There was a spectacular sunset tonight. After class the world looks different. You are getting strong. Your training is working. Your training is yours. Now, as you head back out, keep your eyes open. There are a lot of opponents out there that are easy to miss. They are not all in human form. But they are quite real. They can sneak up. They can seem harmless. You can get used to them and drop your guard. Here’s a reminder:
There is training and there is anti-training
Anti-training is what works against you. Anti-training degrades your life.
It is pretty easy to overlook anti-training because at first, training is periodic. You go to class a few times a week. That’s your training. The rest of the time you are not training. Or so it seems.
You reach a stage
when, in order to advance, training cannot be occasional. It is constant. You need regular rest and recovery. That is part of good training. You also need continual awareness of the conditions into which you place your mind and body. To train to our potential we need to make good decisions, all the time.
We need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve through our training, and what we need to do to achieve our goals. So we cultivate a presence of mind strong enough to note what is going on, inside and outside, and what needs to be done, in every moment.
This is not an ordinary way to live.
But it is the way to become an accomplished person. It is demanding and rewarding. In the fulfillment of our potential, our freedom from confusion and dishonor, in our ability to take care of ourselves and the people who depend on us.
Anti-training comes in many forms,
some coarse and some subtle. What do you do between workouts? What do you do with your body, and with your mind? If what you do is not taking you forward, if it is not contributing to your strength, skill, focus and peace of mind, then it is degrading them.
Our mind is constantly on the prowl. Seeking out what feels good. Avoiding what does not. Addiction and agitation come from this. There is no satisfying addiction, and no peace comes from it. They start because at first they appear harmless. If we are not vigilant, they invade. If we do not stop them, they take over.
Sugar and recreational eating
Sugar addiction leads to recreational eating, obesity, emotional disturbance and sickness. It degrades training. Predatory corporations, like drug dealers, try to take advantage of people, but it is within our power to reject their influence, to be free of their seduction, brainwashing, and rackets; to recover, to stay strong and healthy.
Porn and promiscuity
Promiscuity and porn addiction destroy relationships and individuals. Minds get distorted, unable to function freely. This makes people feel ashamed, weak and alienated, degraded and degrading. With the decline of the family ideal as the best way to live, the social values and social structures that protect it have weakened, and promiscuity is normalized. Like all addictions in which people become imprisoned, it damages training.
Intoxication
Drugs and alcohol distort the mind, degrade the body, and wreck your judgement. The experience of pleasure turns into disatisfaction, craving and pain. Addicts lose self-respect, betray the trust of friends and family, get into conflicts, debt and difficulties. They lose their composure, their dignity, their health and their lives.
Games, distraction and the illusion of action
One-way digital interaction through games, social media, scrolling and watching, conspire to stunt people’s development, degrade problem solving and complex thinking, block empathic feeling, erode the will, distort relationships and obscure meaningful action, replacing it all with the fleeting pleasure of dopamine secretions and the endless pursuit of phantoms.
Corrupt rewards
Gain, fame, pleasure, esteem, authority and status pursued for their own sake, without consideration of right and wrong, present a danger that may not be evident at the start. Institutions which rely on them require that you adopt their values and further their objectives. By doing this, without noticing it, you give up the direction of your own life, and your freedom to make moral choices. If you devote your life to increasing shareholder value regardless of the means by which that value is increased – a means you may not know, can not choose, and cannot question – you will be trapped, harnessed to those values, to those actions, and to their consequences. If you are rewarded for doing good work that gives you satisfaction and brings benefit to other people then you will be rewarded with a virtuous life. You will have the clear mind and strong purpose it takes to do real training. Otherwise, training might be interesting, but it cannot be pursued seriously as a path to freedom.
Anger, blame and resentment
Hard-hearted people manipulate others. And we are all subject to being manipulated by them if we do not recognize their threats and promises as poisons. If we recognize the value of genuine training and the transformative potential it offers, we can see what to do and what to avoid, and escape these traps. Our power is our own. We refuse to give way to anger or resentment. We do not take the bait and succumb to rage, whether personal, or directed toward a mythical group. Rage blinds us to the best course of action. We do not tolerate evil and injustice, whatever the source. We make progress in what is right, with courage, generosity, and persistence. We do not need to immanentize the eschaton to reach our goal.
We use training to free ourselves
Training is redemptive. It brings us back to earth. It is human, communal, challenging, rewarding, natural. It restores health and dignity. Obstacles to training are pervasive in modern cultures. Modern cultures are saturated with expedience, with getting somewhere else, getting more, going faster, being different. Modern cultures are oriented to machines, and so many are condemned to a circumscribed life in a prison of urban ugliness, deferred responsiblity, timidity, anger and alienation. We are not immune to this influence, but we need not be swept away by it either. Neither corruption, isolation or the myth of the arc of history should be allowed to determine our choices, or the course of our lives. We can free ourselves. Training gives us the means. It elevates our experience. Training is not an escape from life. It is a way in.
About that magnificent sunset tonight
We all experienced it. We saw it. We felt it. With our senses sharp, our minds calm and clear, our bodies energized, refreshed and relaxed after hours of hard training. You can’t record that experience. You can’t reproduce it on video, approximate it in pictures or generate it with AI. Because it was real. We were and are in it. The sun set. The world moved on, as we did. You can’t explain a sunset. You don’t need to. We need to live it. Karate training is like this. Life is. Some people are forgetting this. We are remembering it.
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in western NC.
Photo by Tarleton Brooks
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Read This Before it’s Too Late:
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