alsey

get in the most comfortable position you can, close your eyes, and breath. that's actually all there is to meditation. the hard part is being able to not do anything else other than breath. focus on the breath. i find it best to focus on the sensation just inside the rim of the nostril. feel the breath flowing past that point and focus on it. your mind will wander. when you notice your mind wandering, stop thinking and return to the sensation of the breath. your mind will wander again; go back to the breath. keep doing this. it will take a lot of practice before you can stop your mind wandering for a long period of time. and it will take even more practice before you start to notice long lasting benefits from your meditation. meditation is all about practice and patience. its all in my sig. i learnt to meditate from this book: http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php i never looked back. learning to meditate is by far the best thing i've done in my life.

i think the two are separable, but i also think they complement eachother very well. buddhism deals with life and death. martial arts deal with life and death in a short specific space of time, a fight. this was more obvious when martial arts involved killing someone on a battlefield for instance. to understand life and death, to be free of the fear of death to go and do what you must are goals of buddhism and they help greatly in martial arts training. the other thing is that buddhism helps you to empty your mind. in simple terms this frees you of distraction so you can perform your art as well as possible. the 'enlightened' warrior is able to practice his art to the limit of his physical ability. someone with a less disciplined mind will be restricted by their mind. this doesn't just apply to martial arts, it applies to everything. to the buddhist, meditation improves everything in their life. if a buddhist practices martial arts, then his meditation will improve his martial arts. if he practices cooking, then his meditation will improve his cooking. this is why the two are so interwined. for a samurai, for example, to abandon buddhism would be like making a concious effort to get worse at everything in his life, including his bujitsu.

i like to think that i am not. when i think about death i don't think of it as a bad thing, something that will happen and hopefully i will be able to embrace when the time comes. i'm sure though there is still subconcious fear of it in me though. i have already faced death in a way already, as many who have used entheogenic drugs have. i won't say any more on that because i don't know how moderators will react to me posting about drug use. but basically i am confident that i have experienced something almost identical to death. i believe i know how to let go of my ego and accept death, but i may be wrong.

god i love mortal kombat. they're all brilliant. even mk1 i play occasionally, me and a friend played it just over a month ago. deadly alliance is probably my favorite though, i've never thought as much about a fighting game as that one. one of my favorite games ever. i havn't tried deception yet.

enpi. i also like jitte and chinte, but i love enpi.

i'm very much in favour of as much japanese language as possible. one of the main reasons i practice martial arts is because i'm interested in the tradition and the history, and language is a vital part of this. also the english translations of japanese terms are often incomplete or incorrect. e.g. 'age uke' does not mean upward block. ultimately i don't think it matters. names are just names, and martial art is a lot more than semantics. personally i just like to have as much traditional elements in the art as possible.

kendo is sparring all out. we don't actually use katana, but the shinai simulates the weight, balance and feel of katana very well. we also wear armor, but the sparring is indeed all out. all cuts are full speed and power as if we were trying to kill the opponent. the feeling when you're doing it is incredible.

it depends how much you care about your weapon. i'd recommend getting instruction from an expert if you want to do it properly, but you can probably get the job done reasonable well on your own.

its something i've wanted to try for years, but all the archery schools i can find are western competition styles with plastic bows and laser sights and stuff lol.

i mainly train with shinai, bokken and katana in kendo. i've also done quite a lot of training with a staff, and i've dabbled in sai and nunchaku.

karate has had a lot of influences over the years. most of its growth as an art occured in okinawa so it is generally regarded as okinawan, but the foundations of the art came with the chinese masters who travelled to okinawa. once there, the okinawans made it their own, but chinese would still come over from time to time and add their influences. then the japanese came and added their influences. then karate travelled to japan itself and certain japanese embraced and made it their own. some kata are distinctly chinese in style (e.g. gankaku/chinto), while others are very okinawan (e.g. bassai/passai), and others still are japanese (e.g. heian/pinan) i would say modern karate is japanese, but is based on okinawan and chinese methods. alternatively you could say that it comes from china, via okinawa and japan. some people even trace it further back to india.

all real fighting styles contain techniques for use at all ranges - striking, grappling, throws/takedowns, groundwork - and karate is no exception. karate in its old okinawan form was essentially a very efficient method of civilian self defence. the kind of situations karate deals with are the same sort of violent civilian encounters that occur today, i.e. untrained thugs wanting to hurt you for some reason or another. karate was never meant for competition, or fighting other martial artists or warriors, it was made for civilian self defence. the kata IMO are karate, not something practiced in karate. each kata contains the self defence techniques of the master who created it and is a style in itself. master motobu wrote: "the naihanchi [tekki], passai [bassai], chinto [gankaku] and rohai [meikyo] styles are not left in china today and only remain in okinawa as active martial arts." motobu refers to katas as styles and martial arts; each kata is a complete self defence system in itself and so it must contain techniques for dealing with any type of situation at any range. thus each kata contains striking, grappling, throws/takedowns and groundwork. this is also supported by the old masters studying just one or two kata in their lifetime. there was no need for any more because a kata, when understood properly, is a complete fighting system. the problem of course is recognising these things in a kata. if one has never practiced grappling, then grappling techniques within a kata will not be spotted. the other problem is that 'real' karate was intentionally supressed by its own masters in the early 20th century. master itosu (who i would call the grandfather of modern karate, if funakoshi is the father) began teaching karate to children as a way of keeping fit and developing discipline. as a result the real combat techniques of the kata were not taught. crippling locks and takedowns were taught as punches or blocks. soon enough this became karate-do and the real fighting art faded into obscurity. and so we have modern karate - an art that was intended for children. this is the reason why i quit my shotokan practice a few years ago. despite this the kata remain, and hence the real fighting art that karate used to be is still there. its just not taught in modern karate schools.

it depends on what you want to know. martial arts are vast and encompass many things, do you want to get good at fighting? do you want to know more about martial arts history or philosophy? are you more interested in sport martial arts? its hard to recommend a book on martial arts in general because there are no books that cover all of it!

of course, modern training methods have the benefit of a better knowledge of medicine, nutrition, psychology etc and better technology (even in things as simple as a punch bag). but the samurai still trained in as realistic a way as possible, i.e. limited rules sparring and grappling. on a battlefield? i doubt it. all well trained fighters have an advantage in street fights, but not all well trained fighters have an advantage against other well trained fighters. i guess all i'm saying is that for bruce to step into the octagon is just trying to beat the MMA guy at his own game. the UFC fighter's occupation is to be good at fighting in the octagon, so he has a huge advantage over someone like bruce lee. if an MMA fighter found himself on a medieval battlefield (hypothetical of course), i'm pretty sure he'd die rather soon. he'd end up on the ground and get a spear through his back or something. i'm just trying to say that MMA is very good at what its meant for, and so were bruce lee's skills. i'm not saying one is better than the other overall or even in a street fight situation, but i do think MMA is better in the octagon situation. i also accept your point that its not all about vital areas and banned techniques, there is more to it than that. when i said that bruce lee would kill the guy in the octagon, i wasn't serious and probably i was wrong.

i'm coming into this rather late, but these are my thoughts: i started watching UFC a couple of years ago, and i really enjoy it. i think its great that a fighting competition with limited rules exists and is broadcast so widely. however, i do not think UFC is very realistic and i do not think methods used in UFC are necessarily the best self-defense methods, because of the following: UFC has rules, time-limits, breaks, supporters etc, real fighting has none of these things. UFC is garaunteed one on one, in a real fight the situation could be different. even if a real fight starts out one on one, others can join in. UFC is a fight between two martial artists, real fights usually involve one or more untrained fighters. UFC occurs in an octagon, real fights will most certainly not occur in an octagon. UFC fights occur at prearranged times, in a real fight you may have just seconds to prepare. UFC is empty hand, real fighting is not necessarily empty hand. despite this i love watching UFC and the fighting methods used in it are still genius and the fighters extremely skilled. one of the martial arts i practice is kendo. i love watching and fighting in kendo matches. however these matches, while they use real sword fighting techniques are nothing like real sword combat because of the restrictions placed on the match and the fact that it is a match and not a fight occuring in an unexpected place at an unexpected time with other people as possible combatants. i see UFC fighting in the same way. as for most fights going to the ground, i honestly don't know. people often produce statistics on this, but the methods used to obtain those statistics are either unknown or unreliable, so i go on my own experience. i have been in three fights, and i didn't go to the ground in any of them. one of them involved six people, and some of those people did go to the ground. i have also seen two violent encounters, one of which went to the ground. i think it important to remember that in real violent encounters, none of the combatants might have the objective of submitting, crippling or killing another. often it is enough for a thug to punch you in the face and leave it at that, but of course you should be trained to go to the ground just in case.

personally i believe all kata movements are active combat techniques that will disable the opponent, i guess that is the root of my skepticism of this bunkai.

UseoForce, i admit i have never trained in MMA, but i have watched a fair bit of UFC, though that has all been in the last two or three years. i may have seen and experienced little of MMA compared to you or someone actually into it, but i have seen situations in UFC where one fighter has had the advantage and could have finished the fight there and then should he have been allowed to use one of the banned methods, but instead the fighter is forced to mount the opponent and grapple to get the victory. i do however get what you're saying (and agree with most of it) and i'll have to look into older MMA competitions. i do not believe realistic combat training to be non-traditional. quite the opposite. by traditional i essentially mean one of the older arts, and arts where the ring environment was not considered. for example, modern karate would not fall under this definition of traditional. the reason i think bruce would be so disadvantaged is not because he has had inadequate training, but because the methods he has trained in greatly utilise things which are banned in UFC. modern MMA however seems to be based on things which are allowed in UFC (as far as i know, and in all honesty i don't know much about modern MMA so correct me if i'm wrong). to win in UFC or any professional sport you have to be extremely good at the specific things demanded by the sport. bruce did not spend his life training to beat people in the octagon, while those who fight in UFC do so they have a huge advantage. i think in a random fight in a bar or something, bruce would hold the advantage because he trained to fight in realistic combat situations. while training methods are extremely importand as you explained, so is the target of your training. an MMA fighter will be good in an octagon, a samurai will be good on a medieval battlefield for example.

this is exactly my position on the matter. know where to strike, but don't put everything down to hitting pressure points. in a real fight, hitting a pressure point is extremely difficult. knowing how to strike with speed and power is IMO more important. by all means aim for pressure points, but don't expect to hit them in a real fight. if you do hit them, then great, you win, but if you don't then at least you'll have enough power in the strike to do some damage. learning to strike powerfully is not the same as relying on brute strength. you can have tiny arms and still deliver very powerful punches if you know how to put your whole body into the technique.

i have always interpreted the 'drop' in kanku as a throw. is there any evidence to support the 'night kata' idea? i have never heard of it before and i'm skeptical. if the drop was intended to help the practitioner see his opponent, then why is the gaze directed towards the floor and why does the following move point in the opposite direction?

the following UFC rules put a traditional martial artist like bruce at a disadvantage: no eye gouging no fish hooking no groin attacks no small joint manipulation no striking to the spine or the back of the head no striking using the point of the elbow no throat strikes no grabbing the clavicle no kicking, stamping or kneeing a grounded opponent's head no heel kicks to the kidney these are all vital parts of traditional martial arts. i think if bruce fought UFC his opponent would be declared winner, but probably posthumously.

practice is all it takes. try holding it for just a little longer each time you do it, even if it is just another five seconds. just by standing the in stance your body will get better at it. breath deeply all the way down into the abdomen while you hold the stance. focus on your breath, not your legs.

i have always been told that when bowing to a superior such as your sensei, lower your gaze to show respect, but when bowing to an opponent maintain eye contact and awareness.