Saljkd02

?OHEWAHl

Three swordsmen sat down et a tafcie In a crowded Japanese inn and began to make loud comments abcut their aeighbor, hoping to goad hdm into a duel.’ The mister seemed to teka no notice of them, hut when their remarks becante ruder and morę pcinted, he raised his chopsŁicks and, In guick snips, effortlsssly caught four flies on the winę, As he slowly laid down the chopsticks, the three swcrdsmen hurriedly lef t the room.

The story illustrates a great differance between Oriental and Western thinking, The nverage Westsmer would be intrigued by ecmaone'3 ubił i ty to eatch flies with chopsticks, and weuld probably say that has nothing to do with how good he is in cocnbat. But the Oriental would realire that a man who ha* attalnad such coraplete mas tery of an art reveals his presence o£ mind in every action, The statę of whclenees and inipertnrbafcillty demcnstrated by the master indicated hia mastery of self.

And so it ia with martial arta, To the Westamer the finger jabs, the side kicks, the back fist, etc,, are tools of destructioa and violence which is, indeed, one of their functions, But the Oriental beli«ves that the pricsary function of such tools .is rewealed when they are self-diracted and dastroy greed, fear, anger and folly.

Manipulative sklll is not the Oriental' s goal. He is aiming bis kleks and blows at himsełf and when successful, may even sueceed. in knocking himself out, After yaars of training, he hopes to aehieve that vital Loosenlng and eguebility of all powers which is what the three swcrdsmen saw in the master,

In every day Life the mind is capeble of moving from one thought or object to aaother - "being" mind instead of ^-having^J' mind, How«ver, when face to face with an opponent in a deadly contast, the mind tends to stiek and loses its mobility. Stieka-fcilihy cr stoppage is a problem that baunts every martial artist,

ywan^in (Avalokitesvara) , the Goddess of sercy, is sometlmes represented with one thousand ams, eaeh holding a different instrument, If her mind stopę with the use, for instance, of a spear, all the other arms    will be of no uae whatever. It

is only because of her mind not stoppimg with the use of one arm, but moving fron one instrument to another, that all her arms prove useful with the umnost degree of efficienee. Thus the figurę is me ant to demonstrate that, when the ultimata fcruth Is realised even łs many as one thousand ams on one body mav eacb be service-ahle in one way or another,

"Purposeieseness," ■‘empty-mindedness’' cr "no art” are freguent terms used in the Orient to denote the ultimate achievement of a martial artist. According tc Zen, the spirit is by naturę formless