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After a stay at home with my bro Tom and my mom (and a visit by Natasha) where I trained at Center City Aikido (no Donovan around - he was in chile and argentina teaching a seminar... but his senior students Pete, Fred and teacher Dana pushed me and were kind in training!), I'm off to NYC. Arrived around 1 and spent most of the afternoon in NYC at the Colombia dental clinic to get a wisdom tooth checked out. I've a follow-up appt next Monday.

Then it was class time. From there I showed up late for Yamada sensei's class. Whoops - couldn't be helped, I suppose. Took his class, then Harvey Konigsburg's class (got to take a little ukemi for him - w00t), then another beginner's class. Good times. Left shoulder's a bit sore from kayaking with my brother, but otherwise...good stuff.

Spent an hour post class walking around the dojo's neighborhood and landmarking significant stores. I've been here... maybe two months at this point total (in short spurts, usually a week or two over Dec and summer), but I've never really made a concerted effort to figure how I'd best like to eat, shop and live while here. Tonight I had sushi... and learned some of what to order and what NOT to order - like blowing $2 on a single piece of inari. Here I was, thinking I'd be spending $2 on a few inari pieces, but no luck.

Another perk of being vegetarian showed up tonight: there's often fewer choices. I LOVE fewer choices in restaurants and menus. Let's me get a system down faster. I suppose that reminds me of precepts in zen, in a way, in that you sort of "opt out" of some really difficult to balance stuff - like intoxicants, killing, whatever. Some folks maybe HAVE to do those things...maybe, I dunno...but balancing them without danger to self or others seems tricky. I like following them as best I can. Even the ones I do take challenging positions on (like being in open relationships, etc.) seem tricky enough without worrying about the other 8 or 9. Ultimately, though, I think I don't feel it's particularly useful for myself to be considering which I do or don't follow in spirit... but more find value in investigating their spirit. I guess I'm just saying that looking for the spirit in "rules" like that, while simplifying, let's you make some headway. Walking a middle way versus walking an untrammeled field, I suppose. For me, having an "external" marker like a precept or rule demonstrates the ultimately internal nature of those rules - the "road" is really created, conditionally, by my interpretation of it - so I end up just walking on myself, wondering where my middle is. Adherence to an external, for me, is really about adhering to whatever it is that is natural for me...with all its investigations and whatnot.

I still like being vegetarian though. And, for instance, not being interesting in shopping for new clothes - that meant I only marked a select FEW "important spots" for me - like mostly vegetarian friendly restaurants, the UPS, and the Rubin museum of Buddhist Art - a personal fav spot for me. Good times!

Now a touch of consulting work, a lil' GTD reviewin', and night time before the 6am wake up call and cleaning! Tomorrow: 5 classes, eating, a to-do or two and connecting with friends. Awesome.

peace,mike

Labels: aikido

Happy new year, everyone!

It's 7:30 and I've had a wonderful morning so far - an exciting way to start the new year for me. I woke up from a dream/nightmare about worries I have with MLK day events at NCSSM I'm helping to plan - wonderful! Very exciting to me to start my year off with worries about diversity education being done well. Then I did some zazen and did one of the morning chants I really enjoy:
Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to awaken with them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha's Way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

Did a bit of brainstorming on MLK to get those worries out of my head into actionables... something I might not have been able to as clearly do last year. I've made progress in being "cleaner" with my GTD implementation, which is really progress toward, to me, directly facing myself and my worries, interests, capabilities, etc. Also, got up to get my two hakamas and Sarah's hakama out of the washer for hanging. We wash them about once a year (kinda like belts - I was told not to wash mine because of damage to certain parts), and they must be hung dry - so got to hanging them in my room with the space heater on high.

Social justice, GTD, Aikido, Zen all on my mind before 7:30 in the new year. Who knows what this year will bring, but a very pleasant start!

Also - Crapzola, my comments settings were all askew! Til now, only folks with blogger accounts could comment. LAME. Fixed that yesterday, so folks can comment away on my ramblings. :-)

peace & justice in the new year! Ring it in with all you've got!

mike

Labels: aikido, dreams, GTD, social justice, zen

...and here's those six stain similes for proper listening, also from The Nectar of Manjurshri's Speech.  Don't do these. :-)

It is said in the Vyakhyayukti:
To be puffed up with pride, to have no faith,
To have no yearning interest,
Outwardly distracted, inwardly withdrawn,
To listen with despondency: These are all impurities.

The commentary also says:

This refers respective to the pride of thinking oneself superior to the teacher and to one's spiritual companions.  It refers to a lack of confidence in the Dharma, the teacher, and one's fellow disciples.  It refers also to an absence of keen interest and endeavor in the Dharma, and indicates distraction when the mind runs after the outer objects of the senses and is not concentrated, or when it sinks into a state of dullness and torpor.  It refers too to the dismay one might feel at the length of the teaching session, or at the discomforts of hunger or thirst, or of heat or cold, on account of which one does not want to listen or else listens with displeasure.  [...] one must control one's behavior, have an attitude of utmost respect, and listen to the teachings in the proper manner.

Good "ideas" like these, to me, are only useful when they can be appropriately applied.  Even outside of Buddhism, specifically in Aikido or GTD or even social justice motivation, it seems these could be used as checklists for one's perspective.  So, in GTD, one might ask:

• Is my thinking I'm awesome at GTD keeping me from learning?
• Am I unwilling to trust that GTD has any merit whatsoever? (recognizing that some faith can only be realized by familiarity, meaning you've gotta do SOMETHING to get the flavor of it)
  
• Do I think that being organized isn't that important? (i.e. not recognizing the strain on other important parts of life, however subtle yet insidious)
• Am I tooling around with the GTD implementation specifics, like fancy handhelds or other external manifestations of a system, and not really practicing?
• Am I navel-gazing, thinking about the perfect GTD system and how I'll implement it...someday?
• Am I wallowing in how hard implementation will be, how long it'll take, how much money/time/resources, without applying GTD to This Right Here?  Am I stuck on the overwhelmingness of the big picture than I can't see managable chunks of projects and completable next actions?

Seems these stains have lots of applications!  Can you see the aikido or community change making parallels?

Labels: aikido, GTD, listening, social justice

Sometimes I enjoy a reminder of what it takes to really listen to a teacher. As both a teacher and (moreso) a student in martial arts, and a student at UNC's MSW program, I enjoyed something I found (for the second or third time!) on listening and wanted to share.

So today I took some time to read a new book - commentary on one of my favorite, if not my favorite Buddhist teaching: Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara - The path of the Bodhisattva - available online or in paper format in my current favorite translation. I've read it often, maybe about 50 times through at this point, and I enjoy commentaries on it. For those not familiar with that term, it's pretty common in Buddhism for sutras or teachings to be commented on and have those commentaries get famous in their own right. So, back to what I'm reading: the Nectar of Manjushri's Speech: A Detailed Commentary on Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva.

In the introduction to the commentary, the author reviews a few Buddhist reminders about listening. First, the three defects of a vessel:

Concerning the three defects of a vessel, it is said:

• Inattentive, you are like a vessel overturned.
• Forgetful, you are like a ruptured vessel.
• Stained by the afflictions, you are like a poisoned vessel.

So: don't do those! :-) In Aikido, that seems to parallel as well. I notice these as a student and teacher, but prefer to share my experience embodiing the listening "whoopsies" myself.

While sitting in seiza listening to Steve Sensei or another teacher, if I find myself with a wandering mind on what I'm going to do after class, or some situation from my "outside" life, that's me as the vessel overturned. If I'm watching, but not really taking in what he's saying and then miss basics like footwork or handwork clearly off, I'm like a ruptured vessel. If I'm of a "peace ninja" type mind, thinking how Awesome I'm going to be when I get up and do that technique myself, I'm like a poisoned vessel (maybe it's got mold in it or something, I don't know). So the antidotes, from aikido, seem to be:

• To deeply and ravenously search out the energetic relationship being demonstrated. What is sensei's core doing? How is his spine moving, what are his internal movements? I sometimes lean forward and try to drink in the situation. That keeps me from feeling as "overturned"
• To ensure that I'm also looking at the basics. If all else fails, "forward foot goes back, then step" or whatever. If I can't even lock down on the rough hand and foot movements, how will I hunt down the internal movement that the structure enables?
• To watch humbly, mindful of the non-competitive spirit of aikido. I am not in class to become a dangerous martial artist, a dangerous man. I am there to clean up my spirit and not roughly pull someone all over the place. To me, it should feel like guiding their energy around, making sense of the uke/nage relationship.

So, food for thought!

I'll follow this up eventually with the six stains - another simile for bad listeners!

Labels: aikido, Buddhism, listening

Duke Classes start up soon, and I?ll be teaching martial arts there in their PhyEd department (been there maybe 8 years now ? holy moley!). I?ve only been teaching aikido on and off as an assistant instructor for a few years now? But there?s something insidious about Aikido, and martial arts practice in general, that I?ve been watching for some time in myself and others. It?s the peace ninja.

Some background. So I started serious (4-7 times a week) martial arts practice when I was around 8 or 9. This was the 80s, so I?m sure I had ninja turtle aspirations at the time. But I don?t remember being particularly motivated by that idea during practice ? I really valued my martial arts instructor, Master Ron Huntley, and thrived on the ethical questions we talked about in class. Training was meditative and therapeutic, and great for when home life, and less so school life, was trying. I think I wandered into my previous martial art, Tang Soo Do, just because my mother signed my brother and I up and I was engaged in the practice.

But I came to Aikido, dangerously, through ideas, not practice, and that makes a difference. I?d been Korean punching/kicking styles at Duke for a few years, and continuing reading Buddhism and martial arts texts for any clues to ?the big secret of the universe? that I felt I was studying with all the spare time I had?when I wasn?t watching save-the-world type martial arts movies. That?s when I came across The Art of Peace by Aikido?s founder. I was sure that whoever had written that book had the answer to the big secret.

Now this is played up some, but not much. After reading and reading that book a hundred times or so, I finally aligned my life for serious practice and gave up my daily training in my previous art. I was an engineer, but I wanted to help people. I was a computer scientist, but I loved human services. I wanted to be engaged in the world. And I thought that meant dropping my previous life. And so I scrapped what I was doing and got an internship in Albuquerque, NM, working with Hogares, Inc., at a residential treatment center for youth, often in the foster and adoption systems, with drug dependencies or emotional challenges. And I trained every day that summer for 2 hours at Albuquerque Aikikai with T. S. Okuyama sensei.

But something remained in me from that time that I still work on, consciously now, and see in other people. It?s the peace ninja. Here?s what I mean by that.

See, I had this thing for the sheer awesomeness of martial arts. The power, the control, the ferociousness (in my mind). One dangerous thing with the practice of martial arts, to me, is that without a lot of competition, an ego can quickly get out of hand. And an out of hand ego physically changes your body in visible ways ? and not to the improvement of technique.

Aikido?s a special bird here. With someone like me, in love with helping people and martial arts training? what could be more compelling than using martial arts for good? Lots of modern day stories in anime and TV and movies celebrate that model. Aikido, dangerously so, represents in many ways the pinnacle of peaceful martial arts-dom. I could finally be, in my mind, the peace ninja.

But the idea of greatness, of ?about to do something AWESOME? changes your aikido, changes your body no matter what you do actually. I?ve been teaching martial arts now, regularly, for about 8 years? and I feel this is very true. The symptoms? Still, unnatural postures ?before and after? a technique. Even the sense of ?beginning? frequently becomes a sort of ?get-ready? GO!? type flow, which weirds out the uke. I certainly have found this to be true in myself, and I?ve talked about it in classes when I?ve seen folks seemingly in love with their own awesomeness holding funny, Bruce Lee type postures before and after throws.

In my body, and in my limited teaching experience, one of the worst things for technique moving from very beginner to ? practicing actual technique is how the idea of a technique frequently substitutes for sensitively learning the actual feel, the substance of the technique. I certainly have this to work on, too? I?m not really sure I know the answer here, but I think inflated, unnatural ideas of the self or the practice itself really get in the way of natural practice. Whether practicing to transform yourself into some mythological warrior for peace, an undefeatable monster, or an intense and mysterious swordsman?. Or even just make your life a little better, careful that the idea of practice doesn?t get in the way of the practice itself.

Come the start of Duke?s PE Classes (where I?m teaching Aikido, Aiki-jo and Chen Tai Chi) I?m not quite sure how I?m going to advocate attitudes of practice? but it?s certainly on my radar. I think one great way that I?ll start working on now is my own attitude: celebrating the real and natural benefits of practice (and there are many, I feel) while not ignoring the challenging and frustrating realities of serious practice.

Labels: aikido, duke pe classes

After morning aikido, we loaded Sarah's fit (so tiny!  So Huge!) and Andy Wood's mondo truck with mats for the evening demonstration in Raleigh.  Open Sky was invited to bring folks again...very fun stuff!  

The demo went great.  Lots of adults were there, and even more folks from the kids program.  Highlights of the festival, to me, were excellent Taiko drumming and Bon dancing.  And our demo :-D !  At any rate, I love being part of demos, especially as an uke - folks get all charged up and throw with some extra ummph.

Also, during the festival my bro Tom called to talk some relationship ideas... since he's still processing a previous relationship.  It was somewhat coincidental, since Sarah and I had some good relationship talks in the last few days as well.  One theme I feel is essential in processing relationships is allowing oneself to be "normal."  That seems to come up all the time.  Here's what I mean:

Let's say some crazy stuff happens in the relationship... and you end up "breaking up" (whatever that means, in practice!) with that person.  I feel I've experienced and I've been a friend to others that have experienced wild emotions after the fact, many of which folks might not want to be experiencing: jealousy, anger, deep sadness/despair, etc.  But then there's the self-hostility that sometimes gets let out when we have these cultural norms of "clean breaks."  What is that?  Personally, I've never been able to "stop" feeling for folks.  My feelings have changed over time, and never overnight... but never "stopped."  There are a host of cultural models that relate to relationships I think are Nutso, but for now I'll leave it there.

Also, as is clear (maybe?) I'm still gradually getting into this blog THANG.  Eventually, I'm hoping to concentrate days so each day is a different themed post... but this month I'm just getting used to posting sometimes... and more and more so.  So.  Another successful, rambly post.  

Good thing, to me, setting up a blog and a website is a process.  And I've significantly tamed a lot of my crazy perfectionism, though my old friend is certainly still in this habit mind of mine.  

Anywho, more later as I ramble...I've still mentally got a month of play before I establish a routine!  

peace,mike

Labels: aikido, relationships, sarah kaneko, tom

Since moving into "the house that the dojo built," Sarah and I hadn't had a chance to carpool to Open Sky Aikido together a few miles away at the Boone Shopping Center.  Today, we did!  We started rice before hand so that food would be nearly prepared when we got back (thank you, rice cooker technology).

After class, Sarah Kaneko, Alex Hamer and I were sitting in the back talking about Body Worlds being in Charlotte... when Sarah noticed a wave of water coming out of the back dojo room.  Frantically, we started mopping, laying rags, and called Steve Sensei to let him know our dojo was being quickly flooded from the back.  

See, we're next to this tshirt making place.  Turns out a hose connected to some piece of water pressure equipment bucked off from the machine and started, literally, a nonstop flood of water coming from their side of the barn.  Sarah, Alex and I were chatting almost 40 minutes after class was over - if we weren't there to begin the frantic "bail out the ship that is our dojo(!)," this hose would have quickly filled a few inches of our entire dojo at the rate it was going... since it would have had a full 12 hours to run before folks started coming in.

There's nothing like unplugging refridgerators with your feet in two inches of water.  Well, actually, I got out of the water and stood on the countertops to pull it... but I definitely, inanely, had my hand on the outlet before I realized "hey, I'm standing in water."  I don't want to win any Darwin Awards.  Imagine a fire starting in the dojo because of the water problem... it's not every dojo that can say it simultaneously was flooded away while on fire.  

So, that having been said, the dojo is safe and sound (thanks to mad-dash water scooping and mopping... and a friendly neighborhood emergency plumber/water person who arrived 40 minutes into it with a monster wet vac), Sarah and I came home to some Well-Cooked rice (which we proceeded to turn into yummy giant burritos), and our first "real" night together in the dojo house will proceed, hopefully, much less on emergency mode.

And I'll wash and dry my gi-top, which worked well as a giant wet rag.  Sandbags would have been nice.  

peace,
Mike

Labels: aikido, open sky, sarah kaneko

Exciting, looks like the bulk of the site is working.  Perhaps I can be "official."  

Making a website's a hoot.  My experience of it has been confronting a lot of narcissism and perfectionism.  I'll be using my site, in part, for work related things... but also for telling stories.  What stories?  Well, hopefully ones other folks care about or find food for thought.

Til then, it's a Saturday morning.  I'm in NJ visiting family and friends... enjoyed seeing Maggie (the shore was fun and motivating, thanks again for the invite) and Camille (congrats on your new book coming out!).  Nanny, my grandmother, is still recovering from a knee surgery, so I checked in with her once or twice for company.  Tom's off to teach at kayaking school after a week working for Physical Therapy, and hanging out with Mom's been fun - we had a particular bit of hilarity when she laughingly squirmed under a chair we were trying to take upstairs.  

But at any rate, Saturday morning means Aikido (well, every day means Aikido if all's going well).  I'm sad not to be in Hillsborough, NC, at Open Sky for our morning class (going on right now!) but I'm heading into Philly to train with Donovan Waite Sensei.  Looking forward to it.  

I'll still be working out how to group these posts so there's some order to them, but now, I just need to post something to begin to get in the groove.  So here I am, posting something...

...in the groove.

Labels: aikido, family, mom, nanny, open sky, tom, website