THE ZEN MIRROR

Training in Interesting Times

By Jeff Brooks

We each will decide if it’s a blessing or a curse but we all are now living in interesting times. Interesting because the veil of routine is lifted more frequently revealing a character of experience less predictable a future less amenable to assumptions than we once believed in.

One of the attributes of periods of social disorder, here and elsewhere, throughout space and time, is that the strong prey upon the weak. And fear becomes a habit. In stable times there is enough amity for decent people to band together to serve their mutual interest. Representative governments, a justice system, the rule of contracts, reliable currency, all depend upon this. Under stable conditions people can recognize the utility of both competition and shared interests. The US Constitution is based on a distribution of power, so that each center of power acts and a restraint on the concentration of power and the arrogance that always grows from that centralization and the suffering that inevitably flows from it.

This carefully made fabric begins to unravel in interesting times. Institutions cease to fulfill the roles for which they were devised. People use more of their energy for cruder aims and so have less for higher human aspirations. Vice is regarded as innocuous. Interesting times in medieval China, Russia or Europe exhibit the same properties as our own interesting times.

People, seeking happiness, forget how to find it. Thrift and industry are for suckers. Work is for chumps. Self mastery and self sacrifice in the service of others is thought to be effeminate and naive, if not outright corrupting. The sale of intoxicating drugs, pornography and gambling is regarded as entertainment, in the same category somehow, as Shakespeare, Milton, the Bible and the Brady Bunch. People make themselves slaves. Fear rules. Freedom, and life itself, are willingly sacrificed in the name of comfort, of personal choice.

The process by means of which people’s lives are leached away by addiction to these poisons is overlooked or denied. The vessel that holds our precious life is broken.

Those of us who are practitioners recognize interesting times as part of the times of our lives. We don’t welcome this, we don’t reject it. We recognize that the path is sometimes smooth and sometimes steep. We proceed. We recognize that in the moment of violent confrontation, of physical or emotional shock it will be too late to train. We will either be prepared at that moment or we will not. And we recognize that the time to prepare is now. This is the time we have. We need to use it well.

As a practitioner we understand that everything changes. That if we can create the conditions for propitious change we have a chance to prevail over every difficulty. But our time is short. Our physical strength, our clarity of mind, the leisure time in which we can train, the lives of the people who are depending on us for protection, all are limited.

If we wish to face the inevitable challenges of interesting times with equanimity and skill, the time to prepare is now. We cannot wait even one day.

If we prepare ourselves, if we conduct ourselves with virtue and sincerity, if we face opposition and threats with courage and unstoppable purpose, there will be no problem we cannot face. Whatever the outcome, whatever the times demand, justice will prevail.

Copyright Jeff Brooks and FightingArts.com 2007

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