Ruminations on Lojong Mind Training

I am one of those Christians who, like the Trappist monk, Brother Thomas Merton, believes that there is a lot to be learned from an ecumenical or interfaith dialogue with those firmly on spiritual paths taken by other religions ... that does NOT mean that I am about to convert to another religion; my faith is more than strong enough to take away my fear of any sort of temptation to stray from my life in Christ.  Not only does studying another religion help me to understand how to reach out to AND to relate to people of other faiths [hopefully without coming off as another condescending missionary jerk preying on them like some sort of evangelical vulture trying to add another soul-for-Jesus to my crusader belt], it invariably teaches me a deeper lesson about my own Christian faith, about my own commitment to love God, to do His will and to treat all other human beings as I would want them to treat me.

Beyond just the religious aspects, there is an awfully lot to learn from other cultures ... all have attachment to symbolism and beliefs that more trouble than those symbols and beliefs are worth -- it's nice to know that Christians aren't the only knuckleheads who are so stuck in their backward ways, that they'd rather die than think about changing.   What I find useful is investigating how other cultures approach problem solving and thinking.  In particular, I am absolutely certain that the Buddhists and Daoists have some very important things that we could learn about discipline, meditation, patience, situational awareness, self-defense ...our western heritage is relatively violent and confrontational -- our history is all about heroic crusades, dying in glorious battles, military strategy, weapons and systems for winning wars ... "Onward Christian Soldiers!" captures how we think ... by contrast, for thousands of years, the energy of brightest minds in these cultures has been focused upon debating, thinking about, meditating on and writing about the best techniques for training one's mind and purifying one's motivations and attitudes for greater focus on spiritual cultivation.   Lojong is the mind training practice of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition; it is based on a set of fifty-nine aphorisms originally formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Geshe Chekhawa. These proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering; these proverbs should not exactly be regard as we Christians regard commandments [especially the 1st and 2nd commandments] but they are helpful guidelines that will make our search for happiness in this life a lot easier. The aphorisms on lojong mind training listed below are paraphrased from web-based directory of translations of the Tibetan original.

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  First, train in the preliminaries.
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  Treat everything you perceive as a dream.
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  Find the consciousness you had before you were born ... respect the miracle of your birth and everything that miracle represents about the best intentions and essential hopes of your parents, the accumulated values and traditions of your elders.  
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  Let even the remedy itself drop away naturally.
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  Stay in the primeval consciousness, the basis of everything.
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  Between meditations, treat everything as an illusion.
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  As you breathe in, take in and accept all the sadness, pain, and negativity of the whole world, including yourself, and absorb it into your heart. As you breathe out, pour out all your joy and bliss; bless the whole of existence.
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  Understand your attachments, your aversions, and your indifference, and love them all.
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  Apply these proverbs in everything you do.
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  When practicing unconditional acceptance, start with yourself.
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  When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up.
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  Take all the blame yourself.
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  Be grateful to everyone.
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  Don't worry – there's nothing real about your confusion.
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  When something unexpected happens, in that very moment, treat it as a meditation.
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  Work with the Five Forces.  Practice these Five Forces and you are ready for death at any moment. The Five Forces are:

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   Be intense, be committed.
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   Familiarization – get used to doing and being what you want to do and to be.
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   Cultivate the white seeds, not the black ones.
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   Turn totally away from all your ego trips.
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   Dedicate all the merits of what you do for the benefit of others.

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  All teachings have the same goal.
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  Follow the inner witness rather than the outer ones.
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  Always have the support of a joyful mind.
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  Practicing even when distracted is good training.
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  Always observe these three points:

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   Regularity of practice.
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   Not wasting time on the inessential.
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   Not rationalizing our mistakes.

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  Change your attitude, but stay natural.
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  Do not discuss defects.
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  Don't worry about other people.
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  Work on your greatest imperfection first.
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  Abandon all hope of results.
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  Give up poisonous food.
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  Don't be consistent.
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  Don't indulge in malicious gossip.
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  Don't wait in ambush.
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  Don't strike at the heart.
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  Don't put the yak's load on the cow.
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  Remember – this is not a competition.
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  Don't be sneaky.
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  Don't abuse your divine power for selfish reasons.
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  Don't expect to profit from other people's misfortune.
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  In all your activities, have a single purpose.
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  Solve all problems by accepting the bad energy and sending out the good.
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  Renew your commitment when you get up and before you go to sleep.
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  Accept good and bad fortune with an equal mind.
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  Keep your vows even at the risk of your life.
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  Recognize your neurotic tendencies, overcome them, then transcend them.
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  Find a teacher, tame the roving mind, choose a lifestyle that allows you to practice.
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  Love your teacher, enjoy your practice, keep your vows.
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  Focus your body, mind, and spirit on the path.
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  Exclude nothing from your acceptance practice: train with a whole heart.
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  Always meditate on whatever you resent.
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  Don't depend on how the rest of the world is.
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  In this life, concentrate on achieving what is most meaningful.
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  Don't let your emotions distract you, but bring them to your practice.
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  Don't let your practice become irregular.
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  Train wholeheartedly.
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  Free yourself by first watching, then analyzing.
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  Don't feel sorry for yourself.
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  Don't be jealous.
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  Stay focused.
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  Don't expect any applause.

I think about Afghanistan more and more every day.

When the world saw the destruction of a UNESCO Heritage site as expression of fundamentalist hate in early 2001, we knew the hard-line Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the other idiots linked to Al-Qaeda around the world would never stop. We knew that the ignorance, intolerance and capacity for evil would keep coming for us; we ignored it, dismissed it, or worse, thought that this senseless cultural vandalisn of destruction of the Buddhist statues in the Afghanistan Bamiyan Valley was an acceptable form of Afghani cultural assertion or islamic religious expression ... besides, it too far away from the United States to matter.   But the bell was tolling for us in early 2001.    This act took several attempts over several days; it was deliberately pre-announced and well-documented by various news agencies.  If the world had not already gotten the hint, this was Taliban's declaration of holy war against anything and everything in the world that could not be explained within their simplistic, narrow, brutish views.  Six months later, they took down the World Trade Center and flew a plane into the Pentagon. We should realize that we have only started to confront them in a world war that will continue; we can leave Afghanistan, but this attack will keep coming. We need more patience, discipline and inner strength ... to support our troops, to push for reform in [or removal of] the Karzai regime, to continue this fight as long as we need to, to sustain clear alternative.

The Attitude of Learning Taijiquan

The traditional internal martial arts of taijiquan, xingxiquan or baguazhang are often misunderstood as being just a flexibility and balance exercise for better health ... which is understandable, because they are excellent for that purpose alone, particularly for older martial artists! In reality, there's so much more. For instance, every one of the 113 movements in the classical Yang-style taijiquan form sets the stage for multiple different martial applications for self-defense purposes including: 1) shuai jiao, throwing an enemy off balance or downing an enemy, ideally by understanding the enemy's emotional state or following the enemy's intent and then exploiting the enemy's anger or lack of centeredness or if necessary with more direct contact and wrestling moves that set the enemy up for explosive bursts power or fa jin; 2) qin na, immobilizing the enemy by seizing, locking and breaking joints, muscles, tendons and bones; or 3) dian xue, beyond wild boxing or kicking, this involves very controlled strikes at vulnerable acupuncture body cavities or acupoints. As these three secondary tactics demonstrate, the neijia internal martial arts are much more than just the opening movements and their choreography -- the very same understanding of the body's vulnerabilities and function that is used by the qin na and dian xue tactics are also the basis for acupuncture or acupressure as well as TCM massage [such as tui na an mo, die da an mo or dian xue an mo, which is very similar to shiatsu massage]. Taiji classes have become popular in hospitals, clinics, community and senior centers in the last twenty years or so, as baby boomers age and the art's reputation as a low stress training for seniors becames better known -- or at least PARTIALLY better known. After all, most older men and women just are not that interested anymore in throwing punches to hurt people or in being injured in their workouts, but they still want to be active, flexible. Yet traditionalists feel that a school not teaching martial aspects somewhere in their syllabus cannot be said to be actually teaching the art itself. Traditionalists believe that understanding the theory behind breathing coordination strategies and the core physiological principles of the martial aspects of the internal arts are a necessary gateway to develop the mental focus necessary for realizing the full physical, mental and spiritual benefits of these arts. And you can't really understand the theory, unless you practice in conscious, repetitive training enough to develop a reflexive ability to apply the art without thinking ... OR until you have reached the point where you understand the theory without having to think about the theory.

At first, when one learns about the mental benefits and martial deadliness of taijiquan, xingxiquan or baguazhang it's a little tough to believe the results. These arts seem so unrealistically powerful that one might wonder why these internal Chinese martial arts have not already become more widely practiced ... the simple answer is that these arts require an extremely serious decades-long commitment of daily training and effort ... the benefits are in fact real enough but the commitment is much deeper, longer than anything that most modern American's can imagine. These arts do not offer the rapid turnaround, "Biggest Loser," cancer-survivor-runs-in-marathon dramatic before-and-after instant-jedi results that Americans typically dream of. Internal martial arts demand more serious mental study and a decades-long commitment ... they do not fit with expectations of rapid results possible on a training regimen at their gym, start doing pilates, kickboxing or extreme cardio video for a sixty minutes a day, training for a marathon, signing up at external mixed martial arts dojo or even jumping into something deadly serious Marine Martial Arts training.

In some cases trite expressions are especially true ... for example, when you start preparing to learn taijiquan, you should realize that you will get out of it what you put into it. Perhaps, in some ways, it is most discouraging to get past the very first disappointments in just doing the earliest taiji qigong stretching and conditioning exercises as preparation to be able to learn taijiquan ... because even though you know better, you might be secretly hoping for more ... you dream you'll pick up a few DVDs, some books, go to a seminar or two and learn one or two things and ...Viola! you're an instant jedi. Of course, that isn't going to happen -- so you need to make a firm decision that you're going to have to make an investment and you're going to have to stick with it and find ways to commit to working at it every day for a pretty long time BEFORE YOU MAKE ANY TANGIBLE OUTWARDLY VISIBLE PROGRESS. In the internal martial arts training, a journey of million miles does actually begins with the first step -- and you need to get that step right or do it over until you do! It is useful to know beforehand something about scope and hardship of the journey in order to prepare mentally for what is ahead and to "pace oneself" emotionally for difficulties that will need to be overcome. Of course, aptitudes vary, but becoming a taijiquan master probably requires something like 25,000 to 50,000 hours of serious effort and diligent study under the direction of an excellent master. It might be relatively easy to describe the attitude necessary for learning taijiquan -- it is entirely another thing to embody courage and perseverance necessary to continually display that attitude over the course of a training period that lasts decades. It helps to understand that courage and perseverance are like muscles, built one repetition, one movement at a time.

Taijiquan theory, for example, is deep and profound -- xingxiquan or baguazhang require similarly exhaustive and perspicacious study -- not only as a complex martial art (e.g. 113 movements, each setting the stage for multiple different combinations of martial applications in Shuai Jiao, Qin Na, Dian Xue), but also with deep implications for physical flexibility and balance, mental acuity and spiritual cultivation. It should not come as surprise that it takes many years of learning, research, reading, studying, pondering, questioning and practicing to gradually grasp the feeling of the art. In addition to perseverance and a good learning attitude, it is also important to find a good master. The Chinese have a saying that "It is better for a disciple to inquire and search for a martial arts master for three years than to learn three years from unqualified one." Additionally, it is common for a good master will test a qualified disciple for three years to see through a disciples's personality to know whether or not the disciple will persevere and maintain good martial morality.

A sincere taiji practioner should collect, read, study and practice the material from a lot of different taijiquan books and DVDs especially from established, reputable authors and martial arts masters that you trust; it does not hurt to also peruse and collect materials from other xingxiquan, baguazhang and other martial arts. It is also good idea to reach out and make connections with other martial artists in order to possibly workout together for flexibility and conditioning, exchange knowledge about techniques, or collaborate on important things like better diet and nutrition. In addition, it is necessary to take advantage of as many seminars, summer camps, emails, videos and every other way that you can think of to get in touch with truly experienced masters and their well-qualified martial arts disciples. Do not be shy about asking questions -- realize that the best way for an experienced martial artist to learn the art even more deeply is for them to teach a worthy disciple. Another Chinese expression is that "You do not want to give up your throat; question every talented person on earth. The way to attain the necessary knowledge is look outside and inside, fine and coarse ... nothing must not be touched upon."

In the beginning, it is necessary to pay close attention to the movements and try to be as accurate as possible. At first it is necessary to do the movements repetitively, but carefully to build the correct muscle memory. As you do this, you must also learn to relax physically as you regulate the body consciously, Only after you have gotten to this stage, can you reach the next stage where you do not have to regulate the body consciously ... the stage known as "regulating without regulating." The next stage after this is to coordinate your breathing with the movements and then work at regulating your breathing. When you get to the point where you can regulate your breathing without regulating your breathing, you can slow down the form while keeping the number of breaths the same. As you carefully stretch the form, your breathing must become natural, smooth, deep, slender and calm ... once you have reached this stage, you will have provided the necessary environment for your wisdom mind to regulate your emotional mind.

Regulating the emotional mind is necessary for obtaining the most significant relaxation benefits of the taiji practice. As you become better in this practice, you will also strengthen your immune system and more thoroughly oxygenate your blood to raise your mental sharpness and elevate your spirit. In order to garner the full health benefits of taijiquan, you need to explore the martial arts applications. If you practice taijiquan for martial arts applications, you must learn to use your mind to lead the qi to the arms for performing different techniques and to to the legs for rooting. In order to manifest power most efficiently and rapidly, you must build a sense of the enemy by imagining that you are in a combat situation. Here, too, the approach is continually train all of the combinations of your techniques to point past conscious regulation, i.e. where you are at the "regulating without regulating" point for regulating the qi where habits are no longer conscious choices, but instead reflexes. After all of your techniques are at this level, they could be quite useful in real emergencies ... or in preventing misunderstandings from becoming real emergencies ... after all, the ultimate goal of taijiquan practice is to help you reach the point where you can harmonize your energy with the energy of the natural universe ... the perfect warrior does not fight, but instead prepares so that it becomes possible to understand where the fight will come from ... which makes it possible to prevent the fight from ever happening with the appropriate early intervention of kindness and disciplined resolve.

Invest in Embryonic Breathing

The person on the cover of this book is the author, Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming.  The picture to me  is almost comical ... Dr. Yang appears so deceptively tranquil and serene on the cover, but you may rest assured that he is one particularly capable and disciplined martial artist and one especially tough and sharp-minded intellectual.  You should know that he founded the global Yang Martial Arts Academy (YMAA) and continues to serve as the supreme shifu in what is almost certainly the world's preeminent martial arts academy.   Before founding and leading YMAA for over 25 years, Dr. Yang also had the discipline to manage his time well enough to earn a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue -- this background is still evident.  Although he has immense respect for Chinese culture, he still writes and thinks like an intensely skeptical western engineer or scientist.  The ability to excel in two very different cultures is unique; I do not know of anyone who has displayed the resilience, intelligence and discipline to achieve these levels of excellence in two distinctly different cultures.  Yet, Dr. Yang's mind is supple, quick and open enough that he instantly recognizes the medical importance of activities in other cultures such as African music or Native American dancing because of these activities' roles in helping humans to enjoyably and regularly regulate the circulation of biochemical/bioelectric energy in their bodies.

Dr. Yang is one of my favorite authors, but this is one of my favorite books of his.  It is absolutely one of those books that you can't afford not to read, re-read, re-read again and then practice the techniques and think about what you've read ... and then learn Chinese to be able to interpret some of the different ancient texts referenced in this book and then read the book again to learn something new.  In fact, much of the importance of this particular book can be found in Dr.Yang's detailed discussion and annotations of a bibliography of ancient text on qi gong with a particular focus on embryonic breathing.  Dr. Yang makes it clear that he does not have a monopoly on the views of these ancient texts -- he also goes to great it lengths to make it very clear that qigong is a living artform and that others should lend their intrepration.  In this book, he provides a map for future study by others as he lays for the intellectual foundation for others to build upon.

On practicing Qin Na for health benefits

As a martial art, Qin Na is an extraordinarily powerful set of of roughly 700 techniques -- collectively these techniques represent an artform that takes most of a lifetime to master, but even a few techniques can be especially useful to police and others who must attempt to safely, peacefully deal with potentially violent people in ugly, contentious situations.  The power of the Qin Na artform is based upon disciplined and lengthy practice ... you can read about Qin Na in books and watch DVDs in order to understand what you are doing; but to learn Qin Na, you must practice under the watchful eye of an experienced master ... practice is necessary to develop an accurate, complete [mental and physical] awareness of different situations and then to correctly, rapidly, safely, carefully execute the most appropriate grabbing technique which seizes and controls an opponents joints, muscles and tendons.  In deadly situations [faced by law enforcement officers and military police] Qin Na is also about developing sufficient jin or power to effectively grasp and hold a dangerous oppently and then deliver a powerful blow with neutralizing or even potentially lethal effect.  In other words, Qin Na is all about very precise mental balance, accurate control of the qi and a very detailed and specific understanding of the body's physical structure and qi channels.

I began looking into Qin Na in my effort to learn more about qigong and my desire to develop a personal training regimen to develop power and more fully realize the more profound health benefits of qigong.  At first I shied away from Qin Na.  It is still very difficult for me to even watch Qin Na DVDs.  Even carefully orchestrated demonstrations led by an experienced master like Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming involve putting someone into obvious and real pain.  That's tough for me to watch -- I've been in a couple serious fights and I've broken up other fights, but I have never thrown the first punch -- the people who have seen me in those situations might believe otherwise, but by nature, I am a VERY nonviolent person; I certainly have NO desire to inflict pain on anyone.

I am only starting to learn about Qin Na conceptually ... to read about it, to watch DVDs, to start thinking about the theory.  It is already obvious to me that it will take a lot of courage for me in order to practice and really learn Qin Na [or Aikido, Jujitsu or any other martial art that uses the seizing arts] ... at this stage, I have a lot of respect for anyone who is a serious student of Qin Na and practice it regularly ... of course, I have an immense amount of respect for others, like police officers [both military and civilian], who are confident enough in their practice, that they walk in the direction of trouble to peacefully defuse dangerous situations [even though this means that sometimes they will need to actually use their Qin Na skill in deadly situations, rather than simply drawing their weapon to threaten/kill OR avoiding explosive situations until a squad of heavily armed police officers arrives on the scene].

But I'm not a police officer -- I do not plan to EVER hurt anyone if I can avoid it -- I would like to be able to creatively avoid trouble; I am not all that sure I even want to be able to hurt anyone [therefore, I had better practice diligently and learn Qin Na with enough discipline to use it carefully, in a trustworthy manner, if I need to, to NEVER make any mistakes].   I humbly intend to learn a lot more about Qin Na, to practice and develop the art for a long time.  Someday, I hope to be able to teach others about Qin Na who share my desire to learn the art for the following reasons:  

• To increase mental awareness and agility, 
• to build up mental endurance and strengthen will, 
• to understand qi channels and control qi much better, 
• to train mental balance, stability, centering and root,
• to firm physical balance, stability, centering and root
• to [through practice] stretch the body's joints physically, 
• to understand the structure of the physical body,
• to learn how to heal and recover from injury [because practice inevitably involves injury] and 
• to make friends [because practicing qin na is one way to find out for sure whether someone is really a friend].

I will probably edit this posting later ... for now, I need to try to read and try to finish watching those DVDs before I take in the seminars ...

Overcoming the biology deficit in engineering, even in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering

One of my degrees is in ABE ... it's still something that interests me ... and yet, the thing that I still find amazing about the field is how little of our training was really focused developing engineering from the science of on biological and botanical organisms, biochemistry, molecular genetics or genomics ... ok, genomics and bioinformatics weren't exactly disciplines 30 years ago -- but I don't remember getting any significant background in genetics, biochemistry, biophysics or bioelectricity ... certainly nothing compared to all of those engineering mechanics classes that we took -- the heavy dose of EM classes did make the EIT test pretty damned simple, but I more concerned with what I missed by packing my brain cells with free body diagrams ...

I realized the deficit in my understanding of biology, biochemistry and bioelectricity as my sister and mother struggled with health issues and ultimately passed away. My father's struggle with Parkinson's Disease has just drove the point home even further. Engineers don't know squat about biology and bioelectricity. Farmers might know even less about biology than engineers -- farming is mostly about managing risk and finances by mastering government programs, following markets, managing change [due to weather, problems, etc] and machinery management. The thing is that even doctors and nurses really don't enough about biology -- a lot of their knowledge is about medical procedures, drugs and medical information systems -- but their knowledge is not necessarily all that deep when it comes to biology, biochemistry and bioelectricity.

If we don't spend enough time thinking about biology, we tend not to develop and perfect good habits and we mindlessly engage in behaviors that predispose us to dying early (i.e. before we reach our potential of several hundred years of age) ... not thinking DEEPLY about biology, means that we waste too much time thinking about the mechanics of other systems that we don't really need as much as we need better health of our biological systems ... this is why, in the last 6 months or so [AFTER I TURNED 50!!!], I have FINALLY realized the importance of being a more serious martial artist. The connection between human health, everything about biology and the martial arts were not obvious to me before, but the martial arts are about power and focusing energy -- in order to really understand the energy of the body, it is necessary to PRACTICE different positions, holds, routines, etc and to think deeply about what is going on as one practices ... the more advanced martial arts theorists are even thinking about the requirements of other bioproducts to provide power and extend life ... this includes things such as advanced nutritional supplements, customized herbal treatments for specific needs or genetic hormone therapies that might improve one's "original essence" ... bioengineers can think what requirements are necessary (e.g. what do need to do to manage soil environment for producing certain crops) for developing the next generation of agricultural products that can complement medicine by provide individuals with an even stronger foundation for managing their health more aggressively by looking at bioelectricity, power and detailed aspects of fitness ... it's not enough to feed people, we need to think about how we can help them to optimize their health over a much longer lifespan.

Training in internal martial arts

Every person training in the martial arts will have his or her workouts and workouts of the day sequence ... they will look to masters for that sequence or they will understand something about mastering a skill and will be in the process of developing that sequence by exploring new training, emphasizing methods that seem particularly well-suited to the martial artist's own natural abilities and preferences. My own sequence is far from perfect; I am not really a martial artists.  I am only learning to pick up a few skills to be healthier.  I cannot really become an apprentice, but I do need to look to others for training and guidance.

The basic grounding for my training comes from the teachings and example of Jesus Christ ... because there has been no one who's been tougher, smarter and better at fighting evil than Jesus Christ. His words have been ignored by others, especially those in the church, but those words still hold true today. One of Christ's fundamental teachings is to regard and accept others as you regard and accept yourself. I try to look at wide diversity of approaches including things that many would not see as "martial arts" such as the autobiography and writing of Mahatma Gandhi. 

I have become a huge fan of various authorities that come from a buddhist or daoist perspective, notably Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming.  

I could describe why I am a big fan of Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, but you can and should look around and form your own opinions.  I am not sure if my endorsement should carry much weight.  Nonetheless, I really do believe that Dr. Yang and his disciples [and the other authors associated with YMMA publishing]  are an outstanding source of content.    Material that is highly worth reading, considering pondering.  Of course, all material should be read or pondered with skepticism and critical thought, but I think you will find that Dr. Yang's material holds up well.

Consider the sequence listed in his book Tai Chi Theory and Martial Power for taijiquan and Shaolin White Crane kung fu training.  The basic sequence looks something like the following:

1. Building and strengthening relaxation, calmness, concentration practice and discipline
2. Understanding of human physiology and fundamental theory of basic human bioelectricity as applied to chinese medicine, qi gong massage, acupressure, acupuncture and sensitivity of various areas of the body
3. Breath training for maximizing the oxygenation of the blood and setting the foundation for maximum power in martial arts
4. Experiencing and generating qi or bioelectricity
5. Qi or bioelectricity circulation and control
6. Still meditation
7. Fundamental stances
8. Breath coordination drills
9. Fundmental moving drills
10. Solo taijiquan
11. Analysis of martial application of taijiquan sequence
12. Beginning taijiquan pushing hands
13. Fundamental forms of Taiji Jin training
14. Hen and Ha sound training (i.e. similar to "grunting" in tennis)
15. Fast taijiquan
16. Advanced taijiquan pushing hands
17. Advanced Taiji Jin training
18. Qi expansion and transportation training
19. Martial applications of pushing hands
20. Free pushing hands
21. Taiji fighting set
22. Taiji fighting freeform
23. Exploration of other martial arts
24. Understanding of weapons; disarming weapons
25. Understanding of especially explosive situations and defusing them