We train to stay fit, strong and healthy. That takes consistent attention, inside and outside the dojo.
Most of the food available in stores has poison in it. This is no secret. Pesticides, preservatives, additives, sugar and other chemicals are not good for people. But people put them in the food they know that other people will eat.
Since we are aware of it, we can deal with it. We can expect that the food companies will continue to try to trick their customers, and that leaders and professionals will be incentivized to look the other way. We cannot depend on them. We don’t need to. We do need to look after ourselves.
Most of the media also has poison in it. People sell resentment to get attention. This resentment, evoking envy, jealously, desire and hatred, permeates our experience of our culture. It shapes the debate on issues and values. It causes turbulence, alienation and tribalism. It poisons people. It hurts people.
Like our poisoned food, the taste of this poisoned media is at first sweet and gratifying; then it becomes addictive and destructive. It leads to the sickness and death of people and culture.
For physical health pleasure-seeking can be replaced by seeking nourishment – from food, relationships and work.
For spiritual health tribalism and group-identity can be set aside. Instead, individual character and personal responsibility will be the criteria for deciding what to do, and who to associate with.
By training we find our way through the squalor of cultural decay, in its physical, mental and spiritual dimensions. By consistent, diligent application of our attention, our will and our energy to the demands of training we take control of our lives. First, by valuing them. Then, by taking responsibility for them, and, since our training is a team effort, for the condition of the people around us. As we train our bodies become stronger and more integral. As do our relationships with people and the natural world.
Since we can recognize threats to our physical health, we can avoid them or put a stop to them. Indulgence is easy when pleasure and status govern our choices. It is easily overcome when we aim higher.
Since we can recognize unhealthy mental states as unhealthy, we can make effort to recover our clarity, stability, happiness and purpose.
People are poisoning our bodies and minds, all day, every day. We do not have to collaborate with them or aquiesce. They rationalize what they are doing. They find excuses because it feels good to be important, to be on top, to be successful in the eyes of the world, because it is the way of the world, because if they don’t do it someone else will, because whoever has the most stuff when they die wins, because they are winners and the rest of us are losers, because of the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle, the best man wins.
We know that pleasure and power are potent drugs and they are hopelessly addicted to them. We know that the consequence of evil actions is misery, never happiness.
We can understand them. We cannot let evil rule us.
We need training to prevail. Training is not magic. It is not an escape from the difficulties we face. It is a way to transform pain into power, obstacles to strength, difficulties into health, strangers into allies, and limitations into freedom.
For many centuries, since the olden days when alternatives to tribalism were discovered, people have known that good training is a path we can take through the strange land in which we find ourselves.
We do not allow purveyors of evil to frame the issues or choose the time and place for battle. We make energetic progress in cultivating what is good, beautiful and true, despite the danger and difficulty. In that way we are prepared when harm approaches. And we know what to do.
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Post Copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, Mountain Karate Dojo, Yamabayashi Ryu, western NC, USA
photo by Alexey K., via Pexels
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read True Karate Dō, by Jeffrey Brooks
“One of the best books I’ve read in years, inviting and compelling.
Jeff Brooks moves effortlessly from martial arts to Buddhism to consciousness studies, self-transformation, and related fields in this wide-ranging and Illuminating study that has much to offer both novice explorers and veteran practitioners. A splendid achievement.”
— Philip Zaleski, Editor, The Best Spiritual Writing series
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