Zen Mind, No Mind
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"Achieving a state of good health relies not only on will power but the right mental attitude. The dangers of drinking, smoking, being overweight, and not exercising are well documented, but excuses for not taking good care of your body are easy to find. The reason for acquiring good physical condition is that you increase your strength, energy, vitality, and capacity for enjoying life. You only have to want it. Your body can only handle sudden heavy exercise if it is used to it. If you are overweight it is almost certain you are not in good physical condition and sudden demands would strain your muscles, joints and heart. Hence, a gradual increase in the intensity of exercise is essential and this also applies if you are slim and not used to physical activity. Patience when building up the load is essential. Exercise requires some discipline, but the discipline grows when you see the results, and you start to relish the thought of placing greater demands on yourself so that you can develop further. The added bonus is that you begin to enjoy it. What you observe when advances occur in strength, endurance, and flexibility is the reward. If you could not lift a bag of sand in the garden without difficulty before you started strength training, but now you can with relative ease, you have made desirable progress. The same applies to stamina and flexibility. For example, if regular stretching exercises made it easier to bend over and brush the carpet for a few minutes without incurring lower back pain when you straightened, you have made progress. The examples are numerous."
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About the Book
The book is in two parts: The first, Body Mechanics, describes our body type, structure, systems, organs and canals, physical conditioning, and stress. The second, Concept, Principle and Technique, describes meditations and breathing, mind and body coordination, mental calm and strength, physical relaxation with power, extending energy of the mind, physical conditioning, mindset, self-defence, and massage. The techniques presented are equally suitable for men and women. A section concentrates on physical training. Detailed attention is given to dynamic and static contractions for strength and endurance, cardiovascular techniques for endurance and strength, and exercises for flexibility and strength. Physical training has the dual function of strengthening the body and strengthening the mind. An important section is on mindset; working on mindset is not only to learn the techniques for conditioning your intuition and develop desirables, such as confidence and awareness, but to feel complete within yourself and realize your value in society. The section on self-defence is not a reiteration of physical techniques frequently taught in self-defence classes or martial arts schools. It relates self-defence to mindset, and the power of mind and body coordination. Attention to these areas, the principles of which are described in other sections, comprises the essence of effective self-defence. Principles to which you should adhere when facing potentially dangerous conflict, and techniques you can use during physical engagement, are also discussed. The final section is on massage. The methods described are an effective way of treating someone who has an ailment and feels low on energy, or simply enjoys being massaged. Fundamental to the technique is the concentration of your intrinsic energy to regenerate or revitalize someone’s life power. It is apparent from what can be seen of human effort, mental, physical, and of whatever form, that the motivating driver and the real source of power is the mind. It is also obvious to anyone who has had experience of western and eastern culture that the East is, from its own rich past, ahead of the West in giving concept, method and rationale to an understanding of the relationship between mind and body, mental strength, and the power of mind and body coordination. At the heart of this thinking is zen and it is best seen as the foundation of the Oriental spiritual disciplines, such as the budo, the martial arts of Japan. Intuition, the unconscious mind, or the state of no-mind is the zen mind, the mind that is the focus of the zen method. Intuition cannot be learned, but it can be conditioned, and the techniques for conditioning it can be learned. Zen has been, and is, to budo, an attempt to apply the accumulated knowledge of Confucius, Laotzu, and Buddha to the conditioning of intuition. In the case of budo, zen has been the unifying and driving force. Intuition penetrates the very soul of those who rely on it. It brings a general simplicity that appears to have an unrefined aspect but which is not unrefined. It has been said: The intellect can play with the concept; only the intuition can understand.
About the Author
Brian Reeve lives in Fulham, London. He attended the University of Natal after being conscripted into the South African military for two years, studied Japanese karatedo and aikido in Tokyo, achieving black belt dan grades in both disciplines. He has spent 35 years as an engineering consultant for major oil companies and lived and worked in ten cities. He has published four novels, A Dangerous Game (2005), Dark Intent (2008), Deadly Instinct (2009) and The Scorpions’ Tale (2010)