Serious people can be happy. People are happy when they have a peaceful mind and good relations with others. This may take some work. Our training provides a way to do it. Some traditions may seem artificial and complicated. Traditions have treasures in them. If we can recover the essential ideals in practice, we will get the results we are seeking.
In mind training we cultivate a peaceful mind and good relations with others. In dojo practice, as vigorous and demanding as it is, this is also what we develop. We have been choosing how to live. The results are evident.
We human beings have an urgent need for training. Untrained minds are dangerous. Untrained bodies feel unwell.Training need not include mastering elaborate philosophy, feats of imagination, memory or genius. We do not need magical thinking, intellectual architecture, group identity, special dress, words, rites or modes of behavior. These may be meaningful. They may be helpful. They can never substitute for cultivating the essential qualities we need to master our bodies, our hearts and our minds. We need to know what to do, and we need to be diligent in practicing. But the effort is always rewarded. The results always come.
By making a habit of attending to the present we recover our balance, instead of leaning forward or back in time. Instead of missing our lives, distracted by machines, impressions, desire and anxiety, we can do what we are doing right here and now, with a clear mind and a whole heart. We can be present when we talk, work, train, walk, breathe, eat, and be, alone or together with others. That way of living does not happen by itself. It is unusual. When you meet someone who lives this way, someone who has cultivated a clear, stable mind and a purposeful, generous heart, you can tell something is different about them.
You might think this way of living would make you weak or put you at a disadvantage. It does not. Scheming, manipulating and fretting about how you stand in relation to others can put you at a disadvantage. Doing right with courage, being kind with skill, gives you a great advantage, in ways that matter, in ways that endure, bring strength, and happiness.
We have forms to train ourselves in this way of life. Forms which provide us with an ideal toward which we strive, and against which we can measure our performance. Like kata, the forms in karate, the forms of mind training also focus our effort and give us the means to cultivate the life we want, a life that is energetic, peaceful, purposeful, and virtuous, uniting our body, mind and will with the vast world we are in, a way to make our lives our own.
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Post copyright © 2025 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate Dojo, in the mountains of western NC.
Photo by Nguyen Hung via Unsplash
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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