Arno Ilgner's Blog, page 8
June 14, 2021
When Good is Bad and Vice Versa
Most of us have heard the story of the Chinese farmer and luck. It’s a series of losses and wins others judge as bad and good luck, but the farmer simply says “Bad luck, good luck, who knows?”
Here’s a similar video on the Pursuit of Wonder channel called The Nova Effect - The Tragedy of Good Luck. This short story takes you through a series of incidents where Eric judges the outcomes prematurely based on whether or not they created stress or comfort for him. Here’s how the story unfolds:
Eric takes his dog Nova for a walk and loses him. (bad luck) After a week, Vanessa finds his dog and returns him to Eric and they start dating. (good luck) Eric drives to pick up Vanessa and is involved in an accident. (bad luck)
The doctor runs a CT brain scan to check for head injuries. Then he tells Eric, “I have some bad news and some good news.” The bad news is that we found a brain tumor. Eric says, “OK, what’s the good news.” The doctor says that the good news is that we found a brain tumor.
Eric is totally confused. How can the same thing be both bad and good news? The doctor says that if it hadn’t been for the accident, which caused them to do the brain scan, the tumor wouldn’t have been discovered. By the time Eric would have noticed its presence, it would have been too late. He would have died from the tumor. So, the car accident actually saved his life. Eric reflects how something so bad could be so good and how something so good could be so bad. He realizes how little he knows about what anything actually means.
These stories are simple and clear examples of why The Warrior’s Way encourages eliminating the words “good” and “bad” from our vocabulary. They are labels attached to the immediate situation based on stress and comfort. Since learning requires stress, by labeling stress “bad”, we actually sabotage our learning process. Of course, we do this unconsciously.
To break out of this unconscious habit, eliminate the words. See if you can express yourself without using them. I think you’ll find you have to struggle a bit more to do it, but you’ll also be more accurate in your description. Most of all, you won’t unconsciously sabotage your learning process and will begin moving beyond judging your immediate experiences. By not judging them good or bad, you’ll remain more open to how they unfold. Life happens in the unfolding of events. If you want to live a more aware life, then pay attention to how they unfold. Eliminating good and bad will help you do that. It’ll also help you enjoy the unfolding events more. What a bonus!
So, I encourage you to move beyond “Bad luck, good luck” to “Who knows?”
Practice Tip: What’s Good About What’s Bad?
Perceive events more accurately by eliminating the good and bad labels. Do this in phases:
1. Replace “stressful” for “bad” and “comfortable” for “good.” Doing this replacement will describe more precisely what you mean by the good and bad labels.
2. Simply describe what you want to say without using the words “good” and “bad.” Doing this will be harder, but you’ll be more precise in your descriptions. You’ll know better what you want to say and others will understand you better.
Here’s a similar video on the Pursuit of Wonder channel called The Nova Effect - The Tragedy of Good Luck. This short story takes you through a series of incidents where Eric judges the outcomes prematurely based on whether or not they created stress or comfort for him. Here’s how the story unfolds:
Eric takes his dog Nova for a walk and loses him. (bad luck) After a week, Vanessa finds his dog and returns him to Eric and they start dating. (good luck) Eric drives to pick up Vanessa and is involved in an accident. (bad luck)
The doctor runs a CT brain scan to check for head injuries. Then he tells Eric, “I have some bad news and some good news.” The bad news is that we found a brain tumor. Eric says, “OK, what’s the good news.” The doctor says that the good news is that we found a brain tumor.
Eric is totally confused. How can the same thing be both bad and good news? The doctor says that if it hadn’t been for the accident, which caused them to do the brain scan, the tumor wouldn’t have been discovered. By the time Eric would have noticed its presence, it would have been too late. He would have died from the tumor. So, the car accident actually saved his life. Eric reflects how something so bad could be so good and how something so good could be so bad. He realizes how little he knows about what anything actually means.
These stories are simple and clear examples of why The Warrior’s Way encourages eliminating the words “good” and “bad” from our vocabulary. They are labels attached to the immediate situation based on stress and comfort. Since learning requires stress, by labeling stress “bad”, we actually sabotage our learning process. Of course, we do this unconsciously.
To break out of this unconscious habit, eliminate the words. See if you can express yourself without using them. I think you’ll find you have to struggle a bit more to do it, but you’ll also be more accurate in your description. Most of all, you won’t unconsciously sabotage your learning process and will begin moving beyond judging your immediate experiences. By not judging them good or bad, you’ll remain more open to how they unfold. Life happens in the unfolding of events. If you want to live a more aware life, then pay attention to how they unfold. Eliminating good and bad will help you do that. It’ll also help you enjoy the unfolding events more. What a bonus!
So, I encourage you to move beyond “Bad luck, good luck” to “Who knows?”
Practice Tip: What’s Good About What’s Bad?
Perceive events more accurately by eliminating the good and bad labels. Do this in phases:
1. Replace “stressful” for “bad” and “comfortable” for “good.” Doing this replacement will describe more precisely what you mean by the good and bad labels.
2. Simply describe what you want to say without using the words “good” and “bad.” Doing this will be harder, but you’ll be more precise in your descriptions. You’ll know better what you want to say and others will understand you better.
June 7, 2021
We Know Something When We Experience It
I like to do some work when I fly. Once, flying to Puerto Rico, I was reviewing a lecture on my laptop that I would give to climbers there. So, I was a little annoyed when someone sitting next to me began asking questions about what I do for a career. After I gave him the basic description “I help climbers deal with fears,” he wasn’t satisfied and asked specifically how I did that. I described how climbers are afraid of falling, resist practicing it, and that I teach them how to fall.
We talked for about 15 minutes, but he still didn’t understand. After being initially annoyed by his questions, I became curious. The popular phrase “a picture is worth a 1000 words,” describing how we understand something better by seeing one picture than describing something with 1000 words, popped into my head.
I decided to take the phrase further. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then a video must be worth 1000 pictures. And, taking it still further, if a video is worth 1000 pictures, then an experience must be worth 1000 videos. As we shift from language, to visual images, to moving visual images, to us moving through an experience, we understand reality more clearly. My flying companion had helped me stumble onto an interesting progression for an important tenet of The Warrior’s Way: we know something when we experience it, not before. Intellectual knowledge must shift to experiential knowledge to know something.
Let’s use falling to examine this tenet. It seems crazy that we would think we know how to fall without experiencing it. Yet this is what many climbers do. We wouldn’t make that mistake with something like climbing 5.12. We wouldn’t say “I know how to climb 5.12” without having experienced many 5.12s.
Climbers often take inappropriate risks because they only think about falling. When facing a fall on overhanging terrain, they look down and assess the fall intellectually. The typical intellectual conversation goes like this: “I’m just going to fall into air; I’m not going to hit anything; so, it’s safe to fall.” One mis-conception is thinking that we fall straight down. There are many more, but let’s just use this one to examine how intellectual knowledge needs to shift to experiential knowledge to know falling.
Fears manifest themselves in climbers in various ways as they transition into a fall, and in belayers as they react to catching a fall. Some climbers push away from the wall in an unconscious desire to separate themselves from the situation. Others stay close to the wall in an unconscious desire to stay close to something familiar. Compound this with various ways belayers react to catching falls, like contracting or giving a cushioned catch, and various weight difference between climbers and belayers, and we have multiple scenarios for what climbers actually experience in a fall.
Experiencing falling changes everything. We learn that we don’t fall straight down; we fall in an arc. That arc varies based on how we transition into the fall and what kind of catch we receive from the belayer. If we push away from the wall we create a bigger arc and experience more impact into the wall. If we receive a cushioned catch from the belayer, then we lengthen the end of the arc and diminish the impact into the wall.
Experiencing something means we engage the body; we experience reality through the body’s senses. We see the reality of the fall as we look down; we feel the reality of the body in space as we transition into the fall and impact the wall. The body is present for the falling experience so it can learn how to fall. We need to make sure that the mind is present also. We accomplish this by making sure the mind doesn’t think, creating mis-conception, while the body is engaged in the experiencing process. The mind needs to be aware and wait for the experience to be completed. The mind shouldn’t intellectualize during the experience; it should simply pay attention.
Experiencing falling converts an intellectual understanding of falling into an experiential understanding of it. Once we’ve made this conversion we can use words again. We can describe falling, perhaps using 1000 words, but those words will represent reality more accurately because they’re based on experiential knowledge. Yet, the recipients of those words will need to experience falling themselves if they want to know it.
Words, pictures, videos, experiences… This progression is a helpful reminder that we know something when we experience it, not before. I didn’t make much progress with my flying companion’s mis-conceptions about falling. So, I suggested that he go to a climbing gym and experience climbing, and falling, for himself.
Practice Tip: Focus on Yourself
We should consider this words-pictures-videos-experiences progression the next time we post comments on Facebook. Are our comments based on words we’ve heard, pictures we’ve seen, videos we’ve watched, or experiences we’ve had?
Realizing that we know something when we experience it is a healthy reality check for turning the focus of what we know back to ourselves, so we can learn to clarify our own mis-conceptions. It’s best to pay attention to our own learning process, rather than convince others about what they need to learn.
We talked for about 15 minutes, but he still didn’t understand. After being initially annoyed by his questions, I became curious. The popular phrase “a picture is worth a 1000 words,” describing how we understand something better by seeing one picture than describing something with 1000 words, popped into my head.
I decided to take the phrase further. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then a video must be worth 1000 pictures. And, taking it still further, if a video is worth 1000 pictures, then an experience must be worth 1000 videos. As we shift from language, to visual images, to moving visual images, to us moving through an experience, we understand reality more clearly. My flying companion had helped me stumble onto an interesting progression for an important tenet of The Warrior’s Way: we know something when we experience it, not before. Intellectual knowledge must shift to experiential knowledge to know something.
Let’s use falling to examine this tenet. It seems crazy that we would think we know how to fall without experiencing it. Yet this is what many climbers do. We wouldn’t make that mistake with something like climbing 5.12. We wouldn’t say “I know how to climb 5.12” without having experienced many 5.12s.
Climbers often take inappropriate risks because they only think about falling. When facing a fall on overhanging terrain, they look down and assess the fall intellectually. The typical intellectual conversation goes like this: “I’m just going to fall into air; I’m not going to hit anything; so, it’s safe to fall.” One mis-conception is thinking that we fall straight down. There are many more, but let’s just use this one to examine how intellectual knowledge needs to shift to experiential knowledge to know falling.
Fears manifest themselves in climbers in various ways as they transition into a fall, and in belayers as they react to catching a fall. Some climbers push away from the wall in an unconscious desire to separate themselves from the situation. Others stay close to the wall in an unconscious desire to stay close to something familiar. Compound this with various ways belayers react to catching falls, like contracting or giving a cushioned catch, and various weight difference between climbers and belayers, and we have multiple scenarios for what climbers actually experience in a fall.
Experiencing falling changes everything. We learn that we don’t fall straight down; we fall in an arc. That arc varies based on how we transition into the fall and what kind of catch we receive from the belayer. If we push away from the wall we create a bigger arc and experience more impact into the wall. If we receive a cushioned catch from the belayer, then we lengthen the end of the arc and diminish the impact into the wall.
Experiencing something means we engage the body; we experience reality through the body’s senses. We see the reality of the fall as we look down; we feel the reality of the body in space as we transition into the fall and impact the wall. The body is present for the falling experience so it can learn how to fall. We need to make sure that the mind is present also. We accomplish this by making sure the mind doesn’t think, creating mis-conception, while the body is engaged in the experiencing process. The mind needs to be aware and wait for the experience to be completed. The mind shouldn’t intellectualize during the experience; it should simply pay attention.
Experiencing falling converts an intellectual understanding of falling into an experiential understanding of it. Once we’ve made this conversion we can use words again. We can describe falling, perhaps using 1000 words, but those words will represent reality more accurately because they’re based on experiential knowledge. Yet, the recipients of those words will need to experience falling themselves if they want to know it.
Words, pictures, videos, experiences… This progression is a helpful reminder that we know something when we experience it, not before. I didn’t make much progress with my flying companion’s mis-conceptions about falling. So, I suggested that he go to a climbing gym and experience climbing, and falling, for himself.
Practice Tip: Focus on Yourself
We should consider this words-pictures-videos-experiences progression the next time we post comments on Facebook. Are our comments based on words we’ve heard, pictures we’ve seen, videos we’ve watched, or experiences we’ve had?
Realizing that we know something when we experience it is a healthy reality check for turning the focus of what we know back to ourselves, so we can learn to clarify our own mis-conceptions. It’s best to pay attention to our own learning process, rather than convince others about what they need to learn.
May 31, 2021
How Do We Diminish Our Resistance to Mental Training?
Mental training seems to be more accepted by athletes and people in general now. But, biases from the past still persist. Check out this article in Peak Performance Sports by Patrick Cohn on How to Overcome Athletes’ Resistance to Mental Training. If you find yourself resisting mental training, then consider these resistances and suggestions to move beyond them:
Resistances:
Coaches and teammates will think I’m weak if I embrace mental training.
If my coaches don’t use mental training, why should I?
Performing well is about working hard, not about what goes on in my head.
Something must be wrong with me if I use mental training.
Suggestions to move beyond resistances:
Top athletes are interested in improving everything about themselves, which includes mental training. On a more personal note, if you’re worried about how others perceive you, then that perception itself points to your need for mental training.
Your coaches probably do use mental training; they may have developed it through unconventional means, through their own efforts. Regardless, you need to focus on having a complete training program if you want to improve.
Working hard includes both physical and mental training. Mental training helps you understand when and why you’re doing well. It addresses your motivation for being in the arena in the first place.
Consider that something is wrong with you if you do mental training, just as something is wrong with you if you do physical training. What’s wrong with you is that something is lacking, some physical or mental skill. Therefore, accept that you are on a learning journey that includes all aspects of your current state.
On a broader note, mental training is of primary importance. Your mental state influences everything you do with your physical training, how you practice, and how you perform in competition. What you conceive in your mind flows into your training, how you practice, and how you perform. Your mindset determines everything. If you don’t get some control over your mindset, then everything you do will be misguided and you’ll end up injuring yourself, losing motivation, or quitting an activity you used to enjoy.
Practice tip: List Reasons to Train Your Mind
One way to begin understanding the importance of training the mind is listing reasons for doing so. Such a list can increase your motivation to move in that direction. Here are some questions that can help you make a list of reasons to do mental training:
Do you experience anxiety?
Do you feel frustrated because you’re not progressing?
Do you experience fear?
Do you find it difficult to stay focused?
Are you losing motivation and feeling discouraged?
Have you hit a performance plateau you have difficulty breaking through?
Answering “yes” to any of these questions indicates that you need mental training. Now add other reasons you can think of. Doing mental training can give you more peace of mind within the stressful situations you engage in. It can make you want to be in the middle of stressful situations and find meaning there.
Resistances:
Coaches and teammates will think I’m weak if I embrace mental training.
If my coaches don’t use mental training, why should I?
Performing well is about working hard, not about what goes on in my head.
Something must be wrong with me if I use mental training.
Suggestions to move beyond resistances:
Top athletes are interested in improving everything about themselves, which includes mental training. On a more personal note, if you’re worried about how others perceive you, then that perception itself points to your need for mental training.
Your coaches probably do use mental training; they may have developed it through unconventional means, through their own efforts. Regardless, you need to focus on having a complete training program if you want to improve.
Working hard includes both physical and mental training. Mental training helps you understand when and why you’re doing well. It addresses your motivation for being in the arena in the first place.
Consider that something is wrong with you if you do mental training, just as something is wrong with you if you do physical training. What’s wrong with you is that something is lacking, some physical or mental skill. Therefore, accept that you are on a learning journey that includes all aspects of your current state.
On a broader note, mental training is of primary importance. Your mental state influences everything you do with your physical training, how you practice, and how you perform in competition. What you conceive in your mind flows into your training, how you practice, and how you perform. Your mindset determines everything. If you don’t get some control over your mindset, then everything you do will be misguided and you’ll end up injuring yourself, losing motivation, or quitting an activity you used to enjoy.
Practice tip: List Reasons to Train Your Mind
One way to begin understanding the importance of training the mind is listing reasons for doing so. Such a list can increase your motivation to move in that direction. Here are some questions that can help you make a list of reasons to do mental training:
Do you experience anxiety?
Do you feel frustrated because you’re not progressing?
Do you experience fear?
Do you find it difficult to stay focused?
Are you losing motivation and feeling discouraged?
Have you hit a performance plateau you have difficulty breaking through?
Answering “yes” to any of these questions indicates that you need mental training. Now add other reasons you can think of. Doing mental training can give you more peace of mind within the stressful situations you engage in. It can make you want to be in the middle of stressful situations and find meaning there.
May 24, 2021
Who is Crazy?
Dean Potter died in 2015 BASE jumping, a sport which involves jumping off cliffs with a parachute and no reserve chute. One mistake during the free-fall or in packing the chute can kill you. He was also known for free soloing and slack-lining without a safety rope. Such risk-sports can seem crazy. In fact, many people are quick to say “that’s crazy” about what Dean did.
An important part of The Warrior’s Way material is that we know something when we’ve experienced it, not just when we think about it. Thinking constitutes intellectual knowledge. Doing an activity shifts intellectual knowledge to experiential knowledge.
When outsiders see an activity like BASE jumping, free soloing, or even rock climbing they look from a perspective of intellectual knowledge alone. The further outside our comfort zones something is the less we know it and the more likely we’re to label it crazy. Conversely, the more something is near our comfort zones the more we know it and the less likely we’re to label it crazy. BASE jumping was near Dean’s comfort zone; he didn’t label it crazy.
So, who is actually crazy here? Labeling something crazy that we have no knowledge of is crazy. The outsider is crazy, not the participant in the activity. The mind is responsible for this tendency. It tricks us. The mind fears stress and looks for ways to justify staying in its comfort zone. When it sees other people doing challenging activities it has to protect itself. The mind does this by criticizing others and labeling what they do as crazy.
The mind is sick. It needs to learn in order to treat its sickness. But, rather than focus on its own learning, the mind hides in its comfort zone and sprays its opinions about why others shouldn’t be living the lives they’ve chosen to live. The mind is jealous about what others have accomplished and fearful that it can’t do the same.
The mind also has difficulty with death. It sees living a long life as more valued than living a short life, even if that long life is lived in fear and not meaningful. The free soloist Michael Reardon used to say that free soloers have a life-wish, not a death-wish. Free soloing puts them at the edge of life and death, shifts their attention into the present moment, causing them to feel most alive. They want to live, not die. But, they want to live as fully as possible.
One objection outsiders have to activities like BASE jumping and free soloing is the impact one’s death has on those left behind, one’s friends and family. It’s easy to say one shouldn’t free solo because you’ll probably die if you fall. But there are plenty of people who think we shouldn’t rock climb because they don’t understand the true consequences in rock climbing. We can regress to staying in our homes and not venturing outside because of our fear of death. It’s all a matter of degree. Where do we draw the line about what is too risky and who should draw that line?
The best people to determine what is too risky and where to draw that line are the people who participate in the activity. They draw that line based on their experiential knowledge and they know what is appropriate for them more than someone else. The outsider wants to draw that line based on their mind’s fears and lack of knowledge.
We need to pay attention to our learning process. If we do that, then we can learn more about why we fear death, how to take appropriate risks, and the mind’s tendency to trick us. We don’t want anyone interfering with our learning process, so we shouldn’t interfere with others’ learning process. Dean wasn’t crazy; he chose to live his life fully.
Practice Tip: Why do I think it’s crazy?
There are plenty of things people do that seem crazy to us. It doesn’t have to be something extreme like BASE jumping or free soloing. It can be what someone eats or dealing with traffic each day commuting to work.
Seeing such things can cause us to say “that’s crazy.” Remember, the mind is sick. Catch yourself when you say “that’s crazy” and shift your attention to your own learning process. Ask yourself, “Why do I think it’s crazy?”
An important part of The Warrior’s Way material is that we know something when we’ve experienced it, not just when we think about it. Thinking constitutes intellectual knowledge. Doing an activity shifts intellectual knowledge to experiential knowledge.
When outsiders see an activity like BASE jumping, free soloing, or even rock climbing they look from a perspective of intellectual knowledge alone. The further outside our comfort zones something is the less we know it and the more likely we’re to label it crazy. Conversely, the more something is near our comfort zones the more we know it and the less likely we’re to label it crazy. BASE jumping was near Dean’s comfort zone; he didn’t label it crazy.
So, who is actually crazy here? Labeling something crazy that we have no knowledge of is crazy. The outsider is crazy, not the participant in the activity. The mind is responsible for this tendency. It tricks us. The mind fears stress and looks for ways to justify staying in its comfort zone. When it sees other people doing challenging activities it has to protect itself. The mind does this by criticizing others and labeling what they do as crazy.
The mind is sick. It needs to learn in order to treat its sickness. But, rather than focus on its own learning, the mind hides in its comfort zone and sprays its opinions about why others shouldn’t be living the lives they’ve chosen to live. The mind is jealous about what others have accomplished and fearful that it can’t do the same.
The mind also has difficulty with death. It sees living a long life as more valued than living a short life, even if that long life is lived in fear and not meaningful. The free soloist Michael Reardon used to say that free soloers have a life-wish, not a death-wish. Free soloing puts them at the edge of life and death, shifts their attention into the present moment, causing them to feel most alive. They want to live, not die. But, they want to live as fully as possible.
One objection outsiders have to activities like BASE jumping and free soloing is the impact one’s death has on those left behind, one’s friends and family. It’s easy to say one shouldn’t free solo because you’ll probably die if you fall. But there are plenty of people who think we shouldn’t rock climb because they don’t understand the true consequences in rock climbing. We can regress to staying in our homes and not venturing outside because of our fear of death. It’s all a matter of degree. Where do we draw the line about what is too risky and who should draw that line?
The best people to determine what is too risky and where to draw that line are the people who participate in the activity. They draw that line based on their experiential knowledge and they know what is appropriate for them more than someone else. The outsider wants to draw that line based on their mind’s fears and lack of knowledge.
We need to pay attention to our learning process. If we do that, then we can learn more about why we fear death, how to take appropriate risks, and the mind’s tendency to trick us. We don’t want anyone interfering with our learning process, so we shouldn’t interfere with others’ learning process. Dean wasn’t crazy; he chose to live his life fully.
Practice Tip: Why do I think it’s crazy?
There are plenty of things people do that seem crazy to us. It doesn’t have to be something extreme like BASE jumping or free soloing. It can be what someone eats or dealing with traffic each day commuting to work.
Seeing such things can cause us to say “that’s crazy.” Remember, the mind is sick. Catch yourself when you say “that’s crazy” and shift your attention to your own learning process. Ask yourself, “Why do I think it’s crazy?”
May 17, 2021
How Intention and Motivation Work Together
Here’s an interesting article, about the interaction between intention and motivation, in Tricycle written by Thupten Jinpa, which he took from his book A Fearless Heart. Jinpa is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar of religious studies of both Eastern and Western philosophy. He is the principal English translator for the Dalai Lama.
He says that we often use the words “intention” and “motivation” interchangeably as if they mean the same thing. But there’s an important difference: deliberateness. Our motivation is our drive that moves us. That drive can wax and wane. We may be more or less conscious about why we’re motivated. Thus, motivation may not be deliberate.
Intention is always deliberate. Jinpa says it’s an articulation of a conscious goal. We need intentions for the long view. We set and reaffirm our intentions to point us in the directions we want to go. Intention sets a conscious direction; motivation sustains our drive in that direction.
Jinpa says that setting an intention in the morning sets the tone for the day. He suggests that once we feel settled, we should contemplate the following questions:
“What is it that I value deeply?”
“What, in the depth of my heart, do I wish for myself, for my loved ones, and for the world?”
Simply stay with the open questions. Trust that the questions themselves are working to develop a conscious intention for the day. Then, throughout the day, find opportunities to check in with your intentions. You’ll become distracted. Therefore, redirecting your focus to your intention is important. Expect to do this many times during the day.
Jinpa says the intention-setting practice in the morning is paired with another contemplative exercise called dedication. The role of this exercise is to complete the circle. At the end of the day we reconnect with the intentions we set in the morning, reflecting on our experience. The point is to reflect on your day in an objective way. In The Warrior’s Way, we do this by asking two questions:
“What did I do well?”
“What do I still need to learn?”
These questions dig specifically into how consciously and deliberately you set your intentions in the morning and your awareness of how your motivation waxed and waned throughout the day. Simply being aware of how motivation waxes and wanes gives you insight into your level of interest in whatever you’re doing. That shifts your motivation from being unconscious to conscious; the first step toward sustaining it.
This “dedication” practice needs to be nonjudgmental. Jinpa suggests that whatever thoughts and feelings this reviewing might bring, just stay with it. There’s no need to push them away if they have a negative quality; or grasp at them if they seem positive. Simply stay with it for a while in silence. Don’t lapse into self-criticism; remain self-compassionate. Compassion relaxes you into the details of what you discovered, which is important for working with that discovery.
Jinpa says that with persistence, awareness, and reflection, we can bring our motivations more into line with our intentions. Appreciating how our emotions play a role in motivating behavior gives insights into aligning them.
How do we tap our emotional reservoir? Jinpa continues: Cognitions play a critical role, which the early Buddhist texts characterize as seeing the value of doing something. Through cognitive engagement, such as seeing the benefits, we connect intention with motivation. So, within this causal nexus, the crucial link to watch for is the one between our awareness of the goal and why we would go for it.
This cognitive process is a starting point. It focuses on the connection between the goal and the benefits. We need to move on to more intrinsic reasons for why we are motivated. Thus, Jinpa clarifies: Then, again, it’s the joy we take in our efforts—the courage to try, the dedication to stick with it—and their results that helps sustain our motivations over the long run.
We know that intrinsic motivation is far more stable and enduring. The process of setting intentions and joyfully reflecting on them is how we transform extrinsic into intrinsic motivations, and thereby sustain the energy and purpose to live true to our best aspirations.
Our intentions are sustained over time if we want to do the work that separates us from the goal. That wanting to means we do the work for its own sake. The achievement of the goal is simply one part of a larger process that makes our motivation more deliberate.
Practice tip: Open, Maintain, and Close the Circle
Begin, maintain, and close the circle of your day with a morning routine, reminders, and an evening dedication. I’ve found it helpful for the morning routine to be more body oriented than intellectual. You can do a simple T’ai Chi or yoga movement or pose that ends in a standing posture. It’s here that you set your intentions.
Morning routine: set intentions
“What is it that I value deeply?”
“What, in the depth of my heart, do I wish for myself, for my loved ones, and for the world?”
Maintain deliberateness: observe how sustained your motivation is
You need to become conscious of your motivation throughout the day. How does it wax and wane? Find ways to remind yourself of your intentions. Set a reminder on your smartphone. Each time the reminder alerts you, reaffirm your intentions.
Evening dedication: review your observations
Do your dedication process nonjudgmentally. These questions will reveal answers that are more objective and less tied to your identity. That’s helpful for making changes tomorrow.
“What did I do well?”
“What do I still need to learn?”
He says that we often use the words “intention” and “motivation” interchangeably as if they mean the same thing. But there’s an important difference: deliberateness. Our motivation is our drive that moves us. That drive can wax and wane. We may be more or less conscious about why we’re motivated. Thus, motivation may not be deliberate.
Intention is always deliberate. Jinpa says it’s an articulation of a conscious goal. We need intentions for the long view. We set and reaffirm our intentions to point us in the directions we want to go. Intention sets a conscious direction; motivation sustains our drive in that direction.
Jinpa says that setting an intention in the morning sets the tone for the day. He suggests that once we feel settled, we should contemplate the following questions:
“What is it that I value deeply?”
“What, in the depth of my heart, do I wish for myself, for my loved ones, and for the world?”
Simply stay with the open questions. Trust that the questions themselves are working to develop a conscious intention for the day. Then, throughout the day, find opportunities to check in with your intentions. You’ll become distracted. Therefore, redirecting your focus to your intention is important. Expect to do this many times during the day.
Jinpa says the intention-setting practice in the morning is paired with another contemplative exercise called dedication. The role of this exercise is to complete the circle. At the end of the day we reconnect with the intentions we set in the morning, reflecting on our experience. The point is to reflect on your day in an objective way. In The Warrior’s Way, we do this by asking two questions:
“What did I do well?”
“What do I still need to learn?”
These questions dig specifically into how consciously and deliberately you set your intentions in the morning and your awareness of how your motivation waxed and waned throughout the day. Simply being aware of how motivation waxes and wanes gives you insight into your level of interest in whatever you’re doing. That shifts your motivation from being unconscious to conscious; the first step toward sustaining it.
This “dedication” practice needs to be nonjudgmental. Jinpa suggests that whatever thoughts and feelings this reviewing might bring, just stay with it. There’s no need to push them away if they have a negative quality; or grasp at them if they seem positive. Simply stay with it for a while in silence. Don’t lapse into self-criticism; remain self-compassionate. Compassion relaxes you into the details of what you discovered, which is important for working with that discovery.
Jinpa says that with persistence, awareness, and reflection, we can bring our motivations more into line with our intentions. Appreciating how our emotions play a role in motivating behavior gives insights into aligning them.
How do we tap our emotional reservoir? Jinpa continues: Cognitions play a critical role, which the early Buddhist texts characterize as seeing the value of doing something. Through cognitive engagement, such as seeing the benefits, we connect intention with motivation. So, within this causal nexus, the crucial link to watch for is the one between our awareness of the goal and why we would go for it.
This cognitive process is a starting point. It focuses on the connection between the goal and the benefits. We need to move on to more intrinsic reasons for why we are motivated. Thus, Jinpa clarifies: Then, again, it’s the joy we take in our efforts—the courage to try, the dedication to stick with it—and their results that helps sustain our motivations over the long run.
We know that intrinsic motivation is far more stable and enduring. The process of setting intentions and joyfully reflecting on them is how we transform extrinsic into intrinsic motivations, and thereby sustain the energy and purpose to live true to our best aspirations.
Our intentions are sustained over time if we want to do the work that separates us from the goal. That wanting to means we do the work for its own sake. The achievement of the goal is simply one part of a larger process that makes our motivation more deliberate.
Practice tip: Open, Maintain, and Close the Circle
Begin, maintain, and close the circle of your day with a morning routine, reminders, and an evening dedication. I’ve found it helpful for the morning routine to be more body oriented than intellectual. You can do a simple T’ai Chi or yoga movement or pose that ends in a standing posture. It’s here that you set your intentions.
Morning routine: set intentions
“What is it that I value deeply?”
“What, in the depth of my heart, do I wish for myself, for my loved ones, and for the world?”
Maintain deliberateness: observe how sustained your motivation is
You need to become conscious of your motivation throughout the day. How does it wax and wane? Find ways to remind yourself of your intentions. Set a reminder on your smartphone. Each time the reminder alerts you, reaffirm your intentions.
Evening dedication: review your observations
Do your dedication process nonjudgmentally. These questions will reveal answers that are more objective and less tied to your identity. That’s helpful for making changes tomorrow.
“What did I do well?”
“What do I still need to learn?”
May 10, 2021
Blinded by the Mind
I was climbing in a gym recently and noticed a climber getting very frustrated because he couldn’t make it through the crux of a route. He climbed into the crux using the same sequence each time, fell and got frustrated. That incident made me think of how the mind can blind us from doing effective mental training.
Socrates said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In order to examine our lives, we need to examine the mind, to make sure it supports examination. The word “examine” means to observe, inquire or investigate. The mind has intelligence that supports examination and ignorance that hinders it.
We need to find ways to use the mind’s intelligence and avoid its ignorance. The mind’s intelligence is its ability to solve problems. The mind takes in new information and modifies its current knowledge with this new information. Modifying helps us see a broader perspective. We see our current level of knowledge and a modified version of it.
The mind’s ignorance is its tendency to validate its current knowledge. The mind looks for old information to validate its current perspective. Validating keeps our perspective narrow. We’re blinded by our current level of knowledge and ignore other alternatives.
Solving problems is a forward progression: we have a current level of knowledge, we seek new information, and we blend the new information with our current level of knowledge to solve the problem. This forward progression supports the modifying intelligence of the mind. We’re moving forward from the comfort zone (the known) into the stress zone (the unknown), which shifts us toward learning.
The ignorance of the mind has a backward progression: we know our current level of knowledge, seek old information that supports it, eliminate new information that doesn’t support it, and maintain a narrow perspective of knowledge. This backward progression won’t solve the problem and supports the validating ignorance of the mind. We’re moving backward from the stress zone (the unknown) into the comfort zone (the known), which shifts us away from learning.
If we’re on a challenging route, then we need to solve the problem of the challenge. Problem solving requires us to modify our current level of knowledge by blending it with new information contained within the challenge. We need to experiment with new sequences to modify our current level of knowledge. If we validate what we’ve done in the past, doing the same sequence over and over again, then we’re only working with old information. We’ll get frustrated, be blind to the new information and not solve the problem.
The Zen master Takuan Soho (1573–1645) said “It is the very mind itself, that leads the mind astray.” In order to utilize the mind’s intelligent “modifying” ability and avoid its ignorant “validating” tendency, we need to do mental training from a perspective outside of the mind itself. Otherwise, we’ll get lost in its ignorance and we’ll be led astray.
That outside perspective is called the observer. We observe the mind think. The observer perspective allows us to take a step back from the thinking activity within the mind. From the observer perspective we see that we have a mind that thinks for us. The thinking mind isn’t our essence. Then, we can think to utilize the mind’s modifying intelligence. We can also recognize when the mind is blinding us, when we’re falling victim to the mind’s ignorant tendency to validate.
One of the greatest limitations of the mind is that, even when we’re reading about the mind’s ignorance, as we’re doing now, we think it doesn’t apply to us. This is a protective measure of the mind. Therefore, it’s important to understand that we all fall victim of the mind’s ignorance. We’re never finished with improving the mind’s intelligent modifying ability. So, the task here is to acknowledge that it’s happening to us, now, and to do something tangible each moment to deal with it. The simple mantra “modify don’t validate” can help.
By operating from the perspective of the observer, we’re effective in examining the mind. We’re able to observe, inquire, and investigate its current level of knowledge and solve the problems we face in climbing and life. Only from the perspective of the observer can we do effective mental training.
Practice Tip: Modified Reading
When we read a book, we tend to “read for agreement.” We seek information that we agree with as the author expresses ideas. Or, we “read for disagreement.” We seek information that we disagree with. We take a validating approach to reading. The mind’s thinking is: if the author is saying something I agree with, it’s valuable; if I disagree with it, it’s not valuable.
Instead, we need to “read for observation.” We begin from the perspective that we don’t know. This keeps us open to new information. Then, as we read, we notice information that the mind agrees or disagrees with. From the perspective of the observer we can examine the mind’s ignorant, validating tendency and shift to utilizing its intelligent, modifying ability. Only then can we utilize ideas that the author expresses.
Socrates said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In order to examine our lives, we need to examine the mind, to make sure it supports examination. The word “examine” means to observe, inquire or investigate. The mind has intelligence that supports examination and ignorance that hinders it.
We need to find ways to use the mind’s intelligence and avoid its ignorance. The mind’s intelligence is its ability to solve problems. The mind takes in new information and modifies its current knowledge with this new information. Modifying helps us see a broader perspective. We see our current level of knowledge and a modified version of it.
The mind’s ignorance is its tendency to validate its current knowledge. The mind looks for old information to validate its current perspective. Validating keeps our perspective narrow. We’re blinded by our current level of knowledge and ignore other alternatives.
Solving problems is a forward progression: we have a current level of knowledge, we seek new information, and we blend the new information with our current level of knowledge to solve the problem. This forward progression supports the modifying intelligence of the mind. We’re moving forward from the comfort zone (the known) into the stress zone (the unknown), which shifts us toward learning.
The ignorance of the mind has a backward progression: we know our current level of knowledge, seek old information that supports it, eliminate new information that doesn’t support it, and maintain a narrow perspective of knowledge. This backward progression won’t solve the problem and supports the validating ignorance of the mind. We’re moving backward from the stress zone (the unknown) into the comfort zone (the known), which shifts us away from learning.
If we’re on a challenging route, then we need to solve the problem of the challenge. Problem solving requires us to modify our current level of knowledge by blending it with new information contained within the challenge. We need to experiment with new sequences to modify our current level of knowledge. If we validate what we’ve done in the past, doing the same sequence over and over again, then we’re only working with old information. We’ll get frustrated, be blind to the new information and not solve the problem.
The Zen master Takuan Soho (1573–1645) said “It is the very mind itself, that leads the mind astray.” In order to utilize the mind’s intelligent “modifying” ability and avoid its ignorant “validating” tendency, we need to do mental training from a perspective outside of the mind itself. Otherwise, we’ll get lost in its ignorance and we’ll be led astray.
That outside perspective is called the observer. We observe the mind think. The observer perspective allows us to take a step back from the thinking activity within the mind. From the observer perspective we see that we have a mind that thinks for us. The thinking mind isn’t our essence. Then, we can think to utilize the mind’s modifying intelligence. We can also recognize when the mind is blinding us, when we’re falling victim to the mind’s ignorant tendency to validate.
One of the greatest limitations of the mind is that, even when we’re reading about the mind’s ignorance, as we’re doing now, we think it doesn’t apply to us. This is a protective measure of the mind. Therefore, it’s important to understand that we all fall victim of the mind’s ignorance. We’re never finished with improving the mind’s intelligent modifying ability. So, the task here is to acknowledge that it’s happening to us, now, and to do something tangible each moment to deal with it. The simple mantra “modify don’t validate” can help.
By operating from the perspective of the observer, we’re effective in examining the mind. We’re able to observe, inquire, and investigate its current level of knowledge and solve the problems we face in climbing and life. Only from the perspective of the observer can we do effective mental training.
Practice Tip: Modified Reading
When we read a book, we tend to “read for agreement.” We seek information that we agree with as the author expresses ideas. Or, we “read for disagreement.” We seek information that we disagree with. We take a validating approach to reading. The mind’s thinking is: if the author is saying something I agree with, it’s valuable; if I disagree with it, it’s not valuable.
Instead, we need to “read for observation.” We begin from the perspective that we don’t know. This keeps us open to new information. Then, as we read, we notice information that the mind agrees or disagrees with. From the perspective of the observer we can examine the mind’s ignorant, validating tendency and shift to utilizing its intelligent, modifying ability. Only then can we utilize ideas that the author expresses.
April 19, 2021
Human Performance Podcast With O2X
I did a podcast with the human performance company O2X recently. They do training for first responders. O2X focuses on three components of performance they call “Eat, Sweat, Thrive.” These represent a holistic approach covering the important training areas of nutrition, physical exercise, and mental training. I’m one of their thrive specialists.
We talked about my background in climbing and how that prepared me for developing and teaching The Warrior’s Way. Part of our discussion was contrasting how climbing and its community was different in the 1970s compared to today. Back then there were few climbers and climbing was viewed as a kind of nonconformist activity. We were rebels, rebelling against societal values. Today climbing is accepted as a legitimate sport and even one that is useful for transforming our understanding of how we deal with challenges.
We brought up the topic of Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Cap. We can perceive Alex as being fearless, taking inappropriate risks, and just going for it with no regard for the consequences. Thus, we talked about how Alex, like anyone who has mastered an activity, put in a lot of effort to achieve this important goal. He was intimately familiar with risk, fear, and commitment, not recklessly going for it.
We went into motivation, unbending intent, and attention training. These are important components of mental training, especially for first responders. What we’ve focused on in developing The Warrior’s Way is being clear about what terms mean and understanding them in the context of other concepts. This is important because terms and concepts must support each other and not be contradictory. For example, we define “intention” as “attention focused in the direction of a choice.” Specifically, the choice happens before action is taken. Thus, we’re very specific about what we’ll focus attention on, which consists of the processes of breathing, eye focus, and how we move the body through the activity. Our motivation derives from the processes of this intention.
Finally, we investigated what we could do to become one-percent better each day in our mental training. I suggested having a morning routine that included a body awareness drill. Such drills address what I believe is the most important mental training practice: getting attention out of the mind and into the external environment. Focusing on feeling the body move, what we can hear, and see helps us experience attention focused somatically. This is critical for distinguishing between the two main ways that we use attention: in thinking with the mind and in doing with the body. Action requires doing, requires attention focused in the body on the doing itself. Noticing when our attention is distracted away from this intention helps us redirect it. That constant redirecting process makes the intention unbending. Such unbending intent helps us take action for its own sake, so we can be effective and enjoy it.
We talked about my background in climbing and how that prepared me for developing and teaching The Warrior’s Way. Part of our discussion was contrasting how climbing and its community was different in the 1970s compared to today. Back then there were few climbers and climbing was viewed as a kind of nonconformist activity. We were rebels, rebelling against societal values. Today climbing is accepted as a legitimate sport and even one that is useful for transforming our understanding of how we deal with challenges.
We brought up the topic of Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Cap. We can perceive Alex as being fearless, taking inappropriate risks, and just going for it with no regard for the consequences. Thus, we talked about how Alex, like anyone who has mastered an activity, put in a lot of effort to achieve this important goal. He was intimately familiar with risk, fear, and commitment, not recklessly going for it.
We went into motivation, unbending intent, and attention training. These are important components of mental training, especially for first responders. What we’ve focused on in developing The Warrior’s Way is being clear about what terms mean and understanding them in the context of other concepts. This is important because terms and concepts must support each other and not be contradictory. For example, we define “intention” as “attention focused in the direction of a choice.” Specifically, the choice happens before action is taken. Thus, we’re very specific about what we’ll focus attention on, which consists of the processes of breathing, eye focus, and how we move the body through the activity. Our motivation derives from the processes of this intention.
Finally, we investigated what we could do to become one-percent better each day in our mental training. I suggested having a morning routine that included a body awareness drill. Such drills address what I believe is the most important mental training practice: getting attention out of the mind and into the external environment. Focusing on feeling the body move, what we can hear, and see helps us experience attention focused somatically. This is critical for distinguishing between the two main ways that we use attention: in thinking with the mind and in doing with the body. Action requires doing, requires attention focused in the body on the doing itself. Noticing when our attention is distracted away from this intention helps us redirect it. That constant redirecting process makes the intention unbending. Such unbending intent helps us take action for its own sake, so we can be effective and enjoy it.
April 12, 2021
Listen and Look to Observe
In 1979 I was in the Army, serving on the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) in Korea. Our mission was to patrol the American Sector and insure no North Koreans infiltrated into South Korea. We would do patrols at night and set up LP/OPs (Listening Post / Observation Post) close to the North Korean border. In order to do our job effectively, we needed to listen and observe in a way that would help us locate infiltrators. We listened to sounds and looked for movement. Listening and looking helped our observation of the situation and the reporting of accurate information.
There’s a difference between listening and hearing, looking and seeing. When we listen we attend closely for the purpose of hearing. When we hear we simply use our sense of hearing to perceive sounds. Listening is active; hearing is passive. “Attending closely”—listening—we use our attention to engage with the situation. “Perceiving sounds”—hearing—we’re passively allowing sounds to impact us. We may be aware when we hear a sound, but listening to that sound requires focusing our attention actively during the hearing process.
It’s the same for looking versus seeing. When we look we turn our eyes in some direction in order to see. When we see we simply use our sense of sight to perceive objects. Looking is active; we “turn our eyes in a direction,” engage the situation, and pay attention to it. Seeing is passive; visual images are simply being perceived with the eyes. We may be aware when we see an object, but looking at that object requires focusing our attention actively during the seeing process.
By listening we engage our attention in the whole environment. When we hear a sound, we move our head and body in the direction of the sound, and focus our attention on that particular sound to investigate it.
Similarly, by looking we engage our attention in the whole environment. When we see an object move in the periphery of our field of view, we move our head and body in the direction of the movement, and focus our attention on that particular object to investigate it.
The final step is to become the observer of what we’re listening to and looking at. We do this by observing the mind’s tendency to formulate conclusions too quickly. The mind wants certainty and will create conclusions before listening and looking are allowed to occur. The mind is motivated toward quick resolution of a situation so it can achieve comfort. We need to allow time to take in information, process it, before formulating conclusions. We do this by delaying our conclusions.
When we occupied an LP/OP in Korea, we needed to listen for threats. We heard nature and human sounds. Our tendency was to categorize nature sounds as non-threatening and human sounds as threatening. Labeling nature sounds (birds, wind) as non-threatening meant we didn’t pay attention to them anymore. Listening to these sounds could reveal a threat. The mind sought comfort in the non-threatening label so listening and observation were diminished.
There was a tendency to categorize movement that we saw to the South as friendly and movement to the North as the enemy. If we saw movement to the South, where another American patrol was supposed to be, then we needed to look to determine the threat, instead of labeling it friendly. Was it an animal, the American patrol, or the enemy? The mind sought comfort in the South/North label so looking and observation were diminished.
Our job was to delay making conclusions. We needed to observe and give that information to Military Intelligence. They collected information from all patrols, processed it, and then formulated a more accurate conclusion about the threats.
By listening and looking we engaged our attention in the observation process. We engaged with the situation. We also observed our minds’ tendency to make conclusions about where or what the threat was. We kept our attention engaged by listening to everything we heard and looking at everything we saw, staying in the stress of not knowing instead of hiding in comfortable labels and conclusions.
Practice Tip: Delay
When you climb you’ll experience stress. The mind will want to resolve that stress by seeking comfort. Take for example being physically tired, being pumped. The mind will want to escape the stress of being pumped and say “take” to hang on the rope.
Don’t “take.” Rather, delay and look for options. Delaying gives you time; looking engages your attention in the situation. Look to the left, right and above. Stay in the stress and observe what options present themselves.
There’s a difference between listening and hearing, looking and seeing. When we listen we attend closely for the purpose of hearing. When we hear we simply use our sense of hearing to perceive sounds. Listening is active; hearing is passive. “Attending closely”—listening—we use our attention to engage with the situation. “Perceiving sounds”—hearing—we’re passively allowing sounds to impact us. We may be aware when we hear a sound, but listening to that sound requires focusing our attention actively during the hearing process.
It’s the same for looking versus seeing. When we look we turn our eyes in some direction in order to see. When we see we simply use our sense of sight to perceive objects. Looking is active; we “turn our eyes in a direction,” engage the situation, and pay attention to it. Seeing is passive; visual images are simply being perceived with the eyes. We may be aware when we see an object, but looking at that object requires focusing our attention actively during the seeing process.
By listening we engage our attention in the whole environment. When we hear a sound, we move our head and body in the direction of the sound, and focus our attention on that particular sound to investigate it.
Similarly, by looking we engage our attention in the whole environment. When we see an object move in the periphery of our field of view, we move our head and body in the direction of the movement, and focus our attention on that particular object to investigate it.
The final step is to become the observer of what we’re listening to and looking at. We do this by observing the mind’s tendency to formulate conclusions too quickly. The mind wants certainty and will create conclusions before listening and looking are allowed to occur. The mind is motivated toward quick resolution of a situation so it can achieve comfort. We need to allow time to take in information, process it, before formulating conclusions. We do this by delaying our conclusions.
When we occupied an LP/OP in Korea, we needed to listen for threats. We heard nature and human sounds. Our tendency was to categorize nature sounds as non-threatening and human sounds as threatening. Labeling nature sounds (birds, wind) as non-threatening meant we didn’t pay attention to them anymore. Listening to these sounds could reveal a threat. The mind sought comfort in the non-threatening label so listening and observation were diminished.
There was a tendency to categorize movement that we saw to the South as friendly and movement to the North as the enemy. If we saw movement to the South, where another American patrol was supposed to be, then we needed to look to determine the threat, instead of labeling it friendly. Was it an animal, the American patrol, or the enemy? The mind sought comfort in the South/North label so looking and observation were diminished.
Our job was to delay making conclusions. We needed to observe and give that information to Military Intelligence. They collected information from all patrols, processed it, and then formulated a more accurate conclusion about the threats.
By listening and looking we engaged our attention in the observation process. We engaged with the situation. We also observed our minds’ tendency to make conclusions about where or what the threat was. We kept our attention engaged by listening to everything we heard and looking at everything we saw, staying in the stress of not knowing instead of hiding in comfortable labels and conclusions.
Practice Tip: Delay
When you climb you’ll experience stress. The mind will want to resolve that stress by seeking comfort. Take for example being physically tired, being pumped. The mind will want to escape the stress of being pumped and say “take” to hang on the rope.
Don’t “take.” Rather, delay and look for options. Delaying gives you time; looking engages your attention in the situation. Look to the left, right and above. Stay in the stress and observe what options present themselves.
March 31, 2021
Duality Versus Unity
One hundred and thirty five years ago, on March 30, 1880, Yamaoka Tesshu, the master swordsman and originator of the School of No-Sword, achieved enlightenment. He’d solved the koan: “When two flashing swords meet, there is no place to escape; move on cooly, like a lotus flower blooming in the midst of a roaring fire, and forcefully pierce the Heavens!” Tesshu phrased his solution thus: A true practitioner moves without hesitation, through the confusion and chaos of the sensual world, avoiding all duality.
Tesshu’s solution contains important references to duality and unity that help us understand mental training. Mental training needs to address the kind of mind we need to have when we’re engaged in the experience, whether that’s a sword fight or climbing.
First, the koan is describing a fight: when two flashing swords meet. Therefore, we’re not intellectualizing; we’re engaged in an experience. We’re in the stress zone and can’t escape to the comfort zone. Both body and mind need to support being in the experience.
Second, Tesshu’s solution embodies processes. He understood that the mind thinks in duality to make sense of the world. It understands light because there’s also darkness. It understands comfort because there’s also stress. Yet, Tesshu understood that in order to fight well, when one is engaged in the actual experience, one needs unity. The body and mind need to be one unit, not two.
When he says “a practitioner moves without hesitation” he’s pointing toward the body being engaged in the process of moving, without hesitation from the mind. The mind doesn’t hesitate because it’s not thinking. We don’t have unity if the mind is thinking. We have duality. The mind thinks: “Will I win or lose?” The mind is lost in duality and hesitates, because it’s unsure what the outcome will be or if one can achieve it.
Tesshu continues: “through the confusion and chaos of the sensual world.” Life and growth include stress, which causes confusion and chaos for the mind. And, “sensual world” points toward how we interact with the world. We interact via our senses. Remember, the koan references being engaged in the experience of “when flashing swords meet.” This is not a time for intellectualizing with the mind. We’re interacting with the world, the stress, sensually, with our senses and our breath. These are ongoing processes that we keep our attention focused on. Finally, we “avoid all duality” because our attention isn’t focused in the mind, thinking about winning or losing; it’s focused in the body on the experience of fighting. The mind is aware, but not engaged in thinking.
Duality splits our attention. We focus on a future end result the mind wants to achieve, while the body is engaged in the present process of fighting or climbing. Unity comes from having both the mind and body focused in the present moment. The body is always in the present moment: it moves and breathes moment to moment. When engaged in experience, we need to stop thinking to get the mind in the present moment. The mind needs to observe, to take in the trillions of bits of information being perceived, process it intuitively, so it can manifest itself through the body. Our attention must be focused on bodily processes and not mental end results. With the mind focused this way, unity is achieved between body and mind.
The Warrior’s Way trainings emphasize committing our attention to either “stop and think,” or “move and take action with the body.” We do our thinking, which is dualistic, at stopping points on a climb, when we’re in our comfort zones. We analyze the goal, the consequence, and develop a plan. We weigh the duality of our desire to achieve the goal against the consequences, and make a decision. Then, when we commit to action, to the stress zone of experience, we shift our attention to the body, to the processes of breathing and moving. No thinking is involved. The mind is carried along as the present observer, taking in the information from the experience and feeding it directly to the body in an intuitive manner.
Enlightenment is simply moving beyond the limited dualistic understanding of the mind. It took Tesshu 40 years of intense practice of swordsmanship and Zen to become enlightened. I’ve been intensely studying and practicing The Warrior’s Way for about half that time. I’m just now beginning to understand the mind’s limitations and how to observe it, so it can be transcended. Maybe in 20 more years of intense study and practice I’ll become enlightened?
Practice Tip: Body and Mind Unity
When you rest, rest; when you climb, climb! When you’re engaged in an experience—two flashing swords meeting—you need unity of the body and the mind. Thinking is important, but you need to do it before engagement. Do a thorough risk assessment at stop/rest points to make sure you’re taking an appropriate risk. Then, set aside thinking and engage doing.
You set aside thinking by shifting your attention to the processes of the body: breathing and moving. Keep your attention focused on those processes and allow your mind to simply be present, to observe and feed information intuitively back to the body.
Tesshu’s solution contains important references to duality and unity that help us understand mental training. Mental training needs to address the kind of mind we need to have when we’re engaged in the experience, whether that’s a sword fight or climbing.
First, the koan is describing a fight: when two flashing swords meet. Therefore, we’re not intellectualizing; we’re engaged in an experience. We’re in the stress zone and can’t escape to the comfort zone. Both body and mind need to support being in the experience.
Second, Tesshu’s solution embodies processes. He understood that the mind thinks in duality to make sense of the world. It understands light because there’s also darkness. It understands comfort because there’s also stress. Yet, Tesshu understood that in order to fight well, when one is engaged in the actual experience, one needs unity. The body and mind need to be one unit, not two.
When he says “a practitioner moves without hesitation” he’s pointing toward the body being engaged in the process of moving, without hesitation from the mind. The mind doesn’t hesitate because it’s not thinking. We don’t have unity if the mind is thinking. We have duality. The mind thinks: “Will I win or lose?” The mind is lost in duality and hesitates, because it’s unsure what the outcome will be or if one can achieve it.
Tesshu continues: “through the confusion and chaos of the sensual world.” Life and growth include stress, which causes confusion and chaos for the mind. And, “sensual world” points toward how we interact with the world. We interact via our senses. Remember, the koan references being engaged in the experience of “when flashing swords meet.” This is not a time for intellectualizing with the mind. We’re interacting with the world, the stress, sensually, with our senses and our breath. These are ongoing processes that we keep our attention focused on. Finally, we “avoid all duality” because our attention isn’t focused in the mind, thinking about winning or losing; it’s focused in the body on the experience of fighting. The mind is aware, but not engaged in thinking.
Duality splits our attention. We focus on a future end result the mind wants to achieve, while the body is engaged in the present process of fighting or climbing. Unity comes from having both the mind and body focused in the present moment. The body is always in the present moment: it moves and breathes moment to moment. When engaged in experience, we need to stop thinking to get the mind in the present moment. The mind needs to observe, to take in the trillions of bits of information being perceived, process it intuitively, so it can manifest itself through the body. Our attention must be focused on bodily processes and not mental end results. With the mind focused this way, unity is achieved between body and mind.
The Warrior’s Way trainings emphasize committing our attention to either “stop and think,” or “move and take action with the body.” We do our thinking, which is dualistic, at stopping points on a climb, when we’re in our comfort zones. We analyze the goal, the consequence, and develop a plan. We weigh the duality of our desire to achieve the goal against the consequences, and make a decision. Then, when we commit to action, to the stress zone of experience, we shift our attention to the body, to the processes of breathing and moving. No thinking is involved. The mind is carried along as the present observer, taking in the information from the experience and feeding it directly to the body in an intuitive manner.
Enlightenment is simply moving beyond the limited dualistic understanding of the mind. It took Tesshu 40 years of intense practice of swordsmanship and Zen to become enlightened. I’ve been intensely studying and practicing The Warrior’s Way for about half that time. I’m just now beginning to understand the mind’s limitations and how to observe it, so it can be transcended. Maybe in 20 more years of intense study and practice I’ll become enlightened?
Practice Tip: Body and Mind Unity
When you rest, rest; when you climb, climb! When you’re engaged in an experience—two flashing swords meeting—you need unity of the body and the mind. Thinking is important, but you need to do it before engagement. Do a thorough risk assessment at stop/rest points to make sure you’re taking an appropriate risk. Then, set aside thinking and engage doing.
You set aside thinking by shifting your attention to the processes of the body: breathing and moving. Keep your attention focused on those processes and allow your mind to simply be present, to observe and feed information intuitively back to the body.
March 15, 2021
Does Unbending Intent Complement Learning?
In the last lesson we looked at the importance of having unbending intent for accomplishing big goals. At first glance, it can seem that having unbending intent diminishes our learning, such as having an unbending way of thinking that limits us. If unbending intent does this, then it’s not a concept that’s part of The Warrior’s Way. Unbending intent needs to complement the learning process.
Intention occurs after thinking and before doing; after preparation and before action. Intention is part of transitioning between them; it’s part of the decision-making process. We decide to take action on a plan we’ve prepared; we decide to do with the body what we’ve thought about with the mind. We shift from preparation to action, from mind to body, from thinking to doing. The transition process needs to break apart these two very different ways of using our attention. We decide to break away from preparation, mind and thinking, and shift to action, body, and doing.
The last part of the transitioning process is to set an intention on what we’ll focus our attention on, during action. We need to decide how we choose to focus our attention. This is what intention is: attention focused in the direction of a choice or decision. Warriors choose to focus their attention on processes that will occur during action. That’s a process intention, not an intent for accomplishing a goal or end result. That process intention is what’s unbending. This is how warriors persist.
Now, does such an intention diminish or prevent learning? The learning process, by definition, requires modifying our current knowledge rather than validating it. We need to stay receptive to whatever information presents itself so we can learn. We also don’t know what we need to learn when looking into the future from our current perspective.
Take, for example, working a route toward a redpoint ascent. We need to learn the route by working out the sequences and other details. Doing this requires modifying our current knowledge. We go into the process of working a route with an initial conception of how the body sequences will be, but through working it, we modify that initial conception. “Modifying” is the key word here. We aren’t validating our initial conception.
We also engage this process knowing that we can’t know what we need to learn from our current perspective. That’s like knowing what we need to learn to do calculus before actually studying it. We can’t know what we need to learn before we learn it. Therefore, the climb teaches us what we need to learn.
We may hit a plateau and not be able to redpoint a route. We can’t know what we need to learn to break through that plateau from our current perspective. We need to continue to engage and notice what the climb is revealing to us. Is the climb revealing that we need to change a sequence, improve breathing, have better eye contact, or detach ourselves from succeeding? The climb reveals what’s distracting our attention from the moment. We simply need to place our attention in the moment so we’re more aware of what’s distracting it.
When working a route, our intention is to apply the process of how to move the body through various sequences until we find the best one. Once we’ve done that we apply processes of breathing and relaxing to refine how we use our energy. We also refine any mental distractions of attention the mind creates about succeeding. Unbending intent, in this case, means we are unbending in our intent to move our bodies, breathe and relax, the very processes we need to focus our attention on, when engaged in action. In short, we’re unbending in our intent to keep our attention on processes that occur when we’re in action so it’s focused in the moment.
A process unbending intent takes one bit of information and expands it into various possibilities. The one bit of information is “working a route.” Our intent is to work the route so we learn all that’s necessary to redpoint it. We’re unbending in our intent to focus on processes: working sequences, refining breathing, relaxation, or other mental distractions. In other words, we change ourselves: our body sequence, our breathing, our relaxation, any mental distractions. Doing this modifies us, so we can learn, and therefore complements the learning process. We take the one bit of information—working a route—and we are then unbending in seeking possibilities to learn.
Practice Tip: The Climb Will Teach You
You’ve probably experienced a route that thwarts you from succeeding. Something is lacking that you still need to learn. What is it? You don’t know because you haven’t learned it yet. So, don’t focus on thinking you know. Rather, focus on what the climb has to teach you.
Engage the climb by focusing your attention in the moment, especially that moment when you fall. What contributes to the fall? Is it an incorrect sequence causing you to use too much energy? Is it poor breathing, being tense, or focusing on success? Keep your attention out of the mind and in the body. Keep your attention out of thinking and focused on the somatic actions of the body such as moving, breathing, and relaxing. The climb will reveal what is lacking in how you apply those processes.
Intention occurs after thinking and before doing; after preparation and before action. Intention is part of transitioning between them; it’s part of the decision-making process. We decide to take action on a plan we’ve prepared; we decide to do with the body what we’ve thought about with the mind. We shift from preparation to action, from mind to body, from thinking to doing. The transition process needs to break apart these two very different ways of using our attention. We decide to break away from preparation, mind and thinking, and shift to action, body, and doing.
The last part of the transitioning process is to set an intention on what we’ll focus our attention on, during action. We need to decide how we choose to focus our attention. This is what intention is: attention focused in the direction of a choice or decision. Warriors choose to focus their attention on processes that will occur during action. That’s a process intention, not an intent for accomplishing a goal or end result. That process intention is what’s unbending. This is how warriors persist.
Now, does such an intention diminish or prevent learning? The learning process, by definition, requires modifying our current knowledge rather than validating it. We need to stay receptive to whatever information presents itself so we can learn. We also don’t know what we need to learn when looking into the future from our current perspective.
Take, for example, working a route toward a redpoint ascent. We need to learn the route by working out the sequences and other details. Doing this requires modifying our current knowledge. We go into the process of working a route with an initial conception of how the body sequences will be, but through working it, we modify that initial conception. “Modifying” is the key word here. We aren’t validating our initial conception.
We also engage this process knowing that we can’t know what we need to learn from our current perspective. That’s like knowing what we need to learn to do calculus before actually studying it. We can’t know what we need to learn before we learn it. Therefore, the climb teaches us what we need to learn.
We may hit a plateau and not be able to redpoint a route. We can’t know what we need to learn to break through that plateau from our current perspective. We need to continue to engage and notice what the climb is revealing to us. Is the climb revealing that we need to change a sequence, improve breathing, have better eye contact, or detach ourselves from succeeding? The climb reveals what’s distracting our attention from the moment. We simply need to place our attention in the moment so we’re more aware of what’s distracting it.
When working a route, our intention is to apply the process of how to move the body through various sequences until we find the best one. Once we’ve done that we apply processes of breathing and relaxing to refine how we use our energy. We also refine any mental distractions of attention the mind creates about succeeding. Unbending intent, in this case, means we are unbending in our intent to move our bodies, breathe and relax, the very processes we need to focus our attention on, when engaged in action. In short, we’re unbending in our intent to keep our attention on processes that occur when we’re in action so it’s focused in the moment.
A process unbending intent takes one bit of information and expands it into various possibilities. The one bit of information is “working a route.” Our intent is to work the route so we learn all that’s necessary to redpoint it. We’re unbending in our intent to focus on processes: working sequences, refining breathing, relaxation, or other mental distractions. In other words, we change ourselves: our body sequence, our breathing, our relaxation, any mental distractions. Doing this modifies us, so we can learn, and therefore complements the learning process. We take the one bit of information—working a route—and we are then unbending in seeking possibilities to learn.
Practice Tip: The Climb Will Teach You
You’ve probably experienced a route that thwarts you from succeeding. Something is lacking that you still need to learn. What is it? You don’t know because you haven’t learned it yet. So, don’t focus on thinking you know. Rather, focus on what the climb has to teach you.
Engage the climb by focusing your attention in the moment, especially that moment when you fall. What contributes to the fall? Is it an incorrect sequence causing you to use too much energy? Is it poor breathing, being tense, or focusing on success? Keep your attention out of the mind and in the body. Keep your attention out of thinking and focused on the somatic actions of the body such as moving, breathing, and relaxing. The climb will reveal what is lacking in how you apply those processes.
