THE ZEN MIRROR

The Kingdom Within You

By Jeff Brooks

Hit the makiwara. If you have been practicing for a while you will likely be transmitting tons of pressure into your target. Anyone can see – and hear – that you are affecting the world around you. But what is less recognized is that you are affecting the world within you as well.

If you have had some high school physics you remember Newton’s law of reciprocal motion:

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  Actually it is more accurately:

All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

So when the makiwara post bends back under the power of your punch, and the sound of the impact echoes through the room any karate practitioner can tell you its not only the things outside you that are influenced. You are changed as well.
Power is communicated through your body at the same time. With every impact your muscles absorb power, your connective tissues toughen, your hands are conditioned, your mind focuses, your hand-eye connection improves and the power of your will to generate power, also is affected.

For every action we take on the world around us there is a corresponding effect on the world within us.

This differs from the Newtonian principle in that the inner transformation is not always equal, and the effects are not limited to the physical. The implications of this fact are the single most important point to understand if we are to have a truly cultivated life.

What we do is who we are. If you want your life to be different: do different things.

If you want to master the martial arts, go master the martial arts. Engage in the action of training many hours every day consistently and sincerely for decades without regard to the results and no problem you will become the real thing.
Some people talk about training, speculate about it, read about it, and only do it an hour or two a week, most but not all of the weeks of the year. That can help them get in shape and learn some self defense skills, but that will never lead to mastery.

We are training in something all the time. What are these practitioners doing in all the other hours of the week? What is their mind doing? What is their body doing? If their mind is jumping from subject to subject, from stimulus to TV, computer, radio, road sign, phone call, advertisement, relentlessly, then that is the condition of mind they are cultivating. The fact that this chaotic flow is interrupted occasionally by martial arts is good, but the two hours of martial arts will not replace the effects of the 166 hours that week spent in other pursuits.

If your mind is pulled by likes and dislikes, anger and desire, jealousy and fear, continually disturbed by the inputs that cascade our way from the modern world then that is the mind we are cultivating. If we take an hour or two a day to train, calmly, powerfully and clearly, if we train our minds to think clearly the rest of the time and deliberately make effort to detect when it is turbulent and to return it to a condition of clarity – even in the midst of action – then that is the life we cultivate.

People are sometimes displeased with this perspective. They feel pressured by it. They respond to this by saying they are doing the best they can. We all want to be stroked. We all like to be praised. We want our prejudices confirmed and our life habits affirmed. We are praised falsely often. By charming and persuasive advertisers, salesmen, drug dealers and false teachers who say: Buy this… you’re doing just fine…

If we want to get the life we want we will have to do the work. The undeniable fact is we are cultivating something 24 hours a day. Our actions upon the outer world – what we do, what we say, what we think – have a transformative effect on our inner world, simultaneously. If we take our lives seriously we can take command of our schedule, use our body and mind well, and cultivate a life that is all we want it to be. Then we can be of use to others and hope to put an end to suffering for them and for ourselves as well.

If we float, rudderless, allowing the temptations and narcissistic chaos of contemporary life to carry us along we give up the direction of our own lives, invite disaster, and miss the chance we have to become true martial artists.
Mastery, greatness, is not the exclusive right of a special few, ancient masters, talented gold medalists… There is no limit on the amount of greatness that can fit into the world. Put yourself on that path and let nothing stand in your way. You will achieve it.

Jeffrey M. Brooks

Jeff Brooks (9th dan), began martial arts training in 1978 and opened his first karate dojo in Northampton, MA (1988 through 2009), while also conducting self-defense seminars, professional programs in combative skills and served as a regular contributor on Zen and karate-related topics to FightingArts.com.

Jeff then moved to South Carolina  and started a career in law enforcement, serving as a police officer, then  detective, defensive tactics instructor, firearms instructor, PPCT instructor, Deputy US Marshal, and Deputy Sheriff. After retirement, he founded Mountain Karate in Saluda, NC.

In karate Brooks received his 5th degree Black Belt from the Nagamine honbu dojo, his 7th degree black belt in 2004, and his 9th degree black belt in 2022, in recognition of his formation and leadership of Yamabayashi Ryu. He studied with leading teachers in Okinawan, Japanese, and Chinese traditions, in the US and overseas, including Katsuhiko Shinzato (the translator of Shoshin Nagamine’s Essence of Okinawan Karate Do, and formerly a student of the Kishaba brothers’ karate and kobudo); Sogen Sakiyama, Roshi (direct student of Miyagi Chojun, and practitioner of Goju-ryu karate); and Shoshin Nagamine (Chief of the Motobu District Police, Mayor of Naha, and founder of Matsubayashi Shorin Ryu).

Jeff Brooks has written hundreds of published articles on martial arts, and Zen and has been cited widely online and in print. He wrote speeches and presentations for high profile public figures in politics, media, business and the arts.

He is author of several books including “True Karate Dō”, available on Amazon.com