Gym Zen: The Prequel

Shelby Starnes over at EliteFTS posted some quotes from an author, punk rock bassist and Zen Buddhist named Brad Warner. Brad has written a few books on Zen, his most notable are Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up. I've always gravitated towards Buddhism but I don't know much about Zen, so I picked up Sit Down and managed to blow through it. Twice. I'm currently going through it with a highlighter in a vain attempt to retain all the good things in that book. It also inspired me to pick up the translation of Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo), in order to find a different perspective and start to reach my own conclusions.

I tend to relate things through training and competition, since that's one of the things that has been a constant in my life for the past 12-14 years (give or take a couple injury years). So, with any luck, this will be the first part of a series relating some aspects of Zen to training and competing in sport. My intention is to focus on each of Dogen's main themes of Buddhist study and (try to) draw some parallels and applications to them in the athletic world.

I do my best to write things in the "this is me" tense, rather than the "Here's what I do/did, why you should do it and why everything I do is awesome" tense. One of the bigger concepts I've found in Zen is that we all experience the world uniquely. This seems like a fairly obvious point but it's something that we forget in our day to day lives. My experiences (in training and competing, in relationships, in professional endeavors, etc) are unique from yours and I try to keep that in mind.
So, Dogen. Dogen basically summarized Buddhist study into four basic principles:

1. Establishing the Will to Truth: You have to regard the truth, in all its black and white glory, as your ultimate goal. You also have to be willing to accept what is true, regardless of how you feel about the matter.

2. Deep Belief in Cause and Effect: Dogen believed that the entire universe follows the rule of cause and effect without exception. This is the toughest one for me to wrap my head around, because we as humans live to create exceptions to any rule. "This isn't right, but...".

3. Life as Present Action: Love this from Sit Down, "At best, past and future are reference material for the eternal now. You can dream about the future, but no matter how well you construct that dream, your future will not be precisely as you envisioned it. The world where we live is existence at the present moment." Self-explanatory, no?

4. Zazen: Zazen is the form of meditation in Zen. Dogen thought that zazen was a vital part of experiencing the world as it truly is. Whether or not you care to dabble in meditating or not, the root idea is getting some quiet time to not think (read that again: NOT think) about anything at all. I think we all agree that a little more quiet time would hardly be a bad thing, right?

So there's the primer. Fire away with questions, comments and concerns and thanks very much for taking the time. Now your daily affirmation: