The highest aspiration of any form of silat, is that it can teach us how to deal with the inevitability of our own death. Paradoxically, it can also teach us how to live. This is what it means to be a warrior. Care to share your thoughts? Salam, Krisno
I am just a baby exploring outside my crib, so forgive my ignorance. I hope Mas Krisno's post stimulates some worthwhile discussion. First, when you are about to lose something, its value is more obvious. Life is the most precious gift we have. It is sacred. The nature of self-defence: What is the self we are defending? What is the nature of life? Who gave it to us? Self-defence is not mere body defence. Surely the ultimate in self-defence is defence of the true self, the soul. In this case, where does body defence sit in relation to how one has prepared the soul, grown it etc, defended it against the deceit of the enemy? When body defence is in line with soul defence, is the purpose to defend against temptation to satiate appetites of the flesh? In preparation for shedding this mortal skin, one must be prepared to meet the one who gave us life. If we lived correctly according to our faith, assuming we had it, then perhaps we would be welcomed into the heavenly sphere. The knowledge of what lies beyond death is the knowledge about how to live now: commitment to this knowledge in faith, intention and action. God only knows what lies ahead. It’s in all the books, I think.
Perhaps not just Silat, I think this extends to many practices. Bit of a tangent but I remember this story I once heard. There was this very high ranking family and a son was born to them. Unfortunately this boy had a strange birth defect, not only was he mute but he had a strange membrane or skin which extended over his face, nose, eyes and ears so that he could not fully see, smell or hear the external world. At a time when such things were not well tolerated in society the father, who was a cruel man could no longer bare the embarrassment of the situation. He ordered his loyal servant to take the boy at dawn to a deep lake and hold him under the water until his life was extinguished. The young boy’s mother heard of the plans and she was deeply upset but what could she do. That night in her sleep she was visited by a wise man. He gave her instructions telling her that the boy had great potential, in time he will surpass all others “Take the boy to the sea, not the lake and hold him up until the ninth wave passes over his head”. The mother secretly passed the instructions on to the servant and he agreed to it. Dawn arrived and the servant took the boy to the sea, at the waters edge the boy blindly went forward, unable to smell the salty sea, unable to hear the waves crashing, unable to see with clearness his steps and no voice to say otherwise. The servant carried the boy out some distance, deep enough to drown him but before that he had to do as he promised the boys mother. He held the boy up so that each wave went over his head. Then something miraculous began to happen, as each wave went over the membrane started to loosen. When the ninth wave passed over the boy rose up out of the water, his eyes now uncovered they filled with tears. His lungs filled with air and he let out a cry. Not tears of sadness but tears of joy, because until then he had lived with a veil preventing him form knowing the truth and the truth was so beautiful it made him weep. As foretold he was in advance of his years, now that he could see what others could not. Probably the deepest teaching of Silat or any other system/ religion is to see with unveiled eyes. Seeing clearly you can truly know yourself, walk the correct path and guide others. But I could be wrong too
Quite right old chap. While aspirations are personal, there is I think a hierarchy of achievement which is universal, even if our own aspiration is aiming elsewhere. The ideas of life and death and our attachment to those concepts, does probably fall in this general category. It is to this hierarchy that I allude. The question is then, who is the "I" that we forsee as experiencing death? How do we define our selves, how do we see our selves from within the context of our mortality? The reality could be that our self is a construct of our mind ego. It is this construct which we've allowed to exist which creates a separate (and bogus) reality ... and it is this construct entity which acknowledges and fears it's mortal predicament. Our ego fears and rails against the inevitability of it's doom. The body and the mind are part of the same entity ... they are two parts of who we are. The mind is a tool which we can use to enhance the symbiotic relationship, just as body processes can as well. Observe the connectedness that an infant can display and compare it to the clumsiness that most adults have learned through decades of intensifying bad habits. The process of silat (and I'm using it as a generic term of any martial art as is common in my mother tongue ... silat=martial art) allows us to quiet the ego momentarily as we focus our intent on the requirements of our practice. (In my culture, silat alludes to many activities ... we have the silat of life ... not just about martial arts. Silat is a description of a way, the path of the warrior, and need have nothing to do with take-downs or pukulan). When we perform, our mind becomes still. Thus achieving a quietening of the calamity that the ego perceives ... it becomes irrelevant in the stillness of the moment. Gradually the strangle-hold of the ego decreases and relaxes and our the veil of perceptions change and re-align ... and from the ego's perspective, this is the the most important death, the death of the concept of self. Thus the holistic "we" of body and mind can re-align and the concept of "I" construct of the mind un-moored from body can become diminished ... death of the ego, the id, the false concept of "I". We are of the Tao ... a nonsensical word denoting the vastness of the unknowable. "Death" as perceived by the ego has no place here, for the real death is as natural as breathing out, and being alive is as natural as breathing in, the change in tide and change of season. Therefore ... through silat, we can gain insight into how to approach the inevibilty of our death ... while (at the same time) changing our understanding of what life means. But of course, aspirations remain the construct of our other construct created by mind to represent self. Salam, Krisno
In absolute reality, there is no life or death as we percieve it, there is only transition and change. But getting the ego-mind to conceptualize things of an infinite nature is like trying to run Windows Vista on a Commodore 64... As far as aspirations go, I think the more aligned you are with the source and flow of life, the fewer actual aspirations you have. Most of us aspire to be or do or have things that we don't or haven't or are not. If you are in alignment with source, you realize that you already are everything you could ever hope or want to have or do or be. Either because you realize that through combined focused intention, thought and emotions that you are the alchemist and start manifesting whatever you desire, or you realize that it is all a bunch of crap. Or both. Either way, you are no longer a a slave to fear because you realize there is really nothing to lose or gain. Everything already IS. The "I" tries so hard to keep us attached to "insert whatever here" because it must keep us distracted with trivium in order to keep itself alive. That's why it ceases to exist when you learn to live in the stillness of the moment. I think living solely in that moment, free from fear and doubt, is what it means to be a warrior. Think of Obi-wan Kenobi before Vader cuts his ass down....
Look at all the "I think"s in that post. Obviously my ego was responsible for the whole thing. Everyone should completely disregard every word my tricky lil'******* of an ego says. Thank you.
The answer is Linux of course ... I'm sure that some-one could come up with a stripped down version to run on a C64! Good answer ... it is also the struggle along the way or the path. It is fighting the good fight. Tricky things these egos. I speak from frequent personal experience ... of course! Salam, Krisno
I think anything which has a dual nature cannot be true reality, life/death, Good/bad, Hot/cold etc etc Assuming you knew and believed that then death for you would be just an illusion and not the ultimate or final curtain. The Buddha said “ The man that conquers himself is superior to the one who conquers a thousand men in battle” What makes someone want to be able to vanquish anyone who would stands in their way, it must be ego and therefore not the true meaning of martial arts or what it is to be a warrior. My metaphor for a warrior would be much like a tornado. A tornado is one of the most destructive forces in nature, it can lift a house clean from its foundations, it can bend and twist steel train tracks as if they were twigs. Yet something is surprising, if we were to walk through the violently whirling outer wall of the tornado we would find that in its center there is absolute stillness, emptiness, peace! The tornados power comes from that stillness. If you could control that stillness you could move the entire tornado and direct its path. I think a true warrior is someone who has that stillness inside of them, if you have that peace inside of you then you can face anything. The thug is someone who has ego at his center, the warrior is someone who has stillness and peace at his centre, totally different nothing in common.
A true warrior understands they have weakness as challenges on the path to enlightenment. Terrific ideal ... but if there is no struggle left then one has attainment, may be a Buddha. BTW, I thought a tornado was the result of differences between hot air and cold air? If we could recreate our balance of hot air and cold air maybe we could be like a tornado too ... hehe (only joking!) . Salam, Krisno.
Never said there would be no struggle, just that they have a type of peace inside which gives them confadence. Will consider that theory next time I fart.....haha
Maybe that's my problem....I'm far to thuggish...I need to change my ghetto gangsta ways....fo reallls yo
