europe to defeat Takeda. If Katsuyori's army were not strong in gun power, Oda would not have been aware of it, and could not study about it. This example is typical on "The strong lost due to its strength." Do not you think Takeda clan lost not because of their weakness, but because of its strength?





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