Zen in the Martial Arts

When you lose your temper, you lose yourself—on the mat as well as in life.

When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way.

When an untoward event occurs in your life, react to it without haste or passion.

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

For example, if you are fearful your mind will freeze, motion will be stopped and you will be defeated. If your mind is fixed on victory or defeating your opponent, you will be unable to function automatically.

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

The angry man will defeat himself in battle as well as in life.

Only through practice and more practice, until you can do something without conscious effort.

I can defeat you physically with or without a reason. But I can only defeat your mind with a reason. —JIM LAU

A man who has attained mastery of an art reveals it in his every action.

Those who are patient in the trivial things in life and control themselves will one day have the same mastery in great and important things.

Always remember: in life as well as on the mat an unfocused or ‘loose’ mind wastes energy.

What stands in the way of effortless effort is caring, or a conscious attempt to do well.

The principle of avoiding conflict and never opposing an aggressor’s strength head-on is the essence of aikido. We apply the same principle to problems that arise in life. The skilled aikidoist is as elusive as the truth of Zen; he makes himself into a koan—a puzzle which slips away the more one tries to solve it. He is like water in that he falls through the fingers of those who try to clutch him. Water does not hesitate before it yields, for the moment the fingers begin to close it moves away, not of its own strength, but by using the pressure applied to it. It is for this reason, perhaps, that one of the symbols for aikido is water.

For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness? —BHAGAVAD GITA

The mind is like a fertile garden,” Bruce said. “It will grow anything you wish to plant—beautiful flowers or weeds. And so it is with successful, healthy thoughts or with negative ones that will, like weeds, strangle and crowd the others. Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strangle confidence.

We are like blades of grass or trees of the forest, creations of the universe, of the spirit of the universe, and the spirit of the universe has neither life nor death. Vanity is the only obstacle to life.

Only after several years of training did I come to realize that the deepest purpose of the martial arts is to serve as a vehicle for personal spiritual development.

And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?